Chris KobyleckiWhere are our plans?
It's June already, and someone just asked: "๐๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ'๐ด ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ด๐ต๐ณ๐ข๐ต๐ฆ๐จ๐ช๐ค ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ ๐ธ๐ฆ ๐ค๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ต๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ข๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ง๐ง๐ด๐ช๐ต๐ฆ ๐ฃ๐ข๐ค๐ฌ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐๐ฆ๐ค๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ณ?". Sound familiar?
Here's the uncomfortable truth: Most planning fails not because we create bad plans, but because we don't plan to use our plans. Account time to check on plans.
Any planning tool, whether it's OKRs, SMART Goals, Roadmaps, or Score Card - will fail if you don't build the discipline to actually use it.
For successful OKR implementation, I recommend establishing four essential meeting rhythms upfront
OKR Planning session
Regular Check-ins
Quarterly Review
Retro
Valuable Organizational time
OKRs cost time, your valuable organizational time. Consider that it takes:
- 4-8h to set them
- 30-60 min weekly to check in on them
- 1-2h to summarise and review them
- 1h to do a retrospective on this process
This translates to ~1-2h of your organization time per week during a quarter. Yet thatโs the space where you can actually align on the important work.
Yes, it's painful. Yes itโs going to take time. Yet It forces teams to confront the reality that we often default to "Business as Usual" because it feels safer and more engaging.
But if you want real change, you need to keep pushing through the discomfort.