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Life-Sparring Podcast - Round 8: Simon Klaiber - Are You OKR?

Synopsis:

After the Life-Sparring Podcast has been heavy on health and fitness topics recently, it is time to balance things a bit out with an exciting business and personal productivity round on OKRs, Objectives and Key Results.

Our guest, Simon Klaiber, is not just a successful business agility consultant and coach from Frankfurt, Germany; he also runs two Podcasts (in German language) on business and personal agility. In episode 21 of his Personal Agility Podcast, Simon shared his experience using OKRs for personal goal-setting. It would be hard to think of any guest more qualified on this topic than him.

As usual, we start with introducing our guest and dive into Simon’s interesting career. As a self-taught programmer from teenage age, Simon began studying cultural anthropology before eventually following the call of the new economy. He abandoned his studies to work in the booming IT industry of the dot-com bubble era, where he found himself often in the role of translator between customers and technical staff.

Gaining experience as a project manager but growing frustrated with the traditional approaches of project management, Simon became interested in agile methods, acquiring multiple accolades such as Scrum master qualifications. Today he primarily works as a business agility coach and consultant, teaching larger medium-sized companies’ agile systems and methods.

OKRs, Objectives and Key Results is not per se an agile tool, but it is a goal-setting framework prevalent amongst technology companies.

Introduced initially at Intel in the late 1970s, early 1980s by then legendary CEO Andy Grove, OKRs were later popularized by Intel staffer turned private equity investor John Doerr. Doerr brought OKRs to the young team at Google and several other Silicon Valley start-ups, from where the concept diffused into the broader tech industry.

Today OKRs are a widely used method to set goals for an organization and create alignment, transparency, and accountability across different corporate levels.

Together Simon and Fabian explore the advantages and pitfalls of OKRs and how a tool originally designed for big corporations can be helpful to achieve your personal goals.

If you prefer reading over listening or want to follow up the podcast with some additional material, head over to our blog section, where we published an accompanying blog article called Measuring What Really Matters to You – Reaching Your Personal Goals Through Objectives and Key Results.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Simon Klaiber on Linkedin

Simon’s Personal Agility Podcast (German) on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

My recent guest appearance on the Personal Agility Podcast (German) on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Klaiber Advisory website (German)

John Doerr’s website What-Matters.com

John Doerr’s book Measure What Matters on Goodreads and on Amazon (Affiliate Link)

Koan App for OKRs (free for personal use) official website

Life-Sparring Blogpost on OKRs: Measuring What Really Matters to You

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About the Life-Sparring Podcast:

Sparring is an important part of martial arts; it is the reality check of your abilities. As Mike Tyson famously said: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Life-Sparring takes the sparring from the ring into real life. Hear Life-Sparring host Fabian Gruber punching above his weight, interviewing top experts in their respective fields, trying to fight (his own) mediocrity one round at a time.

The Life-Sparring podcast is hosted by Fabian Gruber and produced by Thomas Latter.

Intro and Outro beat is produced by Markezi Producer.

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