Episode 85 — OKRs: Ben Lamorte
I was late to the game when I got exposed to the concept of OKRs a few years ago. Before that, I thought that it was just another term for setting objectives, and you can dump a million of those onto your people.
But there is a different approach, a much gentler approach to OKRs, that makes more sense to me now. And because I found that mental change so interesting, I was excited when Ben Lamorte reached out to me and asked if he could be a guest on the show.
And of course, I said “yes”.
Ben Lamorte is a leading figure in the space of “Objectives and Key Results” (OKRs). He has more OKRs coaching experience than anyone on the planet. Ben is a coach to business leaders focused on defining and making measurable progress on their most important goals. He started OKRs.com in 2014 and over the past decade has helped 200+ organizations based in 20+ countries implement OKRs including eBay, Adobe, Capital One, 3M, ServiceNow, Zalando, and Nike.
After co-authoring one of the first books dedicated to OKRs, Ben wrote The OKRs Field Book, the first book written specifically for OKRs coaches, published by Wiley in 2022. He studied Engineering and Mathematics at the University of California, Davis and holds a graduate degree in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University.
In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about:
- Ben’s background
- Why OKRs gained popularity?
- How has the use of OKRs evolved over the last 20 years? (industries, levels of use etc.?)
- In general, why do so many workers complain about OKRs? Are their OKRs programs failing?
- What are the 3 phases for implementing OKRs as detailed in your field book?
- What are the deployment parameters that must be defined in phase 1 and why is this so important?
Ben can be found on LinkedIn and contacted via his website at okrs.com.
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Additional information
- Here are the book recommendations from Ben:
- Radical Focus, Wodtke (An early book that is written as a story that gets into the value of OKRs and includes a case study based on successful OKRs rollout within a start-up)
- The OKRs Field Book, Lamorte (The first book for OKRs coaches)
- Objectives and Key Results: Niven, Lamorte (The first hardback/text book dedicated to OKRs)
- Measure What Matters, Doerr (A sales book for OKRs to get people excited)
- High Output Management, Grove (this is the first book to mention OKRs)
- Example chapters from Ben’s books can be downloaded here: https://okrs.com/resources/books-on-okrs/
Credits
Music by Jeremy Voltz, www.jeremyvoltzmusic.com
- CP1 (Welcome)
- Interludes tba
- South Wing (Outro)
Roland Woldt is a well-rounded executive with 25+ years of Business Transformation consulting and software development/system implementation experience, in addition to leadership positions within the German Armed Forces (11 years).
He has worked as Team Lead, Engagement/Program Manager, and Enterprise/Solution Architect for many projects. Within these projects, he was responsible for the full project life cycle, from shaping a solution and selling it, to setting up a methodological approach through design, implementation, and testing, up to the rollout of solutions.
In addition to this, Roland has managed consulting offerings during their lifecycle from the definition, delivery to update, and had revenue responsibility for them.
Roland has had many roles: VP of Global Consulting at iGrafx, Head of Software AG’s Global Process Mining CoE, Director in KPMG’s Advisory (running the EA offering for the US firm), and other leadership positions at Software AG/IDS Scheer and Accenture. Before that, he served as an active-duty and reserve officer in the German Armed Forces.
