Richard McLean is Senior Director of Business Operations at Elsevier – the world’s leading publisher of science and health information – where his focus is on product strategy implementation and performance. Prior to that, he led strategic programmes in numerous senior roles in the public sector. Elsevier was using OKRs, but they were new to McLean. After a few months in his new role, McClean wrote this case study outlining the top four things he’d learnt about OKRs. His insights are nuanced and sometimes challenge established thinking.

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His first takeaway is the importance of separating objectives and activities into two different ‘buckets’ – a tip from OKR coach Felipe Castro. Visualising them in this way makes you ‘less wedded to the activities you’re currently doing’ and ‘freer to ask whether they are the right ones’, McLean writes. His second is that you shouldn’t cascade objectives down through levels of management – he argues it’s slow and reinforces a ‘top-down, command and control way of working’; just make sure each team’s OKRs are aligned with the company OKRs. His third is the importance of keeping objectives and metrics separate, something Christina Wodtke advocates. Finally, although some argue that OKRs and individual compensation should be completely separate, McLean says he found that total separation unhelpful – it’s almost inevitable, he writes, that OKRs are at least a factor in someone’s performance review.

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McClean clearly knows his stuff, referencing John Doerr, Christina Wodtke and Felipe Castro throughout his article, which also offers a useful link to McLean’s OKR reading list. A short, 9-minute read, full of fresh ideas and useful tips.

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