A very happy new year to everyone! We trust that you’ve all had a rest and a refresh. We have a few exciting changes already in play with the appointment of Eliza Turnbull to General Manager of Consulting Services. Eliza has been working with us since the middle of 2020, and alongside Richie will spearhead our growing client consulting work. Not only an accomplished marketing strategy mind, Eliza has a deep interest in developing the foundations of purpose-driven cultures. And if that wasn’t enough, her family’s excellent Marlborough wines have seamlessly found their way into our fridge and our hearts.
Sadly we did farewell Maddi at the end of 2020 as she elected to take her burgeoning career in fashion and design back to Auckland. We’re currently hunting two new creative roles to join Cecilia in our design studio and are pleased to say that the talent pool is strong. Perhaps this provides one benefit from the (dare we mutter the word) pandemic – the return of many talented Kiwis.
The year of the OKR
Ah, the world of performance acronyms. Such fertile territory. Many of you will have perhaps heard of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). This is a simple strategic framework that allows a business to use specific metrics to track goals. They are popular with large organisations but equally can be used by smaller operators to track and rate peoples’ achievements. What makes OKRs smart is that they are visual to everyone. That includes the leadership, management and teams. Everyone knows what everyone’s role is.
We recently worked with a client on setting up a straightforward approach to setting simple and achievable OKRs. This approach replaced some of the more retrospective processes like six-monthly or annual performance reviews of which can be out of date and less relevant. OKRs should be ideally more timebound, objectively scored and simple for people to focus on. You can set monthly OKRs and have a check-in, assess progress and keep moving. It’s far more efficient and also allows that all important communication with your team members. What sounds like more work is actually less, with more accountable and engaged outcomes. Drop us a line if you’d like a copy of Lattice’s Practical Guide to OKRs. It’s worth a read as you look to frame up 2021.
Framing your time this year
While we don’t know, nor can we predict what kind of year we’ll get in 2021 there are some certainties that don’t change. One of them is the fact that we all have 24 hours in a day to get stuff done. For a good third of that we should be asleep, so when you assess the ‘available light’, you can see that time is a valuable asset that needs to be used effectively. Here’s one working example. Our client Connected Accountants have successfully implemented the four-day week into their business. In practicable terms, this means their team has 32 ‘available hours’ to deliver their regular workload. So the challenge here is to put the onus on good planning and executing efficiencies. If you achieve this, then your Friday's freed up.
Alicia McKay writes a great piece on this concept amongst others here. If you get a moment have a read and consider how important the best use of your time this year will be.
The humble predictions we shouldn’t make
It looks like another busy and eventful year. We’re not waxing our skis for a North American ski tour quite yet, and we reckon those Aussie prawns will be stuck on their barbies for the bulk of the year. While we enjoy the relative sanctity of our island existence and wait and see what happens to house prices and the coveted arrival of imported French hair dressing supplies, we’ll continue to enjoy the challenges that pop up in our realm of culture and customer land.
