A classic line from the movie “A World Without Thieves”: “Too many people, it’s hard to lead a team”, which is also a business bottleneck that will be encountered after scale-up. Of course, there are always ways. In addition to taking advantage of the convergence of team values, a complete task guidance system is also needed. After all, work is to complete tasks. There are two types of mainstream goal management systems. Let’s take a look at them together.
Mainstream KPI
The key performance indicator method (Key Performance Indicator) is what we often call KPI. It is mainly to divide the performance evaluation into a number of keyword indicators in the workflow. The concept of employees as digital people acts as the implementer of small goals split from the macro goals of the enterprise. A practical KPI indicator system needs to follow the SMART principle, including specific performance indicators, quantifiable indicator data, and can be achieved in actual work and within one’s own capabilities. Finally, there must be a time limit, that is, it must be completed within a specific time period. KPI enterprises generally use employee performance management systems.
Emerging OKR
Objectives and Key Result (Objctives and Key Result) is an emerging OKR assessment, which is a management method for defining and tracking goals and completion status. It was invented by Intel in 1999. It is also the performance management system that the Google team has been using.
The purpose of OKR is to run through the project goals from top to bottom. The more prominent features are simplicity, clarity and transparency. Each person being assessed has a goal, but not many goals; key results can be implemented and there are corresponding goals to be completed; finally, the goals and results of each team and individual are public. Everyone knows that we are doing things for the overall goal of the company. With a clear sense of purpose and mutual communication, work efficiency will naturally increase. The main difference between KPI and ORK is that KPI assesses “whether the work has been done”, while OKR assesses “whether the work has been completed”.
For most Amazon teams, innovative work can have more OKRs to assist in evaluation, such as hot product selection and product development. Process-based jobs may be more inclined to KPI supervision, such as customer maintenance, SEO promotion, etc. Our purpose at Amazon is to provide value to potential users around the world, so I always believe that a small and beautiful team is the right way to scale, insisting on innovation first and execution second, so in daily management, relatively speaking, I prefer OKR’s result orientation. There is no difference between OKR and KPI, and the two cannot completely replace each other. It varies from person to person and from place to place. I hope everyone can find a performance evaluation method that suits their team.