OKRs and CFRs are proven vehicles for high performance and exponential growth. They also have more subtle, internal, quotidian effects – like grooming better executives, or giving less vocal contributors an opportunity to shine. On the long and demanding road to operating excellence, they help organizations improve each and every day. Leaders become better communicators and motivators. Contributors grow into more disciplined, rigorous thinkers. When imbued with meaningful conversations and feedback, structured goal setting teaches people how to work within constraints even as they push against them – an especially critical lesson for smaller, scaling operations.
The Zume Pizza story vividly illustrates these internal dynamics. It’s about a start-up using OKRs and CFRs – plus a few robots – to take on the giant of its industry. The $10 billion U.S Pizza delivery market has been controlled by three national chains: Domino’s, Pizza Hut, and Papa John’s. They aren’t life altering pizzas, but their brands are well established and own the great advantage of economy of scale. In the spring of 2016, when Zume Pizza opened for business in an out-of-the-way concrete bunker in Silicon valley, the skeptics came out in droves. “ Robotized, artisanal pizza” was derided as a Left Coast gimmick. The odds for success seemed long.
Going on two years later, Zume is beating those odds by making world-class pizza at a competitive price. In 2018, it began disrupting the pizza oligopoly across the Bay Area. Soon it will roll out across the West Coast, and then nationally; by 2019, the founders hope to be overseas. The company assigns tasks to machines, freeing its people for creative jobs that add more value. The company engaged its employees with OKRs which have helped their young company to thrive in ways they could not have foreseen.
Zume cofounder Julia Collins says “ Zume’s biggest asset is our talented creative team. Left to their own devices, our folks would jump into what they thought was most important. Their ideas were always good but not in sync. We implemented OKR’s early in our life cycle, three weeks after the first pizza went out the door, because we wanted to be sure that everyone knew our top priorities. In the beginning, to make sure that mission- critical things got done”
Alex Garden Zume’s other cofounder says “It’s hard to deny the explicit value of OKRs, like how they help tie and organization to the leaderships true ambitions. But for young companies like Zume, especially, there’s an equally important implicit value that gets overlooked. OKRs are a superb training tool for executives and managers. They teach you how to manage your business within existing limits”.
“At Zume when we implemented OKRs, the immediate benefit was the process itself. The simple act of forcing people to think about the business – thoughtfully, transparently, interdependently- was a huge accelerant to their performance”.
Achieving what’s real is important: Old-school business models suggest that your role as an executive gets more abstract as you rise in the ranks. Your middle managers buffer you from the operational day-to-day, freeing you to focus on the big picture. OKR’s are very effective for top executives to forge their people. They mint stronger executives and help them avoid rookie mistakes. They implant the rigor and rhythm of a very large company into the framework of a very small company.
