Each month I post my dashboard results. I do this for myself first because these metrics are important and by making a post it holds me accountable to do the work. But I also do it in public to teach and inspire you to do the same.
This month’s post is a bit longer than usual in that I will also reflect on my Q1 2020 OKR results. OKRs are a leader’s secret productivity weapon.
Past dashboard results:
Coaching
With the coronavirus pandemic I moved some 1:1 leaders to the mastermind. Right now having a leadership community to lean into is invaluable. The mastermind has always been well worth the investment. Right now it is priceless.
If you’re on my mailing list you know that I have been cranking out content on online learning. As a result some people have unsubscribed which I always celebrate. I only want Ruckus Makers who find value in what I’m sharing on the email list. While there has been a downtick in subscribers, I have seen a large increase in open-rates and clicks. I don’t measure that on the dashboard, but this tells me the content is helpful.
Website
Right now I only track organic traffic because I’ve invested in a website team to help me attract more Ruckus Makers that don’t know my work yet from this blog and my podcasts.
Although organic was down this month I learned that my website ranks in the top 1% of all websites according to AHREFs guidelines.
Direct Traffic to this website is up 46%. I don’t track this metric on the dashboard but what this tells me is that the tribe I serve is benefiting from the content I’ve been creating right now.
Q1 2020 OKR Results & Takeaways
Scoring
According to Measure What Matters:
“The simplest, cleanest way to score an objective is by averaging the percentage of completion rates of its associated results.”
Google uses the following scale, so I stole like an artist and used it too:
- 0.7 – 1.0 = green (I delivered).
- 0.4 – 0.6 = yellow (I made progress, but fell short of completion).
- 0.0 – 0.3 = red (I failed to make real progress).
| OBJECTIVE 1: Help more school leaders level up [83%] (.3+.9+.1 = 3.3/4) |
| KEY RESULTS (Q1 2020) Grow school leader mastermind to 60 members by March 31 [0.8] Grow “edupreneur” mastermind to 10 members by March 31 [0.5] Connect with 20 leaders from within my community each week [1.0] Ship a productivity sprint and do 6 live coaching sessions by March 31 [1.0] |
| OBJECTIVE 2: Create amazing content [75%] |
| KEY RESULTS (Q1 2020) Ship 4 SEO optimized, value-packed blog posts a month [1.0]. Write 2K words a day or 1 hour a day for book #2 [0.5] Fully engage in “The Creative’s Workshop [0.5]. Participate in “The Creative’s Workshop” daily for 30 minutes [1.0]. |
| OBJECTIVE 3: Increase brand awareness [58%] |
| KEY RESULTS (Q1 2020) 50K downloads a month for BLBS by March 31 [0.6] 20K downloads a month for SLS by March 31 [0.6] 2500K organic visitors a month to website by by March 31 [0.4] Grow email list to 5K by March 31 [0.5] Finish Stage to Scale by March 31 [0.8] |
| OBJECTIVE 4: Launch live event [73%] |
| KEY RESULTS (Q1 2020)Sell out live event by March 31 [.5] Personally invite 100 leaders by Jan 31 [.7] Document “the process” [1.0] |
| OBJECTIVE 5: Improve fitness [60%] |
| KEY RESULTS (Q1 2020)Weigh myself every Friday [0.2]. Eat healthy 6 of 7 days [1.0] Hit the gym 5-6x/week [0.5] Decrease body fat % [0.7] |
Self-Assessment
Below I walk through all my objectives and give the quantitative numbers some heart with qualitative data.
| OKR | Progress | Score | Self-assessment |
| Help more leaders level up | 83% | 1.0 | I abandoned my goal to form relationships with more Superintendents. I have a few strong relationships, but they are a puzzling bunch to me. Those that said they were “all in” on the Inner Circle mastermind all backed out. I actually didn’t hear from them again. Now I know what it feels like to be ghosted! I’ll wait for them to come to me and when that happens it will be more expensive to work with me. I also need to focus on where it’s easy to build relationships and serve. So local building school leaders and business owners are my priority. I also launched two free (8-week) mastermind sprints to help school leaders during this pandemic. Finally, I helped a number of leaders in the Q1 productivity sprint and 10 or so signed up for the Q2 sprint. |
| Create amazing content | 75% | 1.0 | In addition to the podcast I’ve been writing consistently both inside The Creative’s Workshop and on my blog. The content has been timely, relevant, and helpful as education attempts to shift to online learning. I’ve been working on two book proposals and need to give that more focus to ship both of them completed in early Q2 2020. Because I’ve been focused on writing I abandoned my video goal. |
| Increase brand awareness | 58% | 0.7 | I found out that my website is in the top 1% of authoritative websites according to AHREFs. My website team has helped me figure out Google and rank for more keywords that people search for. That’s important because I want to help more people. Three book publishers came to me in Q1 2020 to do books. Podcast downloads are doing well too. |
| Launch live event | 73% | 0.5 | I need to figure out what I’m doing with this. COVID-19 has impacted my thinking about the event, planning, and selling the event. |
| Improve fitness | 60% | 0.5 | This quarter I was in the Netherlands. I didn’t live the healthiest lifestyle there and didn’t work out besides some bike rides. In Scotland we have been in self-isolation so I’ve done a few walks. I should consider doing some runs. I have been consistent with yoga for the last 10 days and feel good about that. My weight is down as well because Miriam and I have been eating a plant-based diet. |
Did I accomplish all of my objectives? If so, what contributed to my success?
No. See below. I made great progress and learned a lot.
If not, what obstacles did I encounter?
The biggest obstacle is COVID-19 and the live event. It also has impacted me emotionally. I have definitely experienced more stress than usual — trouble sleeping and sometimes my head feels like it is caving in and I have to nap. At times it is hard to focus.
I also decided to abandon a few KRs because I judged them to be irrelevant.
I wonder when my work with the website team will payoff in terms of more email subscribers. I am about halfway to my goal of 5K subscribers. Am I not creating enough valuable downloads? Am I not attracting the right kind of leader? Or something else?
If I were to rewrite a goal achieved in full, what would I change?
I didn’t achieve any goal in full which means I set appropriately challenging goals.
What have I learned that might alter my approach to the next cycle’s OKRs?
I wrote this last quarter and it still applies: I want to be mindful about how much I commit to this quarter.
Maybe I should look at how I might have fewer OKRs?
BTW — OKRs are a part of the productivity sprint. Feel free to join us.
