Focusing Your Flow: OKRs and Outcomes Thinking by Matthieu Cornillon

Description: We work hard to continuously improve ourselves, our teams, and our organizations. Much of that improvement centers on productivity: increase flow, reduce cycle time, cut down friction, take air out of the system, etc. But with all that focus on souping up the engine, are we paying enough attention to the steering wheel? At all but beginner levels, performance gains will come in tiny increments which are quickly erased if we wander off the path to our goals. This discussion will start with a brief touch on OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), an increasingly popular goal-setting system. Then we'll dive into an exploration of outcomes thinking, a key to improving our steering toward long-term targets without sacrificing the agility we hold dear.

Matthieu Cornillon is an Agile Coach at Amplify, a Brooklyn-based education technology company. Through most of his career, Matthieu has worked on trying to help people work more effectively, whether through building tools or tweaking processes. Over the last decade, he has shifted his focus from directly creating products to helping coach others in doing so. He values a strong theoretical understanding of Agile, Lean, systems thinking, and other ideas, but believes it important to marry that with lessons learned through hands-on experience in getting things done. For Matthieu, that experience has spanned film and theater, software development, project management, political activism, and renovating his 150-year-old house. Although currently on hiatus to bring up his two young daughters, Matthieu is also a professional actor. Read his blog at growingtruffles.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter @growingtruffles.

Location: Spotify is on 45 W. 18th Street. That's between 6th and 5th avenues, above the Bed Bath and Beyond. Note that for this meeting, we'll be on the 7th floor.