I don't have enough time
It’s an all-too-common feeling. I just don’t have the time; I have too many priorities. This hit me hard at the end of last week.
Here’s what I did:
Took a long, hard look at my calendar. Why start here? Well, I was ‘feeling’ like I had no time to do real heads-down work. As a marketer for a growing tech company, that is a big red flag. A lot of my time should be on creative work - and that takes time, real time, not 20 minutes between meetings. I am a big believer in the saying ‘how you spend your days is how you spend your life’. The same is true at work. An easy but effective step to take is to realign where you are spending your time with what you want to achieve. I moved all the meetings I own to mornings; this includes 1:1s, team, and cross-functional meetings. Then, I blocked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoon. This time is now reserved for heads-down work. Of course, things come up, external meetings have to happen - but if I can keep to even 75% adherence, it gives me significantly more time to focus on what I need to get done.
Removed or pushed out 3 Q1 Key Results. IMHO, the single best thing about using OKRs to translate the strategy and decide which parts we are going to tackle this cycle is the ability and structure to rapidly iterate and adapt. We operate on a quarter cycle, which offers a great timeframe to reflect on what’s worked and reset for the next cycle. It isn’t too long (like a year), but it is also enough time to really achieve something. But the great thing about the process is that if something needs to change, and importantly is now not a priority, it can come off; you don’t have to wait until the end of the quarter. It is good to do this more formal ‘check in’ each month on the key results and see what isn’t progressing, to see if it is still a priority and act accordingly. It is definitely worth doing when you start to feel as though you have too much on. You have probably bitten off too much for this cycle. I know I did. So 2 KRs got removed. 1 got pushed to Q2. Simple. Now I have more ‘time’."
Spent the time getting realigned. Unless you are the CEO, you spend a lot of your time managing up - even the CEO does, really. The reality is that when you aligned your priorities for the quarter, you did so in relation to the company strategy and what is most important to the organization - which is great! But things change, and that is totally okay as well. Most of the time, staff meetings, async updates on key result progress, and being intentional about the reset each quarter are enough to stay aligned. But sometimes, for me maybe once every 6-9 months, you get the feeling of ‘are we actually all really aligned’; ‘are the things I am working on really, really the things that are most important to you now’ - this, to me, is more of a philosophical question. This is about what you have learned in the last x months, what’s changed in the world, and therefore your perception of what’s important. So this week I spent 2 hours on the phone with my boss and the CEO, literally on 2 questions: ‘tell me what is in your highest priority bucket right now’ and ‘here is mine, what’s off’.
No acronym or framework is a magic wand that solves all problems. But using an execution framework like OKRs is a forcing function to staying aligned, and making sure you have enough time focus to achieve what you committed to, and what the company is relying on you to deliver.