I have found that KPIs are a useful addition to an OKR framework.
Objectives are usually big and ambitious, but need to be pinned down using Key Results. Key Results are the definition of success for an Objective.
However, it’s often the case that there are many ‘numbers’ that affect the Key Results. In advance it is very difficult to know which combination of such metrics is the right one to target.
For example, if a KR is to increase sales from £70k to £100k of product X, you can break this down into various other KPIs - traffic, inquiries, conversion rate, AOV etc
In many cases these metrics can’t be hard coded into a KR, as the sweet spot for the business is unknown - and ultimately we don’t care which combination brings us to hit our KR.
So KPIs allow us to play with the next layer down from KRs, setting and revising targets for the constituent numbers that ultimately drive a KR.
Note: KRs should not change frequently, but KPIs can - with testing, iteration, and new information.
I run a ~20 person digital marketing company and we are experimenting with a 4 day week this summer. Everyone has Fridays off in June and July. Pay is unchanged.
Fundamentally it seemed like a cool thing to do for staff - more time to enjoy a summer in London. Doing whatever you want on a Friday - life admin, hobbies, long weekend away, recovering from a hangover... your call.
But then it also seemed like an opportunity to experiment with this new constraint. Could we avoid losing 20% of our output? We certainly didn’t want to work 2 extra hours per day. So the idea was to really take the chance to look at how we work, how we organise ourselves, how we prioritise, how we communicate and share. What can we automate or improve processes for. How we use meetings as a tool for value. And also how we really dive into our work with intensity and drive for the hours we are there.
Overall, sentiment across the company has been extremely positive. We certainly haven’t made up for the lost day in measurable improvements or efficiencies. But we have maybe got half way there - without inducing increased stress during the four days. The team feels more together. And we have probably all learned some skills that will make 5 day weeks that more productive when we restart them. So overall I would be surprised if it wasn’t win-win for all involved.
I can certainly see us doing this again next year - and maybe also again for a month like December. It really just feels good/right overall.
If you are doing this for only part of the year, one thing to be aware of is the Hawthorne Effect [0]. We're wired to seek novelty, and you may see a temporary increase in productivity each time you change working hours because of this. It's actually a reasonable argument for changing things around periodically, as long as it doesn't happen too often. (Note, however, that the effect may be limited to actual experiments where you're making careful observations. There isn't good consensus on it.)
If you are interested in sharing some of your experiences doing this, email me at nick@30hourjobs.com
People love reading about this kind of stuff and I would be happy to feature your company on the site/newsletter. If you're hiring, past featured companies have received some quality candidates from this!
Years ago, when I lived in Boston, when Summer arrived, half of the city went on water or did something outdoors. When I moved to CA, there was no such pattern as there is "Summer" the whole year around.
I'm wondering how different would your approach be if you are based in this kind of climate. For instance, we give our employees 30 days of PTO. If they wanted, they could easily use 8 days to take day off each week during Summer (or any other period), but we have not run into any that would do that.
This is definitely an area that I would like to explore more in the future. Thank you for sharing your experiences!
1) It's fantastic you've done this. This sort of thing would make me crazy about my employer.
2) "We certainly haven’t made up for the lost day in measurable improvements or efficiencies"
Maybe that's OK? Humans have tons of stuff already (at least in the rich world), and most of the things that are expensive are going to stay that way because we create false scarcities to soak up any extra income (housing, mostly).
I suppose that's why we need controls to level the playing field, or else the company willing to push workers for another day will lower the bar for everyone.
I think you're on the right track, best of luck with it!
I am quite sure I would get at least as much -- and probably more -- done if my week were formally four days long instead of five. I'm also sure this could be true, depending on motivation, of everyone I work with and almost everyone I ever have worked with.
More revenue per page view - but its likely that negative or controversial content will get shared more and drive more overall traffic/impressions. So not sure how much of an effect this would have on the overall sentiment of content produced.
Very much agree with this comment. It’s quite likely that the AMP pages received incremental impressions in lower positions, which reduced the overall average position but increased clicks.
The screenshot of rankings from another tool (looks like Accuranker) with a few +1 ranking improvements after disabling AMP also seems insignificant. Often this kind of fluctuation is very normal. Without knowing the baseline level of ranking fluctuation, it’s hard to read too much into this.
This is the danger of analysing ‘totals’ without segmentation to better track incrementality.
Any test needs to be properly controlled to form clear conclusions and I don’t see enough rigor here.
I would however commend the article on its advice to avoid simply ‘disabling’ AMP after using it for a period of time. There is cleanup to be done as the article touches on, and I suspect many may not be aware.
The main problem here is attribution - and with many ad platforms pushing the 'viewthrough conversion' metric, it becomes very messy when hundreds of millions of users start getting tagged as having 'viewed' a video too easily. Future purchases can then be tied back to that 'view', even if it was insignificant in the buying process.
This is where as an advertiser I would be very interested in the distribution of view lengths, to better understand the user's engagement and likelihood that the video made any impact on their behaviours at all.
Although being totally honest, you can't rule out the impact of even a passive 3 second peripheral glimpse of brand video content. Most traditional advertising - TV and outdoor, for example - is not actively viewed, but rather passively 'seen'.
Ultimately it comes back to being pragmatic in the way you assess advertising effectiveness - the promise of digital is perfect ROI analysis and measurement, but the reality is far trickier.
This also happens in reverse - recruitment agencies bidding on names of prospects. Certainly got my attention when I was first targeted by this approach.
How much traffic do you think they actually lose by not having Nissan.com? I would have thought as soon as someone looking for Nissan cars visits that URL, they would realise it was not the right site, then try the ccTLD version i.e. Nissan.co.uk, or simply search "Nissan" in their search engine of choice.
It's a bit like Google AdWords - some choose to bid on their own brand keywords, but are they actually gaining incremental visitors, or just spending budget on acquiring traffic that would otherwise arrived for free anyway?
Objectives are usually big and ambitious, but need to be pinned down using Key Results. Key Results are the definition of success for an Objective.
However, it’s often the case that there are many ‘numbers’ that affect the Key Results. In advance it is very difficult to know which combination of such metrics is the right one to target.
For example, if a KR is to increase sales from £70k to £100k of product X, you can break this down into various other KPIs - traffic, inquiries, conversion rate, AOV etc
In many cases these metrics can’t be hard coded into a KR, as the sweet spot for the business is unknown - and ultimately we don’t care which combination brings us to hit our KR.
So KPIs allow us to play with the next layer down from KRs, setting and revising targets for the constituent numbers that ultimately drive a KR.
Note: KRs should not change frequently, but KPIs can - with testing, iteration, and new information.