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Our North Star
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Getting Started

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Note: This is the FREE OKRs Section of the Complete OKR & Initiatives Hub.
See the full hub here.
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Vision combined with organization is power. Welcome to your tool suite.

👋 Hi! Lucy here. After 8+ years leading in a high growth, highly cross-functional startup environment and ultimately rising from 1st PM to VP of Product & Strategic Planning, I’ve learned a thing or 2 about operational leadership.
I’m here to walk you through the tools and principles I use to help our teams stay tightly aligned and loosely coupled (Source:
No Rules Rules
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- Netflix). TLDR - Do more, meet less.
First of all, what is Coda? Coda is a connected, collaborative workspace platform that builds off of the fundamental units of data in your business (Ex. Goals, tasks, projects, people, teams, etc.). Coda appeals to me because of its holistic approach: start with the fundamentals. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
By properly setting up your base data tables from the beginning, you give yourself, your team, and your AI(!) the fundamental building blocks to create advanced views with speed and accuracy.
Want a quick rundown?
Watch this 1m video
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.
Need a crash course?
Take Coda 101
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.
Need more help? Talk to
support@coda.com
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(they’re lightning fast!) or reach out to me
lucy@level380.com
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to schedule a consulting call.

Set up / explore your workspace:

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Our North Star
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The Vision, Mission, & Strategy that Guide our Work
Everything we do should be in alignment with our North Star. This is perhaps the most important alignment page for your company. The people whose personal North Star overlaps with the Company’s, will be your beacon. The people who don’t see it will come and go. Clarify your North Star, understand your unique powers, and find your superstars. This is why we work.

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Our Goals
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Our Company Goals & How We Achieve Them
Optional read:
Intro to OKRs
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Add
Objectives
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- easy-to-understand, inspirational goal statements that clearly tie to business or customer value
Add
Goal Horizon
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. By default, Company Goals are tied to years (ie. 2024) but you can set any Goal Horizon you want.
Add Company Key Results (
Our Goals
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), which roll up to Objectives
Add Team Key Results (
Our Goals
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), which roll up to Company Key Results
Optional: To leverage Department or Team filters in your
Our Goals
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, add Depts/Teams and associate them with specific individuals.
Add
Departments
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Add
Teams
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, which roll up to Departments.
Add
People
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, which roll up to Teams. Team Key Results will be associated to Teams based on designated Owner.
This is a scalable document meant to track multiple goal cycles - for as long as you want. Add new horizons and goals and easily toggle between horizons to see past goals.


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Helpful Resources

Intro to OKRs

OKRs stand for Objectives & Key Results, which help companies align top line objectives with team goals at scale.
Objectives are the “Whats” and define what we are seeking to achieve. They are:
Aggressive & inspirational, yet realistic
Easy to understand
Clearly tie to business value
Ex. We want to dominate the XYZ business.
Key Results are the “Hows” by which we measure our progress within a set timeframe. They:
Express measurable milestones & timeframes which, if achieved, will advance Objective(s) in a meaningful way
Good: “Improve daily sign-ups by 25 percent by May 1.”
Bad: “Improve sign-ups”
Must describe clear outcomes/outputs, not activities (we need to be able to score success)
Good: “Publish average and tail latency measurements from six Colossus cells by March 7.”
Bad: “Assess latency”
Should ideally tie back to clear value - avoid “Who Cares” KRs
Good: “Launch Foo 4.1 to improve sign-ups by 25 percent”
Bad: “Launch Foo 4.1” - internal terms, unclear why Foo is important
Be reasonably attributable back to one’s efforts
Try to limit to 3-5 Key Results max per Objective to create focus
Together, Objectives & Key Results help teams unify and align work to company objectives, while creating a common definition of success. Ex. We want to dominate the XYZ business “as measured by A, B, C”.
Read more about OKRs here:
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Google's OKR playbook: Learn more about goal setting and OKRs.
Unlock the power of Google's OKR strategy with our comprehensive okr guidelines. Find expert examples, templates, worksheets, and best practices to drive your strategic goals.
www.whatmatters.com
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But wait! When do I use an outcome (Increase metric X) vs. an output (Deliver Y) as my key result?
It is generally recommended to strive for outcome-based Key Results (metrics, not delivery of “x”), as this gives autonomy to teams and allows for projects/tactics to evolve to best suit the desired outcome.
However, there are cases where output KRs may make better goals. This could include:
Early launches with minimal/no performance benchmarks: In these cases, an output KR (”Launch”) that is clearer to understand may be more effective than an obfuscated performance KR (”Drive X sign-ups”). This also allows us to measure our progress towards launch vs. being 0 throughout the OKR cycle. Once the project is launched and performance baselines established, a new KR can be set to focus on performance.
Committed or longer projects that are unlikely to change during the KR cycle: If we’ve committed to “Braze migration” as a project, it may be more clear to express the KR as “Deliver Braze by X” than its end result ”Drive X cost savings.” While multiple projects could potentially drive this cost savings within a quarter, in this case we’ve already committed to one and thus it’s more valuable to reflect reality.
Ultimately, KRs are meant to help us rally around meaningful progress towards our objective. Thus, if an Output KR represents a clearer end state, it may be the better choice in some cases.


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