Try answering in 5 seconds.
1
Early last quarter, our Head of Engineering (HOE) Jason threw a sudden question at Mike (Android Engineer) while he was eating lunch.
"What's the Sleep squad's goal for this quarter?"
Caught off guard, Mike hesitated for a moment but soon answered. "Hitting 100K Sleep DAU~!"
At that moment, Jason stopped the running timer and showed him how long it took to answer."Unfortunately, that took 8 seconds."
After that, Jason encouraged all members to be able to state their squad's quarterly goal within 5 seconds.
"Answering a single goal in 5 seconds." This ultimately served as a litmus test that made us reflect on whether we were truly excelling at prioritization and focus. If we were already doing a great job at it, people would have easily answered within 5 seconds, but the fact that it was difficult meant we still had to work harder on prioritization and focus.
The simple reason we need to prioritize and focus
It's an obvious fact that our resources are not physically infinite. Playing Tetris with our resources as much as possible to ensure there's no idle energy and running multiple initiatives in parallel might seem efficient, but that's not how it actually works in real life. (Of course, this is something we also realized through trial and error.)
This is important and that is important, so let's just do both at the same time! This is like using batteries in parallel instead of in series. A parallel circuit has weaker firepower compared to a series circuit. It's inevitable since the power is distributed. We need to clearly define what to focus on, at least on a weekly or monthly basis, and furthermore on a quarterly basis, burning intensely in series to drive performance much faster.
Of course, there will be times when working in parallel is necessary. In extreme wartime situations, you just have to do whatever comes your way out of pure necessity. After all, you have to survive first. Alternatively, for mid-to-long-term projects that run quietly in the background, parallel execution would be more efficient. The core of this story is to clarify priorities—determining what is the absolute most important among them—and to heavily invest our energy in alignment with those priorities.
If you could only do one task, what should it be?
There are so many things to do, and they all look important. Nevertheless, there is definitely a 'relative advantage' when it comes to importance. Therefore, during our quarterly planning, we fiercely sort out the priorities for all major initiatives. First, we place the initiatives that each person thinks are important into highest — high — medium — low buckets. Then, we go through them one by one and discuss whether to move them up or down. While it varies by quarter, during this roughly one-hour session, we get to learn each other's thoughts on each initiative, and everyone comes to thoroughly understand the resulting priorities from our discussions.
If a sudden change occurs mid-quarter that prevents us from proceeding with a specific initiative, we can simply focus on the next initiative based on the previously synced priorities. Also, if the priorities themselves change mid-quarter, we can just re-discuss them using the same process as above. It enables us to have conversations like, "Everything is important, but this is still more important."
Ah, so this is where our team needs to focus
Once the priorities are set, the respective squads in charge draft their quarterly OKRs and map out a 12-week plan accordingly. Since the focus areas are decided, we just have to pour all our firepower into them this quarter.
However, since the idea that 'this is the most important' is also a hypothesis, if we feel that hypothesis might be wrong—even mid-quarter—we must change our goals. To cross-check this, each squad reviews its OKR Health trends week by week and flexibly adjusts strategies. Also, through squad metric meetings, the PO, engineers, designers, and DAs all get together to monitor how their single target number and other key metrics are changing. This ensures all members clearly recognize what our squad's goal is for this quarter and stay fully focused.
What is your team's goal for this quarter?
Try answering in 5 seconds.
If the answer doesn't come out in 5 seconds,
1. It's either because there are too many goals, or
2. because the goal hasn't been properly understood and aligned upon.
To achieve the best performance as a team, it is essential to focus and immerse yourselves together in a single goal.
Assuming you could only do one task, debate fiercely and define what you need to do.
Then, obsessively fixate on those focus areas as a team.
You will generate incredible performance with much greater firepower than when running multiple things in parallel.