The art of developing specific, concrete objectives and key results (OKRs) that will enable individual departments to work toward common goals.

By William Dunkerley

For over 100 years a respected association's magazine appeared in print. This year it went online only, precipitated by a drop in revenue. A B2B publication covering a transportation specialty had to let almost all its staff go for lack of advertising. Meanwhile an outdoor recreation monthly was enjoying an upswing in reader and advertiser demand. In today's Covid environment, social distancing in the great outdoors has achieved new popularity.

These are examples, for better or for worse, of how the pandemic has impacted magazine publishing.

Those publishers acted fast to adjust their operations to very unexpected circumstances.

We are now all facing unexpected circumstances of some sort. Organizational designs and procedures that were created or that evolved in earlier times may not be optimal to deal with the current or future milieu. For this reason alone it is important for magazine publishers to look inward at the management roles in their companies.

In the last two issues of STRAT, I've reviewed for readers the methodology of objectives and key results, or OKRs. OKRs provide a framework for examining the underlying constellation of structures and procedures that guide your business. OKRs lead you to set goals concretely, to thoughtfully create the means and practices for achieving them, and to track the outcomes for management control.

Why Your Organization Needs OKR

I know some publishers who believe they can do all that without the formality of the OKR platform. Maybe they can. One publisher wrote to us saying that OKRs may be appropriate for big media conglomerates, but they’re not needed for smaller operations.

It's true that OKRs are used even by the likes of Google and Amazon. But the principles behind OKRs, by whatever name, are very important to how your company will fare in today's environment.

So I recommend going through the OKR process to ensure everything you are doing follows a well-thought-out plan that is responsive to actual circumstances. It will also give you assurance that you are producing the results necessary to achieve your organizational objectives.

In the September issue we presented a sample OKR statement for a magazine publishing company as a whole. The next step is to similarly produce OKRs for the company's leader (often titled the publisher).

The Publisher OKR

Some of the organization's OKRs will be delegated to department heads -- editorial and advertising, for example. Those OKRs should later be worked out in consort with the respective department heads.

Other OKRs will fall on the shoulders of the publisher directly. If there is a member of your board who is assigned to monitor your performance, or some other board member who is of key importance, it would be prudent to involve that person in developing the publisher's OKRs.

Communication across the organization is an important top function. The publisher is essentially an orchestra leader for the various departments. Establish a well-articulated objective for that, then define the key results you want to achieve in that regard. These desired results should be quantifiable.

You can start with how often you will hold staff meetings. But don't stop there. You can achieve a result for the number of meetings. But the meetings themselves may not be productive. Devise a metric related to that. For instance, you could have attendees anonymously rate each meeting in terms of their satisfaction with it and their sense of whether it accomplished anything. Rate the meeting yourself and compare your rating with those of the attendees. The results could be enlightening.

Positioning of your publications in the markets they serve is another important function. Market conditions are subject to abrupt changes in today's world. Therefore it is vital to keep your hand on the pulse. Set an objective for your market position, then enumerate quantitative key results.

External communication often is a function in which the publisher plays a major role. In whatever field you publish or whatever geographic area is your focus, you may be an important figure. You may be regarded as an expert, or even a celebrity. This should entail more than playing the role of a big shot. Develop objectives that allow external communication to benefit your organization, then come up with specific key results and metrics.

It often falls upon the publisher to intervene in problems that arise within the organization. Based on past experience, are there examples of recurring needs? Create an objective that takes those needs into account. Enumerate key results and attendant metrics.

Crafting Meaningful OKR Statements

Throughout this process, it is important to create practical OKR statements. Too often I've seen publishers create other documents that play little practical role. For instance, many companies, not just publishers, put great effort into creating mission statements. Too often the result is a well-polished document that sounds impressive but has little practical value.

Likewise are job descriptions that are written to sound prestigious but don't reflect what the job actually entails. They just sit in a hiring manager’s desk drawer.

In contrast, OKR statements, if they are to have real value, must be practical, working documents. In today's environment, OKRs should be reassessed and tweaked on a quarterly basis, or in response to significant events.

Once you have the top job sufficiently OKRed, it is time to look at the various departments.

In this case it is vital to work in partnership with each department head. Examine the organization's OKRs together, then brainstorm how each department’s work will contribute to achieving the key results. In the end you should arrive at a mutually acceptable set of objectives and measurable key results for the department.

William Dunkerley is principal of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, www.publishinghelp.com.

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