OKRs - Operative vs.

Execution Work
A Quick Overview
STRATEGY

Company
strategy 🧭 ��KPIs

OKRs
EXECUTION

EXECUTION WORK OPERATIVE WORK

Strategic Initiatives/ Business as usual, “Keeling

Projects the lights on” work
Strategically relevant Initiatives, Epics & Operative tasks not directly executing or
Projects contributing to strategic goals
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Monitor the split of Execution & Operative Work per team
A necessary reflection

What are the benefits?

Every team needs to make an estimation of how much Execution vs. Operative
Work there is in their team in order to determine how much time they have to
work on OKRs

This split varies from role to role, i.e. a Customer Service Agent will inherently
have less Execution Work than a Product Team. The estimate will help to ask
the question to leadership: “Are we spending our time the way we should?”

According to this split there are certain recommendations on how to

⚠ deal with operative work in OKRs and answer the question
“What shall we even write into out OKRs?”

MASTERCLASS 2
Three scenarios in comparison with different recommendations
How to best deal with Operative Work and OKRs according to the work split

OPERATIVE WORK OPERATIVE WORK OPERATIVE WORK

EXECUTION WORK EXECUTION WORK EXECUTION WORK

Scenario 1: More Execution than Scenario 2: Equal amount of Scenario 3: Less Execution than
Operative Work Execution & Operative Work Operative Work

According to the of Execution & Operative work there are different ways of dealing with Operative work and OKRs.
Let’s have a closer look at them…

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Scenario 1: More Execution than Operative Work

Recommendations OPERATIVE WORK

Ensure focus on strategic topics and only write OKRs that translate to
strategically relevant work to be done

Remember that not only topic needs to be present in OKRs if there is enough
strategically relevant execution work for the team to derive from OKRs

Ensure focus on a few crucial strategic topics by only setting 3-5 OKRs

OKRs will be very relevant for these teams EXECUTION WORK

Make sure there is an even distribution of strategic capacity on the OKRs

4
 Scenario 2: Equal amount of Execution & Operative Work

Recommendations OPERATIVE WORK

Teams might ask to put operative work in OKRs as well. Try to focus on putting
strategic topics into your OKRs, so Execution Work

Considerations if teams push hard to put operative work into OKRs: pros &
cons of putting Operative Work into OKRs

+ -
● Teams have one source of truth regarding ● You would have a lot of OKRs which
all work they do tends to result in a loss of strategic focus
● Teams might lose focus of strategic topics
EXECUTION WORK
since operative work is more part of their
everyday life
● This use might water down the definition
of OKRs as a strategy execution tool

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 Scenario 3: Less Execution than Operative Work

Recommendations
OPERATIVEWORK
OPERATIVE WORK
In these teams OKRs might not have the biggest relevance since the teams
have less time planned for work executing the strategy

OKRs can gain more relevance if teams write OKRs about their operative
work, but the teams should make an informed decision on this: pros & cons for
putting Operative work in OKRs

+ -
● Teams have one source of truth regarding all
work they do
● Teams perceive their work to be equally
important as the work of more strategically
working teams
● OKRs will become more relevant as a
framework and will for sure be worked on
● Teams might try harder to find aspects of
their operative they can strategically
improve (process improvements)
● You would have a lot of OKRs which
tends to result in a loss of strategic focus
● This use might water down the definition
of OKRs as a strategy execution tool EXECUTION WORK
● OKRs become evergreens that rarely
change and are seldomly reflected on
● Less clear distinction of execution &
operative work that can be made