The bottom-up approach that helps high performers with clear goals
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Slide 130 — consider activities vs goals
When the train is moving things become challenging. This is because he or she is highly performant already. Therefore, it’s not a situation where they can hit their high-pressure breaks and, for example, replace activities to match goals.
slide 130.1 — the bottom-up approach
The bottom-up approach is an exercise that I learned from Michael Dearing in his OKR course [1].
This effort should look at activities without having in mind existing goal structures. It’s about navigating and trying to understand the significance of them. Imagine a person that can work effectively in 30 activities in a given week. This person can use the bottom-up method, first to read and reflect on each. This process, of navigating and reflecting, should help to spot patterns.
With patterns, abstract clusters should emerge. These clusters may suggest new goals. Don’t worry; this is temporary. What matters here is that this effort will lead to more clarity about objectives. Just make sure that you are looking at activities and not forcing them to connect with old/existing goals. It will help to see the dynamic nature of goals.
I am grateful to Harrison Metal’s course on OKR, for it provided me with this concrete bottom-up exercise that is used by top entrepreneurs. Keep in mind that the bottoms-up process can also be coordinated with the standard pre-planning top-down approach. Check Michael’s course to see his interpretation and great explanation.
[1] https://www.harrisonmetal.com/classes/gm2-setting-goals-measuring-performance/lessons/magic-of-okrs
