Hello and welcome to This Is Not What I Signed Up For, the podcast for the new manager teaching you how to swim so you don't sink with your new responsibilities. So today I'm going to introduce you to Gary. Gary is a partner at Attention, a full service digital consultancy, but previously I'd worked with Gary in South Africa where he founded a digital agency and PR firm and worked with a bunch of great people and ran some phenomenal teams. And he built up some A players who now have their own agencies and businesses, which I think is a great testament to you, Gary. Now, our paths have crossed many, many times, and I've always been impressed with the sound, relevant, modern, practical, and sort of no-nonsense advice that Gary gives. And I'm very happy to introduce him to everyone today and to have him on the podcast. So welcome, Gary. Thanks for having me, Ross. I think this is, we've been talking about this for a while, so it's nice to finally get it in the book. Yeah, finally. So, Gary, I start all of these off with the same thing. What is the worst piece of management advice you've ever received? That's a great question. Um mostly because honestly, I've never been given any bad advice, but only because I don't think I've ever actually been given any kind of formal training at all, ever. Everything that I've learned in my career, I've had to figure out for myself as I go along. You sort of get thrown into a management role um and it's sort of just, okay, sort of figure it out for yourself. Good luck, which is exactly what your book answers. Exactly. I like every time I come across a new manager, I get a copy of your book and I give it to them. I'm like, this is the thing that no one tells you. Here it is. Everything you need to know is in this book. The one thing that I did have that I think was great is that my parents, both my parents were involved in management training. And so my dinner tables growing up as a child was listening to my parents teaching branch managers. were bank. They used to teach bank managers how to be. managers and so I managed to get a lot of it from that but yeah like actual bad advice never really been given because never being told anything at any point in my career by anyone on how to actually be a good manager so yeah feel like that speaks to kind of the trailblazing route that I know you as having had. Now I know why. Cool. So today we're going to be speaking about a topic which is basically three-letter words. So we talk about KPIs quite a bit. ah I speak about them in the book and we see them when we're in our roles, even before we were in management, we've got to worry about our KPIs. But Gary, you speak about OKRs and that KPIs mean nothing without OKRs. I think let's dive into that in a moment. But I think as we were getting up to that, tell us a little about your leadership journey. As you've said, you've kind of forged your own way. But tell us how you got to this point of that KPIs meaning nothing without OKRs. And then we'll dive into what that actually all means and how it applies. Yeah, sure. uh the beginning parts of my career, I spent a few sort of medium-sized companies, small to medium-sized companies. um I was given KPIs to achieve. um And one of the things that really always frustrated me with me about the KPIs specifically was that they sort of seemed a bit arbitrary. It was sort of like a thing that your manager had to do. and so you just got given this page, this document to fill in. Um, there was no real sort of like thought process behind it. It was just put in some stuff and then I will look at it and somebody else will look at it. And in a year's time, we can go back and have a look. And there was like great intent behind it. think the idea behind it was really good. Uh, but the execution just was awful. And it felt like, again, like a bit of a chore for everyone. involved. And I thought that that was a little bit silly. It seemed like there's a lot of power in a KPI, being given some sort of direction about what it is that you actually want to do and what you want this person to do and how they know when they're doing the right thing to the standard that you want. So not putting enough effort into in the beginning to put those KPIs together sort of doesn't really make a ton of sense in my opinion. Then the other part that I found weird about KPIs is I sort of learn to work with different people is that for the most part, found maybe 70 % of people just didn't care about the KPIs at all. They just didn't bother with them. It was a once a year exercise, get out of the way and move on. Exactly. But then I would say there's about 30 % of people who live and breathe by those KPIs. They almost feel like that is their job description actually doesn't matter. Their KPIs are the thing that matters. And so everything that they do, they build the work that they do in order to achieve the KPIs. Whether that KPIs connected to the business objectives at all, totally irrelevant. These are my KPIs and this is what I'm going to do. literally they treat it like a checkbox item. In order for me to be promoted, I need to have spoken at three conferences and I need to do this and I need to do this. And they're just going to smash out those KPIs and then they go to them. and say, cool, I've met my KPIs, it's time for a race. And that's fine, fair enough. But when those KPIs were in direct contradiction to what was in the best interest of the business, that's when I started seeing. I I remember one manager I had where I went, this was maybe 20 years ago. And I went to her and I said, look, this is the thing that we need to do. You've asked me to do this. Here's the... these are the things that we need to do. It's not in the best interest of the company. Like, I think you've made a mistake in what you're asking me to do because that wouldn't work for the business. And her words were to me were like, no, that's what I want you to do because those are what my KPIs are. And that's my agenda in the company. And I said, I understand, but it's still like, we're going to be worse off. Like, surely if our KPIs contradict what the business needs, then the KPIs are wrong. We should change. Note, those were her requirements and she had a ladder that she was climbing and that's what she was going to do in order to climb that ladder. And that was the first time I saw the danger of these KPIs. And I think you get a cascade effect there. Like I'm a fan of KPIs providing the person setting the KPIs puts in the effort to set them correctly. And that's also got to come from the top down as well. So you do have to have that kind of link up to everything is reaching to the goals and it speaks to everyone swimming in the same direction as well. And yeah, totally agree with you that I see so many people neglect that or they don't relate or they're not outcomes based or anything like that. And it's kind of just spinning in a wheel. It is, and they're dangerous. They're incredibly dangerous. There's this incredibly powerful tool that if you don't apply them correctly, they can lead to disastrous outcomes. I like to compare it to uh Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. I m think it's sort of like you have to obey a human being at all times. uh You have to protect human beings either through action or inaction. unless it contradicts with the first one. And then the third one is you have to look after yourself unless it contradicts with the first or second laws, the three laws of robotics, something like that. And on the face, on the face of it, they sound perfect, right? Like it's a perfect little thing. I think there's probably an application for that in AI somewhere down the line, but it sounds on paper like it's a perfect set of rules in order to govern how a robot works. And as we know from his stories, the outcome of the three laws of robotics is enslaving human beings because the only way for a machine to meet all three of those criteria is to protect human beings from themselves by locking them in a cage. And so you have this incredible law of unintended consequences that comes out when you introduce things like KPIs. And so it's crazy to me that people don't take it seriously because the consequences are so disastrous when they're not connected. Because at the end of the day, I see an OKR on a KPI. as two sides of the same coin. And invariably, like best case scenario, the OKRs and the KPIs are not connected at all. And in the worst case, they often contradict each other entirely. And you're just sort of throwing the side into the world. It's like, go, good luck. So let's get into that. like we're speaking about KPIs and key performance indicators. What exactly is an OKR? Okay, so I came across OKRs when I was running my company because I wanted to find a way to... We were doing this KPI system and I was like, okay, that's cool, but like, do we... Why are we doing this? And how do we structure it in a way that we understand that if, even if the law of unintended consequences kicks in, how do we mitigate against it? How do we make it anti-fragile? So that if I have somebody who is using the KPIs as a ladder climbing exercise, that we still end up in the direction I want to go. And if there's somebody who doesn't particularly care about KPIs, why don't they care about KPIs? Maybe it's because they don't understand what the purpose of the KPI is in the grand scheme of the business. And that's how I came across the idea of an OKR, organizational key result. it's kind of like a, I suppose it's a KPI for a business, but it's more focused on meeting certain objectives. And most companies have these objectives. They're very clear. uh They can be very simple. Objectives you want to make money like if we use soccer as a perfect example, right? If we have to create the OKRs for a soccer game The goal that you're trying to achieve is you want to the game Fine. Now you've got a bunch of things that you need to do in order to win those games So you have key results that you need to or key objectives that you need to meet in order to win the game If you've built them correctly Achieving each one of those four will always lead to you achieving your goal So in terms of soccer, you want to move the ball from your half of the field to their half of the field, and you want to put the ball into the goal in order to score. At the same time, you want to avoid the ball coming into your half and you want to stop the ball going into your goal. That's the second one. And the third one is you need to play by the rules of the game. If you can achieve all three of those, by default, you meet your your OKRs for the business. And I was like, huh. This is kind genius, right? Like it's a simple concept. There's a very simple concept. But if you can just take the things that you need in order to achieve your goal, you've built out your OKRs. And from that now, I can start mapping them directly to individual KPIs. In fact, I'd probably say there's like strategy and tactics that can be woven into that as well. But for the purposes of this discussion, all you need to do is make sure that your OKRs and your KPIs. Um are matching because it creates exactly to your point a cascading effect both up and down. If everyone achieves their KPIs, by design you're going to achieve your key result and by design you then achieve your goal. And all it requires is the top talking down to the bottom and OKRs and KPIs are a great structure to try and make the two merge m in the middle. it speaks to a way that one of the companies that I worked with many years ago was running. And they were phenomenal. The company was eventually acquired uh because, would we hit goals. It was done so well. And it was a group of companies. And I remember it started with a town hall with all 220, however many staff members we were. Two days away, like, taking the whole company down for two days, went to a country club. It was very nice. And we thrashed out what all the goals were across the company as the company. So it wasn't just sort of C-suite saying what everything was. They had a good guiding hand in it, obviously. But everyone got a say and a buy into it. And then they implemented a software system that was tracked in a cascading tree. And you had all of these high level goals and it trickled down to each individual in the company and how they're related to each other. It was a phenomenal thing to see and it's kind of been an inspiration for me nowadays. it's like hearing you speak about it's like, yes, that was all that. At the time I didn't call it OKRs and think of it as KPIs and all that, but yeah, that's how it worked. exactly how it worked. to hear that there are companies that are actually doing it is great, right? Because when it works, it works so well. It has to work because you're connecting outputs with objectives. And most of the problems that we have in business is like, at least in my experience, when I've worked in, I've worked for companies that have 70,000 employees and I've worked in my own business and I've worked for companies that have 10 employees. And it's always the same challenge is that there's an objective and things that the company wants to do, but there's no clear indicator for everyone else on how to make the connection between those two things. And that information is there. It's there. Just organize it. Well, I think sometimes the information is not there. And this is perhaps speaking away from our first time managers. And maybe if you're a first time manager, this is inspiration for you to ask someone. But I think there's also a tendency for a large number of companies to put in their OKRs at the executive level and the C-suite level and never shall it trickle down to the people who are doing the roles. And then there's this lack of visibility. And that creates a whole new problem as well. 100 % agree. on the ground, you're never going to achieve those goals either, I don't think. 100 % okay, and I'd even go so far as to say that even if they're not called OKRs Which I think is probably the case I think everyone is at least at a senior level they know that there are certain things I'm gonna call them Okay ours But I always think that there are two different versions of it. There is the one the accountants version of their OKRs and then there's like the fluffy HR version of OKRs as well, right and One of the things that you need when you set an objective, any place that you set an objective, it doesn't matter where it is, using our soccer analogy, like you either scored the goal or you didn't score the goal. It's a binary, right? There's no feeling involved in it. Like you either did it or you didn't do it. And objectives always have to be binary, right? And I guarantee you the accountant in the company is creating OKRs that are binary. You need to grow by 10%. You need to get your margin within a specific range. You want to decrease your staff turnover and you want to have a specific admin to admin ratio. Like those are binary OKRs and you either achieve them or you don't. If in the instance that you were talking about when the C-suite actually does bother to tell the rest of the company what they're doing, they're not telling them that they come up with these sort of wishy washy. We want to be the most brilliant company and we want to lead with empathy and we want to do and like, how do you measure any of that? How do I, how do I do anything with that? Right? I'm not working towards a goal. It's just the subjective idea of whether or not we actually achieved. We want to have the best customer service. Of course you do. Every company wants the best customer service. What does that actually mean? What is the actual output that you can create as a company that says you have the best customer service? And what does it mean for the individual in the call center that you have the best customer service? So yeah, like the information is there, it's badly packaged. And for the love of me, I do not understand it. There are so many tools available in the world that have solved this problem. I have a good friend of mine. a task manager has this in it now as well. Goals and relating down. uh good friend of mine, Nick Jackson, back in South Africa, he said something to me once that it sat in my head and I use it all the time. said, whenever we started working together, I would always try and get out of spreadsheets. needed to solve a problem and I'd put this information in the spreadsheets and I would spend days trying to rearrange this data and you look at me you go, I care. Go on Google. I promise you, somebody has solved this problem already. for $15 per user per month. And I was like, you're right. And that is 100 % there are tools to manage OKRs and KPIs. They are made by some of the most brilliant people in the world in this field of expertise. And you get it for $15 per user per month. Why wouldn't you use it? It's right there. yeah, absolutely. And I think it just, you've got to have that, that sort of comes through as well. Now I'm going to bring us around a little, cause I mean, we've kind of gone up to a higher level into kind of the exec team and the business as a whole and things like that. I think I'm going to ask a bit of a loaded double question here to you. So if you are a new manager, how do you implement OKRs and kind of leading from that, if the business is using another method of assessing or they're not doing this kind of communication, uh how do you feel you could incorporate this on your own in your team? Because I mean, I've worked in some teams where we didn't have that kind of communication and we put some in our own little goals and our own little methods. But What do you think? What do you think is a way a new manager can put this in, particularly if the business is not following this route? For sure. So the best way to do it is through KPIs, right? Like a KPI setting process is a two-way street. Your manager may not be interested at all in doing it, but that's your opportunity to figure out exactly what is required of you. So it makes sense to use your time creating your own KPIs as a way of getting at least a view into what might be happening behind closed doors. as to what your actual objectives are as a team, because you've now been put into this management position, you have a bunch of people who are going to need to now report into you, and you're going to need to achieve a certain objective. You may not know what the objective is, but that process of deriving your KPIs with your manager is the time when you can sort of, even if they're not explicit, you can start to extract some idea of what those OKRs are, and you create your KPIs according to that. collaborate on your KPIs. Like have that conversation as to why you've got certain KPIs. It's remarkably clear and you might find your manager kind of changes tune on certain things as well. You can kick in some gears there too. Sorry, my two cents throwing in there. For sure. For sure. So that's like, uh at the end of the day, it doesn't matter which level of manager you will have a certain output that you need to achieve. Like that's why you've been made a manager. It's why they need a manager in that particular position. And you do have the tools. You have the tools available to you either to extract that information in some way or to derive it, like read between the lines. m if your manager is not particularly interested. And that's part of being a manager is like sometimes your manager doesn't really know what they're doing either. There's a good chance that if you're in that kind of a business, your manager doesn't even know what their m OKR and their KPI is, right? But if you can be involved in the process and you can collaborate with the process, then you can show that you've collaborated in the process and you've driven, pulled out something that you're then working towards as a team, even if it's not the right thing. Even if it's not what the company wants, the fact that you've done it already sets you apart from other managers because they're just doing whatever they're told you're actually thinking about the right way to approach the problem. You've documented it and as any manager has to do, unfortunately, you CYA'd yourself throughout the process by documenting it. Exactly. Exactly. Great. Gary, thank you for that. I think this has been such a lot of value in a very short period of time. And I think it's something that a lot of managers struggle with. mean, we often get guests on, we speak about culture and things like this. And this is a lot more of that binary. You're going to need to get this done in order to make your role succeed. Thank you very much for all the insight you've got here. I'm loving this. With us closing out about a bit here, if someone wants to get hold of you, uh how can they reach you and what stuff are you busy with at the moment? Yeah, for sure. So as you mentioned earlier, I have joined a company called Attention. It's an agency, a digital agency. Yeah, I guess it's a digital agency. All the agency types are of merging into one another. At the moment, it's a very exciting time. We help businesses get attention at the end of the day. That's sort of like our objective. If you could have the best You could have the cheapest product, you could have the smartest product. If nobody knows that you exist, you're going to have a hard time. And there's different ways of getting attention. One thing that I'm particularly enjoying at the moment is writing a white paper uh for peer review on the theory of attention. There's a huge body of information and research that has been done. on attention, both from a clinical perspective and from a marketing perspective and just from a general social perspective. And so like spending my time sort of like pulling off these ideas and pulling them into a model that we can maybe use to sort of figure out how people can find attention online has been fascinating. I am not an academic, but I'm learning very quickly the rigor required in an academic paper. um But yeah, either this place to find me either on X, I think I believe that's how you and I probably met at some point way back in the day. It wasn't called X yet. um Yeah, or on, I've forgotten about that. Wow, that's funny. Yeah, or otherwise on LinkedIn and then um at attentionstrategy.com is probably the best way to get hold of me. Cool. Thank you, Gary. Thank you very much. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. I wish you the best of luck with your three-letter words and your OKRs and KPIs and that you're not putting out four-letter words when you're dealing with them. Gary, thanks so much for joining us. Everyone, until next time, keep swimming. Thanks Ross