Ep. 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.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here: https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe/.