Objectives: Zooming out before zooming in
Hi everyone! Amanda's here from think team!
The past month we’ve been reshaping our company a lot. From shifting our morning meetings to an hour later to rewriting how we plan our days. As you know we have to write our problems before we start working everyday https://www.su-re.co/post/working-at-su-re-co-pt-6-a-transparent-office
You also may know that we always change and adapt. That is part of why we do the monthly retreats, to find ways where we can always improve and carve our clearer path to our vision.
Anyway, so we decided to change our daily habits. Instead of stating our problem of the day, we state our long-term objective. Instead of just stating “done” at the end of the day. We need to post a daily reflection, alongside an emoji. Why so specific? That’s honestly my first judgment. Until I discovered my flawed point of view during the retreat.
In the retreat, I organized an activity where we each team has to write objectives for next quartile based on OKR. You can find the references here https://www.mural.co/blog/okr-planning-that-works-part-1 . Turns out, a lot of misunderstood what this meant. Many misunderstood Objective as measurable key results. Tak points out that objectives aren’t checkboxes, they are they “why”s not the “how”s. We shouldn’t do things for the sake of doing things. Objectives should be aspirational, but not a vague goal. Based on Ally.io course on OKR , I learned a simple formula for exercise: .
start by defining 3-5 objectives. Use this formula: Verb + what you want to do + in order to/for/so that (what you hope to achieve) For example: “Disseminate the best biogas system to help more farmers to get clean energy and climate education”
This is why we started to write objectives daily for every action we write. To really connect our task however small and specific it is to our longterm goal. In a small company where there will be so many tiny tasks, it’s easy for it to become saturated and have it’s main purpose lost in the fog. By zooming out, I think I can feel better about every single task.
Not only is this helpful mentally, but it also steers the company in a way that everyone will always be rmeinded to work in the same direction. And perhaps within us, we all have an even bigger objective outside the ones in a company. So what is your life objective, to giftmakers, why did you really choose su-re.co?