OKR is an iterative process — it's essentially change management. The truth is that you may not succeed when implementing OKR for the first time, maybe not even the second time. And that's fine. OKR is a flexible and forgiving framework. Once you've mastered it, it will positively impact how you operate as a business. So don't give up just yet!

We spoke to Vlad Filippov, founder and CEO of Spark Equation, about his experience implementing and working with OKR. His first two attempts at implementing OKR didn't run as smoothly as planned. But each time he acquired learnings until he knew exactly what his organization needed to be successful with OKR. We talk about:

• How and when he knew his business needed a framework like OKR
• What he learned during his implementations
• How he finally became successful with OKR
• How he finally implemented OKR to everyone
• What changes he has seen in his organization now that they're successfully working with OKR
• What tools he uses to manage all moving parts of his business

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Want to track your OKRs (and KPIs)? Head over to Perdoo and create a FREE account.

Learn more about strategy, goals (OKRs & KPIs) & growth — visit the Perdoo Resources Hub.

Copyright 2024 Perdoo

Welcome to another episode of Goal Diggers.

I'm Henrik, founder and CEO of Perdoo.

Joining me today is Vlad Filippov from Spark Equation.

Vlad, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

Hey, how you doing Henrik?

Yeah, sure.

My name is Vlad Filippov, CEO and founder of Spark Equation.

We're a boutique consulting company specializing on complex B2B applications and product design.

We've been doing this for over six years now.

Excited to use OKRs and Perdoo in particular.

And how did you find out about OKRs?

And, perhaps even more interesting, like once you found out about OKRs, what made you

And perhaps you could also share a bit of insight about what stage your organization

So what were like, what created the immediate need for something like OKR.

Yeah.

So I've heard about OKRs first time around 2016.

It was the first, second year into running the company.

And at that point, it became apparent to me that the kind of, "let's do everything

And, in order to get to growth stage, we needed to figure out what and how we

So that's when I started educating myself on ultimately how run a company.

Because when I first started it was like, okay, so this is a business.

This is what we do.

We build software.

Okay, so let's go.

And it got us to a certain point.

But after that it's like, okay, so what's next?

How do we get better?

And, I started learning about it.

I read multiple articles about it.

I saw some of us, and throughout the years I saw some of our clients

I liked them.

So I started trying it.

This is my third approach, kind of attempt, to implementing OKRs this year.

And I tried to do this in 2018, then 2020, right before pandemic.

And with various success rates, I guess.

But overall, because this is a third attempt, those two attempts, they didn't really stick.

So..

But still, they kept you motivated?

Yes, because again, the, the problem was still apparent that

We needed to have certain beacons and pillars in the sand, right?

And we needed to know where to go.

And that had to be, not just in my head, or heads of a couple people that I talked to regularly,

And you know, we've always been a remote first company.

We've always been distributed.

And, it's hard to align the team without being really explicit and transparent.

So, what I try to do with OKRs, uh, I try different tool sets.

With my first attempt.

Okay, so tool set, fine.

It was a Google sheet, right?

So it works.

But my first thing was, I created this "space station" that I call it,

And when I present to the team, they're like, Okay, this looks great,

This is just too much.

This is something that maybe we're not gonna be able to achieve like ever.

And do you even have resources for that.

And let's be honest here, my results and my..

The results that I said, the key results, right.

Objectives, Okay, fine.

But the key results, they were not really measurable.

They're not really achievable.

They were more like wishful thinking, than anything else.

So, and because of the tools that I used, also, the team was not able to provide the feedback.

It was, it was basically, static.

You know, I came up with it at the beginning of the year, I share the screen with the team.

I share this Google sheet with the team.

And they looked at it and said, Okay Vlad, okay, let's see what happens.

And then, because there's so many of them, because the environment was changing, by end

And, it was just process as usual.

You know, I was like, let's work on what works and let's just do what we do and, the goals,

So that was a first attempt.

Second attempt was more a dynamic in 2020, where I said, Okay, fine, let me scale it down.

Let me pick fewer goals.

Let me get a more dynamic tool.

I started using the OKR plugin for Jira, and try to connect the strategy with execution.

And, it worked, but it didn't.

Well, because also pandemic started, so I don't know if that potentially kind of threw me off.

Is that the plugin called Upraise?

No I think it's called OKRs.

That's the plugin for Jira.

Yeah.

And the thing is the team was not taking to that.

Also I think because that plugin is, again, that's my perception, too

And Jira has this tactical purpose, right?

The team looks at Jira, it was like, it's a tactical execution.

The OKRs, it's something secondary, right?

The strategy is something secondary.

So you basically put in strategy tools into the execution tool, and they take a

And that's where this why, what and how, they flip.

You start with the how and then you kind of tag the why to it.

If we're talking about .. I'll give you an example from software engineering is a TDD

It's like you doing unit testing as an afterthought.

You're not starting with the testing, you're not starting with discovery.

You're not starting with the user, you're doing it after because you just need to check

doing it because you, you know, it works or you know it's the right thing to do.

So, and that was also a failure for me.

And also the pandemic started.

So I was not able to, that was my fault.

I was not able to calibrate fast enough.

And when I got back to this..

Goals that I set up for 2020, in like September 2020, right?

It's nine months later, it was already too late.

So I said, Okay, I'm gonna start, fresh.

I started looking for tool that would put strategy first right, and

Give us the points and dynamic points.

What I like about Perdoo in this case is that it has those best practices.

It has those examples of the goals right there.

Once you're writing them, you don't have to open another page.

You don't have to go look on a website.

You are there and you're working with this in real time, right?

And then you can connect everything else to that.

You can connect your execution to that.

You can connect Jira to this.

The ultimate goal, the pillars, they take the front stage and the team's attention is

You basically center forward, forward and center.

And another thing too, but that comes to me because throughout my two attempts before I

Okay, well let's be realistic.

Let's reset expectations.

B, I need to make sure that those, key results are actually measurable.

They're not just initiatives.

They're actually measurable.

I know.

Where are we going?

Why are we doing things?

I know how we measuring them and I know through what we trying to

And, all those three things are constantly in like dynamic execution.

And that's what I did this time around.

Scale things down.

I brought the team early on...

I brought everyone in place and I also improved my cadences, personally.

As a CEO.

And I started being more consistent because instead of doing quarterly updates, now

I'm showing this every month.

We're doing dynamic check-ins every week, right?

We're never letting off.

We're never just..

Oh, we're gonna come back to this in three months.

We are not doing the strategy exercise, OKRs exercise as the afterthought.

As something that somebody made us to do.

We start our day with that, basically.

We start our week with that, right?

We have check-ins with the team or daily updates, you know, weeklys and we go into check-ins.

We'll look it up.

We see what's been done.

And again, we always ask our questions: what's happening?

So this year we had some curve balls as well with the competition and the

And I had to recalibrate.

I had to recalibrate a lot, and because I had this tool and now mindset.

It was natural to me.

I said, Okay, fine.

So I'm gonna recalibrate.

I'm going to scale a bit more down because I started with the four goals for this year.

I scaled out to two because four became unattainable.

And I realized that, you know, back in like Q1, but I scaled it down and now I was able

And the team also appreciates that because they see that we still go in a direction

And they see that I'm responding and the leadership team is responding

And not just, not just being like, Okay, yeah, we planned this a year ago, and yeah, we know

Or this is a plan, we're gonna have to stick to it, even though it's not realistic.

I'd like to talk about the, Yeah...

about the benefits that you're seeing in your organization in a minute.

But before we move to that point, it was really interesting to hear like the different

that you've learned over these past couple of years since you started working with OKRs.

And I think there's already so many tips and best practices that you packaged in your answer here.

But I'd like to go one step further back just to understand better, like

So what I found really interesting is that you mentioned at the start.

You started a business, you were doing..

You knew what you had to do.

You were doing these things, and you said that up to a certain point that actually worked.

And I mean, I can guess some answers of course, like perhaps it's the size of the,

But what is it that made you realize all of a sudden that like, Hey, the way we've been doing

This is not what's gonna get us to the next few milestones for our business.

What were those things like?

Was it team size?

Was it new hires that didn't understand what was happening?

What was it in your company that you observed?

That you said, Okay, we have to change some practices right now.

Yeah, it was a combination.

As we started growing, it became apparent to us that the complexity is increasing, the

building, the number of moving things, different variables and factors increasing as well.

And we realized we need to start making some strategic choices and

From the verticals, from the types of the technologies that we are using, and then

And, I realize that I can't just have a disconnected hiring, where we're hiring

And, and having a sales function and having, marketing that are all kind

Right?

Because if we get a client that I don't have the skill set for, right?

Or have a skill set that's not matching exactly, I'm gonna fail with that client.

Right?

So that means before we go onto the marketing and sales, before we start doing a lot of the

Because otherwise when we get there, because one of the functions succeed, Okay, I have

Well, we gonna fail then.

And then that's it, we're done.

And, before, up to a certain size and up to certain complexity, I was able to, kind of

I'm gonna go figure it out.

The level of complexity and the skill is needed, is not that high.

Or not as deep, so I'll be able to figure it out.

But once we started getting to that next level.

That was apparent.

It was like, Okay, this is not gonna work anymore.

You just, you don't have enough hours in the day.

You don't have enough time.

You don't have enough money to just do what you needed to do.

And you know, from what I remember before, like again, I used to rock climb when I was a teenager.

And, before you get to next level, you need to be ready for that next level.

You can't just go there if you're not ready, you're just gonna, it's gonna end up...

So you need to have everything set up first.

You need to train.

Interesting.

Figure out, you need to prepare for it, and then you figure that out, right?

So that was for me, that step where, okay, let's align it.

Let's get the tools, let's figure out where we're going.

Let's put those beacons in place.

Let's have those weight points.

Let's still be flexible and agile, but let's put those beacons in place and explain it to the team.

And then we can go again, right?

Or we can go to next level.

I mean, and so that was the point.

Again, it was a size, the complexity, and, the abilities.

Understood that was definitely helpful clarification.

Now, you ended your previous answer saying, or you were starting to share like, some

that this has unlocked in your company and some of the changes that you've observed.

Yeah.

Could you share more about that?

Like, I mean, you have a couple of years of experience with OKRs now,

You kept working through that and you've gotten to a level that you see, and you

Now, since you've started working on this most recent approach, like what

So the first things kind of benefits fall into three categories.

It's like people, the team, execution and planning.

So I start with the team because the team is a foundation of everything we do.

The team.

I see that and I see that from behavior perspective, and I see that from the

They get it now.

You know, they see what we do.

They see why we do it.

They see where we're going.

They see how we making changes.

If we making changes, why we making those changes like in strategy, and direction.

And there's no more, like I've had suggestions like, but Vlad why are we doing this?

Why are we working with this — a product like this?

Why work with a client like this?

Why are we changing this direction?

Right?

And what happened before?

That's a detractor, right?

Because you have a great team member, you have a great skill set, but that skill set is

or results, how to get us there, how to help our clients, how to get us to next level.

But that skill set, that mind is trying to figure out why we're doing it.

It's like, uh, first things like why are we doing it?

Is that a right thing?

Are we going the right direction?

So now, they don't..

I took that problem away.

Right.

Or at least I'm working on that and it's working because I see that it

Yeah.

It like makes sense.

And if it doesn't make sense, I can ask you like before we actually start executing on that.

Right.

As opposed to later on in the process.

Well, the second thing is, again, that leads to execution because, um, the team is focused and

Cuz now they know the goals and they own the resources that they have and the time,

better and self align those resources better because they don't have to come to

No, because they see the goal and if it aligns, yes, they can do it.

If they don't, well then they might ask me about it, but ultimately now they see it.

Before they either would do something that was completely not aligned

And going to me that's, you know, not practical.

Especially again, in a distributed world.

We try to build this synchronous self organization, self-organizing organization

And I like to use this model pops up from the engineering publish or subscribe.

You publish what you do.

It's almost automatic and I subscribe to it, so if I need to know.

But ultimately, it's a complete observability.

And the team is self organizing based on the goals that are set and based on the

And then the planning as well.

I..

Now..

That's on me.

It's not necessarily OKR, but I just realized that I need to do a better

There's no magic.

Oh, I'm just gonna implement OKR I'm just gonna put those goals, mission statements.

I've had that before, but it's a daily work that you have to actually do as a

The instrument is important, but if you don't know how to use it well, or you're

So that is the part where I said, Look, I need to be more consistent.

I need to bring the team in early.

I need to let 'em work with this and give feedback, and participate in that stuff.

Sometimes team is more involved, sometimes it's less.

But ultimately I know that they see it and I'm being transparent to them

And what I like about tools like Perdoo is the check-ins, right?

For example, check-ins are orgwide.

I do my check in and everyone in the team, they see it.

And there's no, Oh, I'm just going to do my check-in and then I'm gonna distribute to someone.

Like, No, our director of marketing, for example she does check-ins and she sees my checkin.

She knows what I'm working on and what she's working on.

And there's no, this cloud of, oh, CEO is somewhere doing something nobody knows

Because before, what I seen before is like this hierarchy where I knew

Because I see everyone's doing stuff, but they didn't really know what I'm doing.

And that also kind of put a dent in your, I dunno respect Towards you.

Towards me,

Yeah.

In this case.

Absolutely.

What I noticed, like, But what are you, that's what I do right now.

And everyone sees this and it's like, okay, so fine.

So this is great.

So I'm not just sitting there, you know, somewhere and looking at everyone doing

And now everyone sees this, so that's important for us as well.

You mentioned a few things that could be highly interesting for

I mean, being more self organized and more autonomous as a team or

Being able to see progress better, not being siloed anymore.

Did you have any challenges implementing OKRs across the organization, with your teams?

Do people naturally see the benefits of this?

Do they appreciate the benefits or was it not that straightforward?

From my experience when I first started, it was a 10,000 feet view and, people

Because, Okay.

Well this is great.

This is valuable.

Again, as I said, my goals were really overly optimistic, sometimes wishful

Like, okay, Vlad and the team is getting together, directors getting together and figuring that out.

What's gonna happen?

Nobody knows.

And we're probably not gonna get there.

Right?

Or it's just gonna end up being something else.

Right?

Because that's been like the last year or a year before that.

So the team didn't really see the end result of that execution.

Again, they couldn't put the dust together.

And that's why to me, there was not enough of buy-in.

And again, the first attempt, the second attempt, that was discouraging to me.

I was thinking, what's going on?

Right?

Is that the tool?

Is that the setup?

But I like to look at a mirror first.

So I looked in the mirror and I said, Look, let's start with me because I think I'm

I think I'm not putting enough work as I mentioned before, that I should have,

So, the second thing is to, to instill that self management into, everyday's work.

And to basically trust the team and say, Look guys, this is the goal.

We agreed on that, right?

You saw all this.

Right.

Now you have certain resources, you have certain budgets, you have certain things.

It's up to you to decide how to use that, right?

Because ultimately at the end of the day, you are the ones deciding what to

And how to achieve it.

So take ownership of that, and ask me or help me achieve it, but come to me as a coach, more

Right.

And that's what I'm seeing right now as well, because I'm seeing with this, more ownership,

Ultimately, I'm achieving the goal that I set as well for myself, for the

I don't like it.

I want to enable the teams and give them all the tools that they need,

And that's what OKR has allowed us to do because again, from the top, we're setting those goals.

I mean, are we a hundred percent perfect right now?

No, absolutely not.

There's a lot of still things to work on, but, from a buy-in perspective, the main

They thought it's like too broad.

They didn't see how they affect it affects their daily lives and daily work.

Now they see it and it enables them to do more and better.

And it changes the outputs in the organization because people take ownerships

I'm here to move things forward with everyone else.

Did you involve the team when you were implementing OKRs?

I mean, did you involve them from the start or did you like tailor the approach together with

So, we kind of have a flat organization because we do different products that

And we don't really have this giant you know, hierarchy cuz it's a small business.

So I did not have any formal engagement saying like, look this is the OKRs, the trainings.

What I did throughout a year, like last year, right?

I talked to different members of the team and I was soliciting feedback, and seeing how

And then I was able to bring them in once I put a certain blueprint together.

I bring them in and I said, Look guys, this is my thoughts right now.

Like I got it based on the feedback that I work with you, and my experience.

What do you think?

Right?

So it's not complete bottom up, but it is, I think it's a hybrid approach right now that works

not like, Okay, I'm just myself and a leadership team, and then here's what we're gonna be doing.

But it's not also, let's go vote on what kind of goals we're gonna be achieving.

How are we we going forward?

So it's a mix of here's the goals that we are thinking of based on the feedback

What do you guys think?

Any kind of feedback, any kind of input, and then..

Is that reasonable or not?

And then I work with them on setting up the key results and execution because

Every day.

And it's up to them to do this.

Like without our director of marketing our, like, for example, sales and SDRs.

They get together.

It's like, Okay, here's our goal.

Here's our budgets, here's the constraints that we have.

Those are realistically, those are our key results.

How do we achieve that?

Like what are there any other tools and, and potentially even like frameworks

Yes.

So we have created this, well, this is our goal in one of our OKRs actually — to create

information, data, and then a knowledge sharing is really, really important for this to work.

So we have several different tool sets depending on the purpose.

So for strategy and alignment, we use Perdoo.

For product management execution we use Product Board.

For, sales and marketing, we use specialty tools like for sales we use HubSpot.

For marketing we use HubSpot and Zoom info.

And then, we use several tools on engineering side, Jira, LinearB,

And then for people management, we use Lattice.

And together those tools allow us to take care of the strategy, execution, knowledge sharing.

Get Guru we use for the marketing and sales piece part of things.

And then, for Lattice for example, it allows us to connect with our team and do a regular

So we kind of tie that together, so that we have people, strategy, and

Yeah, interesting.

Cuz that's exactly how we look at the building blocks of a company as well, right?

You have strategy, goals, and people.

And at Perdoo right now, we are building out that, that people component.

So we have the check-ins, we have the reflections, the engagement reports, et cetera.

But the next things that we are currently working on are the peer recognition,

By the way, do you see value of having it all in one product or do you rather use

I see a lot of value having it in one product as long as the direction,

what and how is there and the alignment flows in a direction that it makes sense.

Because right now that alignment has to be kind of artificially put together like Lego blocks, right?

Because of different tools.

And some tools, like I mentioned with Jira and OKR, right?

They put execution first and then strategy later.

And I could not realign it in the opposite direction.

So we have the tool that aligns the goals.

Places them the outcomes, right?

The result chain, the inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impact.

You know, put the impact and outcomes first.

Then you go into outputs, your execution, and then you go to the activities that you need

All one block.

Yes.

That would be great.

So right now we have to jump through a lot of hoops to connect it all together.

Cool.

Thank you Vlad.

Thank you so much for joining us on this episode today.

I think it was very interesting for our listeners to hear about your experiences with OKR, the

challenges that you've faced and, and the approach that you've now yeah, got into that unlocks the

So thanks a lot for joining us.

And I think it'll be interesting to reconnect in like six months time to see

you further tweaked your OKR program and and how your team is taking that all in.

Great.

Yeah, that would be great.

And, thank you very much for having me on and, it's a great opportunity to share experience

teams, you know, start using this approach or improve it and use Perdoo for that.

Thank you.