June 2023

A painful truth is that we only know how to write OKRs and KPIs but not how to track and execute them properly…

OKRs and KPIs are management methods that many Vietnamese businesses have applied in recent years. Although these methods are well-known around the world, not all businesses have successfully implemented them.

There are many reasons for the failure of implementing a method, but one of the main reasons is that we spend a lot of time writing and issuing them but do not invest enough in the execution – reviewing and improving.

In today’s article, Simplamo shares with you a focus on clarifying the points that are causing discomfort in the execution process and providing specific, visual methods to help you successfully execute OKRs and KPIs and increase revenue growth.

1. Writing is not enough

Many businesses spend the first 2-3 months of the year creating a business plan for the new year, setting OKRs and KPIs then issuing it and letting it float. They only gather the team to review at regular meetings (usually at the end of the month or quarter), but by then, it’s too late.

Employees forget the set goals, metrics, and even OKRs and KPIs. These goals or metrics are no longer relevant due to constant changes in the market/company strategy. Too many issues arise during the execution process, but they are not addressed in a timely manner or are repeated multiple times.

Finally, the goals and metrics do not meet expectations, leaving both employees and managers exhausted after each meeting. Clearly, writing and issuing a plan or OKRs and KPIs is one thing, but whether it can be successfully executed depends on how we review and improve it.

2. Writing correctly and sufficiently

OKRs and KPIs are no longer unfamiliar to us, with many books, documents, and template samples for businesses to choose from. However, when writing their own set of indicators and objectives, businesses should pay attention to the following:

• Quality over quantity: choose truly important indicators and objectives for the business. A long list of indicators and objectives often does not bring efficiency to the team, they will be overwhelmed by a myriad of indicators, not knowing what to prioritize and where to start. The suggested number here is a maximum of 15 indicators for the entire business and 7 important objectives for each quarter.
• Short and easy to understand: ensure that the names of the indicators and objectives you set are easy to understand, even the lowest-level office employee can understand what you want. Simply put, they must understand to be able to do it correctly, verbose and flashy language only makes things more complicated, employees will not remember and not do it according to your intentions.
• Align with business operations and continuously improve: Each business is a unique entity, therefore, the metrics, goals, OKRs and KPIs will also differ. You should start with the important metrics and goals, and during the process, you and your team will realize whether they are suitable and worth pursuing in the future. Then, you adjust and continue to monitor them.

Nothing is perfect and fixed from the beginning, even your business metrics and goals will evolve with the development of the business, so let everything be natural.

3. Review correctly

After completing the target-setting process and releasing it. It is time for the business to conduct indicators in OKRs and KPIs regular and proper reviews to ensure that everything is always on track.

3.1. Regarding frequency

End-of-month or end-of-quarter meetings are not enough to ensure indicators in OKRs and KPIs smooth operations. Imagine if you only meet your team 12 times a year if you meet at the end of each month or only 4 times a year if you meet at the end of each quarter.

Many issues arise during a month or even a week, both internally and externally with customers. If you only meet at the end of each month, all you get are reports on the numbers, and you do not have the opportunity to address the issues that have hindered the team during the past month or make timely decisions. This is not to mention whether the targets and indicators of your OKRs and KPIs you set are still appropriate or not.

Therefore, hold weekly meetings on a fixed day and time so that the team can schedule their work and prepare the necessary information for the meeting. Weekly reviews are just enough connection; if you have more frequent meetings, the team will not have time to work and will not be proactive in their work.

3.2. Regarding method:

You have identified the importance of organizing a weekly meeting, so what should we do and say in this meeting to ensure that the team always adheres to the targets? Here are the principles of an effective weekly meeting:

• Start and end on time: set up a fixed weekly meeting so that the team can control their time and attend on time. A meeting should only last for 90 minutes; beyond that, people will not have enough energy and focus to come up with the best solutions to problems.
• Coordinators and secretaries: a meeting should have a main coordinator to ensure everyone stays on topic and focused on the issues discussed. The secretary will record important discussion points and action plans created to send to the team after the meeting ends.
• Ensure proper and complete review: review important content weekly, including your metrics, objectives, from top to bottom. This means your metrics should be measured weekly, your goals should be broken down into smaller pieces for implementation. Do not stop midway in this process, especially when you have just discovered a problem and want to solve it immediately, because you may miss larger issues in metrics, objectives that have not been considered.
• Problem-solving requires action (todo): for each problem, focus on solving it by developing specific action plans, assigning responsibility to someone, and then moving on to solve other problems. Be disciplined in this step, as nearly 80% of people have a tendency to “talk around” without focusing on a specific problem.

These are the principles of a properly organized regular meeting. To make this meeting truly effective, the coordinator must equip themselves with many other soft skills. But above all, it is training and discipline that are most important.

By regularly organizing weekly meetings, you will notice significant changes in the team: everyone knows their metrics, objectives, indicators in OKRs and KPIs by heart and focuses on achieving them; the team identifies and solves many emerging problems that are hindering progress; you can evaluate all activities taking place in the organization, adjust strategies and policies in a timely manner, and place expectations in the right place.

4. Simplamo – Helping you track and execute OKRs and KPIs the right way

Simplamo is a modern goal management software that combines OKRs and KPIs to effectively help you build and implement successful OKRs and KPIs. Instead of simply digitizing what you’re doing or providing you with a matrix of functionalities, Simplamo offers you the mindset and principles to ensure that you’re doing things right and sufficiently.

The mindset that Simplamo brings to you includes:

• How to build weekly KPI metrics: Providing company-level and department-level KPI dashboards to quickly identify issues and make accurate predictions.
• How to build quarterly OKR goals focused on what matters, with suggested methods for building them correctly and sufficiently. Breaking down quarterly OKRs into smart milestone checkpoints for easy progress measurement and issue identification.
• A 7-step intelligent weekly meeting framework, including reviewing key metrics and goals to easily identify issues.
• A role-responsibility organizational chart framework, ensuring that OKRs and KPIs are assigned to the right people for the right tasks.
• User-friendly software interface that focuses on displaying important information, making it easy to monitor team progress and identify impediments.
• KPI Scorecard review during weekly meetings.
• OKR goal board with smart milestone checkpoints.

The core essence that Simplamo brings to you is the operational mindset of a business, focusing on alignment, connection, and achieving goals.

Businesses that have used Simplamo have achieved impressive results within just 6 months of using the software. They have learned how to set the right goals, connect their teams, and work together to successfully execute their goals. Many businesses have experienced growth rates of over 30%, and some even achieved 200% growth within 6 months to 1 year of implementing Simplamo.

5. About Simplamo Simplamo aims to bring you real stories and true value.

We know that you are a great leader, a talented CEO with vast professional knowledge and excellent team leadership skills. However, that also means you are always busy, with numerous ideas that are not easy to convey and turn into reality. Your internal environment may become chaotic, and you may feel overwhelmed as your business expands.

Understanding your concerns, Simplamo was created as a crystallization of modern 21st-century management thinking, a century marked by the rapid rise of technology. The 21st century has no place for lengthy management theories and multi-layered approaches. Instead, management should be simple, practical, and effective.

Simplamo transforms modern management knowledge into user-friendly, understandable, and easy-to-follow tools. Amidst the daily flood of information, you and your team will know what needs to be done and how to collaborate to achieve your goals.

During the Simplamo feature demo session, the Simplamo team not only describes the features but also shares detailed insights about the mindset behind them. This way, you and your team can fully understand every aspect of running a business.

Only when there is shared understanding can your team row together in the same boat!

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Simplamo is a modern and scientifically-based management software that uniquely combines OKRs and KPIs, making every aspect of operation simple and approachable for every employee. It relieves pressure for leaders, allowing them to focus on important missions and optimize work performance for the business.

Experience Simplamo and feel the change in just 4 weeks! Register for a Simplamo demo at: https://app.simplamo.com/sign-up

OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal management method widely used in Western companies such as Google, Intel, and LinkedIn, which has made these companies shine as superstars in the global business world. However, most OKRs are only successful in European and American countries, while in Asia, they often result in disastrous failures. Is there a reason behind this performance discrepancy, and is it because “the West has more superheroes”? The answer is not necessarily, as the 21st century is the century of Asia, and we are definitely making mistakes somewhere along the way.

Let’s explore the following article from Simplamo.com to understand the five reasons why OKRs are successful in the West but fail miserably in Asia, according to a report by McKinsey & Company, a leading global strategy consulting firm that has studied and analyzed OKRs and their impact on different markets.

Is it because Europeans have more modern machines, more MBA graduates, or a more advanced nervous system that they succeed? Obviously not. Most of us fail because we are confused in our thinking from the first steps of implementing OKRs. So how do we simplify things? In Asia, with its versatile language and fluid calligraphy, there is a tendency to perceive new things from abroad as “difficult,” which then defaults to “complicated.”

Today, with Simplamo, let’s explore 5 ways in which we can easily make mistakes when implementing OKRs, which are easy to understand and don’t require high-level AI intelligence to grasp. Sometimes, just reading them is enough to understand, and when we understand these 5 characteristics, we will realize that implementing OKRs is not that difficult after all.

1. Cultural factor

In Asian companies, respect for hierarchy is highly valued and questioning the boss’s opinion is seen as disrespectful to superiors and impolite to older people, leading to rigidity and conservatism in organizations and passive waiting for instructions from employees. However, for OKRs, a conservative mindset is easily defeated by the flexibility of the market.

“Trending” is the keyword for all customer behavior today, which is why many successful people today do not need degrees, even successful as teenagers on online platforms, starting their own businesses at a young age and earning millions of dollars, while giants have been destroyed by the “bowing culture” management mindset, having to sell themselves to small and nimble companies to dominate the market, typical of the case of Toshiba, which is 150 years old and had to sell to a series of Taiwanese companies and other financial organizations.

The key here is: empowering leadership, continuous openness, encouraging employees to speak up and be willing to debate for the best plans for the company in meetings. Being honest and good-willed will be a cultural revolution for companies in Asia in general and Vietnam in particular, is there a way? There is a way, everything will be solved with the meeting feature on Simplamo.com.

2. Setting OKRs too complicated, doubting simplicity

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein (the greatest theoretical physicist of the 20th century)

There is a psychological effect that often occurs with Vietnamese and Asian business owners, that is, anything at the macro level cannot be described in simple words. Complexity makes us feel like something grand and worthy of ambitious goals, plans, and dreams, but when it comes to action, everything fails, because to act confidently requires clear thinking, and clarity comes only from simplicity.

The true achievement in business does not come from grandiose-sounding words used just for show, but rather from the daily actions and resolute decisions made through clear and easy-to-understand thinking. Therefore, the more an entrepreneur can turn their ideas into simple and assertive words, the easier it is to encourage their team to apply them to reality, to divide tasks more clearly, and to correct mistakes more quickly and efficiently.

3. Organizational structure is too rigid 

Some Asian companies have traditional and rigid organizational structures with hierarchical levels, they like “the process” and dislike the flexibility of rolling with the punches, which can slow down the implementation of OKRs. Meanwhile, Western companies usually have simpler organizational structures and can make decisions quickly.

US and European companies tend to focus on result-oriented management and performance, while Asian companies often focus on solving short-term issues and ensuring stability within the organization.

So, how can we build a flexible organizational structure that focuses on action, achieves real results, and doesn’t get lost in the roles that need to be done? Let’s explore the function of the Responsibility Chart on Simplamo software, where the systemic thinking of Asia combines with the agility of the West => all are available on Simplamo.com software.

4. Underestimate the measurement factor

In the West, companies often use a results-based measurement approach, which measures the degree of completion of goals and achieves expected outcomes. However, in Asia, companies often use an effort and process-based measurement approach, which measures the level of effort to achieve goals and the process of work execution.

Using inappropriate measurement methods can cause OKRs to fail in Asia, as employees may focus more on completing tasks, only making efforts without caring about the final results. This can lead to OKR goals failing and not bringing real value to the company.

5. Internal disconnection – the “Endless” charger of teamwork.

Setting a goal alone is not enough to achieve it. Usually, people will “set and forget”, so the goal will be pushed aside when daily life and other activities take up time. OKRs require consensus and positive psychology from all members of the organization.

To truly reach the goal, the team must always prioritize it in all its activities. More importantly, it is essential to ensure that everyone in the team knows each other’s work and is moving forward in the overall picture of the team’s common goal.

If people don’t know anything about each other, it will be challenging to help each other, leading to disjointed work processes and disagreements due to vague expectations. Clear communication of goals helps the team understand and ensure that everyone is confident in their work, and no one is left behind or lost when there are always teammates around.

Simplamo – The platform solves 5 common disasters in OKR implementation easily

Simplamo is a software that helps businesses operate and manage with modern management thinking, saving years of hard work with messy and disjointed operations that lead to lost vision and confusion. Now, all the obstacles in a company’s OKR can be solved decisively with simple yet accurate steps that focus on the core issues. The pain of OKR implementation is no longer a silent note in the soaring development of the enterprise.

Specifically, the following 5 functions in Simplamo address common OKR implementation issues encountered in Asian companies:

1. 1:1 dialogue feature enhances empowerment, demonstrating the greatness of a leader (Level 5 Leader according to Jim Collins – author of the book “From Good to Great”), pushing employees into bold tasks, allowing them to take ownership of tasks and discover their own talents.

2. Establish clear and specific company-wide goals, summarized in 7 core objectives, with all members discussing and each department and member having clear, specific goals using the S.M.A.R.T method. Minimize the habit of half-hearted work, ensure everyone understands each other’s work, and their own responsibilities. All operations are carried out on Simplamo.

3. Responsibility chart: clarify the overall picture and current structure of the company, package it with 5 roles or lower for each position, and focus on defining the core roles. Through this, each employee will understand the organization’s nature, and those who are overloaded by sitting in multiple positions will be scientifically restructured and analyzed, discussed with the whole team to come up with an optimized diagram for a smarter operation.

4. Make confident decisions based on data stored on the software. All KPIs are tracked on the Scorecard and updated continuously to fit the business situation, measured weekly to align with the quarterly goals but still maintain flexibility for market fluctuations. Build a vision of core goals using 8 simple questions according to modern management models from the United States. This helps leaders look in the same direction and quickly adapt to a vast world.

5. The Weekly Meeting tool addresses tons of gaps in plan execution. An effective Weekly Meeting, with a ready-made framework, 7 specific steps, all linked to each other, and automatically creating issues when they arise continuously. Urgent issues will be added to the To-do list, while longer ones will be listed in the Rock section of the quarterly goals. The specific PICs will take turns coordinating the meeting on the BOD, helping middle managers become stronger and not relying on the boss.

The rap on Simplamo highlights how the management mindset can be tightly integrated into the company’s operations to truly make them effective. It emphasizes the importance of both leadership and employees understanding what they are doing, where they need to go, and how to get there. Simplamo provides a roadmap for companies, eliminating doubts and turning vision into reality.

Managing a company on Simplamo.com allows us to easily see the capability to achieve goals and any inefficiencies in the action process, which cannot be hidden. The focus is on transparency and simplicity, quickly eliminating difficulties and concentrating on important matters.

CEOs can overcome the pain of management and experience freedom for their ambitions with the support of Simplamo’s simple management software, allowing them to confidently dream of achieving many other victories in their path to realizing their million-dollar dreams!

Simplamo is more than just software, it is the passion and intelligence of engineers who continuously improve and update the product to become smarter, creating a better competitive advantage and helping many Vietnamese businesses achieve sustainable growth. Let’s join together to win!

The growth of a company is the absolute guiding principle for Simplamo. With all its heart and desire, Simplamo believes that all operational pains can be resolved to zero, paving the way for leaders to strive for success and maximize the potential for business development – Super growth – Super profit.

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Simplamo is a modern and scientifically-based management software that uniquely combines KPI and OKR, making every aspect of operation simple and approachable for every employee. It relieves pressure for leaders, allowing them to focus on important missions and optimize work performance for the business.

Experience Simplamo and feel the change in just 4 weeks! Register for a Simplamo demo at: https://app.simplamo.com/sign-up