Contents

Introduction3

About the Authors 4

What makes the Chief Technology Officer unique? 5

Responsibilities of the Chief Technology Officer6

Objectives and Key Results for the CTO Win 7

Connecting CTO Responsibilities to OKRs 8

CTO Scenarios and OKR Examples 13

7 Tips for Better OKRs 15

The Future of Work, CTOs, and OKRs: 18

A Story from Gtmhub

A Practical Demonstration of OKRs21

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Introduction

In the post-pandemic era, it’s hard to find a role with more technical
differentiation and multi-tiered responsibilities than the Chief Technology
Officer (CTO). Defining what the CTO does depends on the industry, size of
the company, and context of the organization’s needs, all of which continue
shifting.

To say the CTO must be a master of adaptation is an understatement. But

how can CTOs optimize technological adaptation and flexibility despite the
concrete (albeit changing and diverse) outcomes needed from the role?

This is why you’re reading. You, the CTO, need a north star for enterprise
technology strategy to survive an era of rapid change and demand.

Whether you’re a consumer experience magician through UI/UX; a visionary

with relentless focus on connecting technology to strategy; an infrastructural
technician of data, security, and IT services; an idea-inspired innovator; or a
combination of these models, you need a strategic framework that brings your
role to the forefront and puts impact back in your hands.

In this whitepaper, we’ll explore:

• Why the CTO stands out more in a post-pandemic world
• The CTO’s defining responsibilities
• How Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) help CTOs win
• Connections between CTO responsibilities and OKR perks
• Practical CTO scenarios to leverage OKRs
• Tips for creating better OKRs
• The future of work narrative through the CTO’s perspective
• Illustrations of OKR alignment in and out of your role

Let’s get started.

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About the Authors

Evan Campbell
C H I E F T R A N S F O R M AT I O N
OFFICER,
GTMHUB

Senior Technology and Business Executive

with demonstrated success in CTO, Found-
er, and Sr VP roles. Proven entrepreneur
bringing two software companies to IPO,
and two firms to exit via sale to public com-
panies.

Radoslav G eorgiev
C H I E F T E C H N O LO GY O F F I C E R
AND CO -FOUNDER,
GTMHUB

Radoslav has been involved in all aspects of

enterprise software development through-
out his career. He has managed agile
product teams through the entire software
development life cycle – from inception to
delivering value to customers.

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What makes the Chief Technology Officer unique?
The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) role can be one of the most rewarding, yet
difficult leadership roles in the enterprise. Companies in all industries continue
to realize that they must become technology firms.

Geoffrey Moore once remarked, “A bank is just a computer with a marketing

department.” Technology, or digital strategy, has become central to the
success of the entire firm.

A bank is just a
computer with
a marketing
department
GEOFFREY MOORE

At the center of enterprise success is the CTO, working on the consistent

development, implementation, and innovation of technology strategy. The
CTO’s distinction goes beyond its responsibilities — in a post-pandemic
workplace, the CTO faces more unique challenges and difficulties.

These difficulties ensue because the Office of the CTO typically does not have
direct control of the work or people implementing and buying technology.
This direct reporting can fall under the CIO, VP of Engineering, or Product
Development.

How do we define the responsibilities of a position often without direct

control?

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Responsibilities of the Chief Technology Officer

The CTO’s responsibility, like many roles, depends on context: software

versus hardware, internal IT versus product, etc. The distinctions could
continue for another page, but the CTO is typically responsible for:

1. Developing technology strategy and roadmaps aligned to short and

long-term objectives
2. Exploration and exploitation of new and emergent technologies for in-
novation and competitive advantage
3. Integrating and rationalizing the technology portfolio at the architec-
ture and systems levels
4. Enabling higher performance of the technology delivery organization
at large
5. Ensuring efficient, profitable, and secure use of technologies, then de-
fining metrics and measures for these standards
6. Often, representing the firm’s technology to external stakeholders and
prospects

Implicit in these responsibilities is the ability to influence and guide the

organization. The CTO role may be defined by unique challenges and
difficulties, but it is not exempt from the systemic problems that plague
other leaders and the enterprise.

What are these problems?

Large enterprises struggle to deliver cross-cutting strategic initiatives.

Much of the problem stems from siloed organizational structures and the
bureaucratic local optimizations they encourage. Silos and bureaucracy
inhibit coordination and alignment, hindering the delivery of enterprise
value from functions that should be cooperating.

Adding to these difficulties, CTOs not having direct control over the work
or the people they manage further complicates the position. How do CTOs
manage their fluctuating responsibilities and the potential pitfalls of the
organization?

Attempting to understand and support the organizational factions

responsible for implementing the CTO’s technology strategy can be
the most frustrating element of the job. However, some techniques and
practices can increase CTO effectiveness immensely.

One tested and proven technique for successfully deploying and executing
strategy is Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

Why OKRs, and why now for the CTO?

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Objectives and Key Results for the CTO Win

OKRs are multi-faceted in propelling strategy deployment and execution.

Their benefits are capable of elevating the CTO to greater effectiveness and
maximizing the organizational impact of the Office of the CTO.

The popularity of OKRs is booming with organizations of all sizes and types
because of the valuable (and well-publicized) “superpowers” that OKRs
convey, including:

Alignment
Focus
Empowerment
Accountability
Innovation
Ambition

These “superpowers” aren’t just buzzwords from marketing teams that make
you feel good. They’re practical outcomes gained from a technically sound
OKR process.

At this point, you might be skeptical. “Oh, so this is just a pitch for OKRs?”

Any skepticism is well received when it comes to OKRs. They take work, and
often, organizations fail to understand, implement, or stay consistent with
them. This is not a pitch for OKRs: it’s a pitch for building a framework that
brings empowerment back to Chief Technology Officers.

We can explore more about how OKRs do this through the lens of the CTO’s
responsibilities.

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Connecting CTO Responsibilities to OKRs
Let’s map the core benefits of OKRs, the “OKR Superpowers,” to the CTO’s
responsibilities. Here, we will illustrate the power and enablement OKRs bring
for a CTO in pursuit of their objectives:

Responsibility #1: Developing technology strategy

and roadmaps aligned to short and long-term
objectives

In the digital economy, all types of product and services firms must become
technology companies to survive and win, as explained in “Why Software
Is Eating The World,” plus thousands of other articles and books promoting
digital transformation and digital business models.

Leaders in traditional businesses, however, may not understand the

possibilities that existing and emerging technologies can offer their business
units.

What are the macro trends affecting the products, services, and business
models of their markets? What emergent digital-native competitors are
preparing to disrupt or disintermediate their firm?

The CTO is uniquely positioned and charged within the firm:

— To understand the company’s strategic business
— To interpret the most relevant technological opportunities and threats
— To envision a technology-future state
— To bridge the company’s current technology assets and capabilities to a
future state, backed by a plan that realizes the strategic business objec-
tives of the firm with speed and efficiency

With these charges for the CTO, the OKR superpowers of alignment and
focus are levers for success. The CTO must understand the business strategy
and strategic objectives to focus and prioritize investing in the technologies
that provide the greatest impact.

In the role of influencer, the CTO must deploy a technology strategy with
clarity and comprehensive understanding. This strategy brings focus, aligns
legions of people across the organization who are doing technology-related
work, and teaches them how to prioritize work of the highest value.

The power of focus provides the north star that various functions and
departments of the organization must steer to, providing the CTO with the
much-needed trump card that overrides all parochial departmental priorities
and interests.

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 Responsibility #2: Exploration and exploitation of
new and emergent technologies for innovation and
competitive advantage

Ambition and innovation are core drivers of the CTO’s mandate. At the
CTO’s core, aligning innovation investment to strategic objectives is crucial to
the CTO’s success.

However, having the ambition to win in the market as expressed through bold
and aggressive moonshot objectives — the kinds that disrupt markets and
propel firms to decimate competitors — drives the spirit of innovation.

OKRs further support the democratization and proliferation of innovation

throughout the enterprise. Unlike MBOs, Hoshin Kanri, and other strategy
frameworks, OKRs convey to the employees the “why” and “what” of strategic
objectives while engaging their insights and passions to creatively discover
the “how,” making innovation a part of everyone’s job.

Through the enablement of employees, innovation and ambition intertwine.

When employees can embrace a strategic framework like OKRs that enables
their freedom of choice in the execution of their roles, fear is no longer the
ceiling for innovation or motivation of decisions.

Responsibility #3: Integrating and rationalizing the

technology portfolio at the architecture and systems
levels
A large enterprise typically has thousands of technology platforms, systems,
and applications. Some of these are strategic because they confer a
competitive advantage in products, services, or markets that align to the
strategic goals of the company.

The platforms or systems that are differentiating must be maximally flexible

and agile to respond to and exploit threats and opportunities. On the other
hand, many IT systems support rote commodity functionality that should be
standardized while being as cheap and efficient as possible.

Inevitably, systems in both categories are at distinct stages of their lifecycles,

from early-stage development to sunset and retirement. Many in the latter
category are being subsumed via “system replacement” projects (a fraught
category of development projects because of the expensive inclination to
replicate unneeded and low-value legacy functionality).

Systems of various vintages, reflecting the APIs and integration capabilities

of their eras, must process data and transactions through an ever-increasing
number of technologies and approaches.

Increased complexity shifts architecture decisions, whether they are point

to point or service bus (or micro-services) integrations, to an exponentially
growing spider web of dependencies and integrations.

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 The CTO is responsible for roadmapping the strategic investment and
lifecycle strategies of all these systems to focus people and investment on the
roadmap initiatives that maximize the value of the technology portfolio for the
enterprise.

Responsibility #4: Enabling higher performance of

the technology delivery organization at large

Technology delivery organizations at scale can become complacent and self-

serving.

When dealing with old technology platforms, hiring can be a challenge.

Opposite of this, retention becomes more difficult due to large, outdated
systems containing decades of accumulated technical and architectural debt.

Fresh, post-secondary hires are usually unfamiliar with modern software

craftsmanship standards, while new technologies continue emerging.

Practices like:
• Test-driven development
• Continuous integration and deployment
• Behavior-driven development
• Domain-driven design

… are hardly new (Kent Beck’s seminal book Extreme Programming

Explained was published in 1999).

However, large IT organizations might sacrifice adherence to these

foundational practices for speed, quality, and agility. The CTO is in an
opportune position to master these techniques and illustrate the critical “why”
of software craftsmanship. When the foundational practices are mastered, the
path to innovation is opened.

Responsibility #5: Ensuring efficient, profitable, and

secure use of technologies, then defining metrics and
measures for these standards

The CTO plays a critical role in the portfolio management process. Ensuring
technology implementation decisions are sound per the organization’s risk
tolerance and expectations of investment return creates additional layers of
complexity for the CTO.

Greater accountability for implementing and enforcing strategic technical

guidelines, architectures, and roadmaps throughout expansive technology
delivery functions is essential for:

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 • Security, scalability, and fitness
• Avoiding waste and redundancy
• Ensuring corporate technology assets are not impaired by technical debt
and defects

The office of the CTO is a critical participant and guide in the “definition of
done” — an agile denotation of fitness and quality standards — for various
types and categories of systems within the enterprise to track accountability
and fit for purpose.

The CTO can use OKRs to drive the improvement program, helping
employees stretch for ambitious new levels of competence and mastery in
the organization. They can define standards that align to strategic objectives
producing quality user experiences, built on secure and safe platforms,
through OKRs.

According to Daniel Pink’s work in Drive: The Surprising Truth About

What Motivates Us, autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the key drivers
of motivation and engagement of knowledge workers. OKRs support an
environment for developers and other technical professionals to achieve all
three.

Organizations can benefit from the hard financial benefits of increased

employee motivation and improved engagement, which translate to
increased productivity and lower turnover.

Responsibility #6: Often, representing the firm’s

technology to external stakeholders and prospects

In firms that derive substantial competitive advantage from technology,

the CTO is the external-facing spokesperson and evangelist for the firm’s
intellectual property/services from the technical point of view.

All kinds of stakeholders — investors, customers, employees — perceive the

firm as more valuable and competitive when the CTO paints the organization’s
image of its technology assets and, even more, its capabilities for innovation
and responsiveness.

To effectively influence these constituencies and drive the correct message,

the CTO must align with the firm’s strategic objectives, especially its go-to-
market strategy.

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 OKR superpowers are entrenched in the responsibilities of
the CTO. OKRs help:

• Align and focus personal objectives to the firm’s strategic outlook

• Prime technology teams for innovation through ambitious goal setting
• Create cross-functional team engagement and accountability in the
trenches

The CTO can navigate with OKRs as the north star for envi-
sioning and enabling technology team outcomes.

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CTO Scenarios and OKR Examples

To better illustrate the power of OKRs in the effective deployment, execution,

and tracking of technology strategy, let us examine a few scenarios and
examples of OKRs that will help realize the CTO and company’s goals:

Scenario 1
The company has a high-level objective to reduce its costly and
inefficient traditional co-dependent channels. They want to sell and
service their end consumer directly. Providing services on the technology
devices ubiquitous to everyone is a Key Result supporting that Objective.
The CTO aligns to the corporate strategic OKR with an OKR like this:

Objective: We’re EVERYWHERE our client could want us!

Description: Our offerings and critical services interactions are
EVERYWHERE the customer/prospect could want to interact with us, from the
first moment they adopt a specific technology.

Key Result 1: Validate core mobile app functionality on 4 device

form factors

Key Result 2: Implement the 5 most used customer support

functions to mobile app

Key Result 3: Grow mobile app usage for new order acquisition
by 25%

Scenario 2
The organization has a strategy to break down technology silos with
better integration and the reuse of software assets. They want to let
systems leverage and integrate with less friction. How does the CTO
optimize this?

Objective: All greenfield systems are cloud-native and

expose microservices!
Key Result 1: 85% of new software assets will be developed in
the cloud, for the cloud

Key Result 2: 70% of public methods in new applications will be

exposed as microservices and documented for other users

Key Result 3: 50% of new applications will use at least one

service from another application

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 Scenario 3
The organization’s hardware products have a longstanding dependency
on a legacy microprocessor that is being deprecated by the
manufacturer. Many competitors’ products offer features/functionality
not possible with the old platform. What’s to be done?

Objective: Escape legacy dependency and exploit new

processor capabilities FAST!

Key Result 1: New reference implementation with 95% existing

functionality carryover

Help an existing product team integrate this implementation

of a hardware virtualization layer that encapsulates and abstracts
differences in the old processor vs the new processor

Key Result 2: Make 3 new features of the new processor available

in the reference implementation

Key Result 3: Get two product teams to commit to a migration

roadmap implementing the new processor and removal of the
abstraction layer within a year

These OKRs usually require the cooperation of various parts of the

organization to succeed – the CTO is attempting to deliver strategic outcomes
that benefit the organization but is highly dependent on Engineering,
Marketing, QA, and other functions to realize those outcomes.

Outside of an OKR framework, the Office of the CTO has great prestige but
little direct control. Applying influence effectively is critical to success. OKRs
help the CTO influence and affect the behavior of functions they don’t control
through the OKR superpower of focus.

The CTO can illustrate how top-level enterprise objectives are served by these
OKRs, and why parochial departmental priorities must come second to these
higher priorities.

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7 Tips for Better OKRs
It’s no secret that well-written OKRs can make all the difference for an
organization. Anyone who has stared at a blank page for long enough, though,
understands that crafting great OKRs is no easy feat.

Like writing itself, deliberate practice and the right guidance separate good
OKRs from the bad.

The practice is on you. The guidance is on us with these seven tips for better
OKRs:

1. Write Objectives like Tweets

Your Objective should be inspiring, easy to remember, and qualitative. An
inspiring Objective connects you and your team to a visual aspiration. It
puts feeling in your work. An easy-to-remember Objective improves recall
and builds the habit of connecting your work to your OKR (since it’s easy to
remember).

Having the temptation to put numbers in your Objective will be there, but
we have Key Results, KPIs, and Tasks for our quantitative focus. Objectives
are like great tweets. Make sure they are concise, punchy, and easy
to understand. We recommend that the Objective is no longer than 70
characters.

2. Make sure your Key Results are not vanity metrics

Crafting great Key Results is about asking “Why?” until you have connected to
the right outcome.

“Create XX amount of new software assets for the cloud” might seem like
a good Key Result. But why choose this figure in particular? Creating new
assets is an output that has no connection to quality or team focus.

Now look at the updated Key Result: “85% of new software assets will be
developed in the cloud, for the cloud.”

The number of assets does not matter for this Key Result. Teams will continue
to push new assets at a sustainable, healthy rate and have focus where
it matters. By targeting a percentage, teams are no longer worried about
pushing out a certain number of assets that can be subpar, but instead
developing assets for what matters: usability in the cloud.

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 3. Say “No Thanks” to Yes/No Key Results
In most cases, all-or-nothing Key Results are not optimal. Connecting to
Tip #2, Yes/No Key Results are usually tasks that measure outputs over
outcomes. If you are creating Yes/No Key Results, you may have too many of
them — 3-5 is the sweet spot.

If you must use Yes/No Key Results, make sure you have a way of measuring
their progress.

4. OKRs are not goals, tasks, or KPIs

A goal is what we want or wish. An Objective is something we accomplish in a
given timeframe.

A KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. OKRs stands for Objectives and
Key Results.

Objective and Indicator have some relation (one influences the other), but they
are not the same thing.

A task is a specific unit of work, such as “Write a section on great OKR tips”
or “Implement push notifications feature.” OKRs are not meant to be an
elaborate to-do list.

Respect each distinction to get the most out of it.

5. Do your OKRs pass the sniff test?

The sniff test for OKRs is simple but can test your patience. “So what?”: the
end-all, be-all question to test the strength of your Key Results.

Asking “So what?” puts the outcome mentality first in your KRs. They aren’t
just about the output of the work, but instead, the result of the work or feature.

You want to increase the total number of users for the quarter. So what? That
number can be gamed with awareness campaigns and free trials. Take this KR
a step further by shifting to increased daily users. This KR is now a measure
of consistency and lasting outcomes.

Asking “So what?” can help your Key Results pass the vanity metric sniff test.

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 6. OKRs are the moon and the stars
Norman Vincent Peale was before the OKR times when he said, “Shoot for the
moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

OKRs are meant to be an inspirational stretch for your teams. 70%

achievement on a lofty OKR will lead to better outcomes than 100%
achievement on an easy OKR.

7. Consistent education
OKRs are a muscle that takes exercise, nutrition, and balance — there is
never a moment to stop learning about them. When you acknowledge this,
your OKRs will improve each quarter.

Learn more about what dedicated OKR software can do for you versus
spreadsheets or simple task management software. Understand the cost
of software’s practical application versus the cost of not improving your
business outcomes. Expand your understanding of the methodology through
blog posts, articles, and whitepapers like the one you are reading.

We can help you do all of this. “Sign up for a free demo of Gtmhub now to get
started.

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The Future of Work, CTOs, and OKRs:
A Story from Gtmhub
Are you working in an office again?

Have you built out an elaborate work-from-home setup?

Or are you somewhere in between?

We know the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we communicate and

collaborate in our work, but we don’t know what the future of work holds. As a
Chief Technology Officer, uncertainty further exacerbates a complicated and,
at times, confusing set of responsibilities.

At Gtmhub, like most of you, we handled the pandemic’s uncertainty well in

some areas and poorly in others. OKRs are the reason you have the chance
to read this whitepaper. They acted as the beacon in our lighthouse when we
were in a storm of uncertainty.

Before the pandemic, OKRs helped us connect our quarterly execution to

the long-term vision of technology velocity and growth as a startup. While we
could not foresee the drastic change that was coming to the world, OKRs built
our strategy execution muscle before it was tested.

One week, we had everyone in person. As the stories go, by the next week we
had nobody.

OKRs informed us on how we were doing in a disconnected, chaotic world.

Our light at the end of the tunnel was our long-term vision, combined with our
inspired Objective. Going into April 2020 and the new quarter, still uninformed
by the world, we had a framework that could work whether we had everyone
or no one in an office.

OKRs helped us modify our strategic approach because we set OKRs

quarterly. We had the tracking and discipline to update our Key Results
and maintain consistency, but shift when the world demanded it. Amid the
uncertainty, staying true to our goals was what we could unite around as an
organization.

Managing Distributed Teams with OKRs and the

Impact of Hiring
Growth and scaling teams are always challenges for organizations, and
technology is not exempt from this challenge. Before the pandemic, we
were hesitant to start with hiring engineers outside of our home city of
Sofia, Bulgaria. The remote model was a concern for us because, like most
companies, we weren’t familiar with it.

You might be asking yourself, “What does hiring have to do with my

management as CTO?”

To manage distributed teams effectively, your methodology for management

must align with your methodology for hiring. As a startup, who you hire today

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 is who you will be managing your teams around in a year.

During the pandemic, we were embracing our growth and shifting to remote
culture. When considering hiring, new candidates must align with the mission
we have set as an organization and as a team, as this is a critical underpinning
for OKR success. This is as much of a priority as the role’s responsibilities.

Remote management creates a layer of friction in connecting teams to

the organization’s mission — strong adherence to OKRs is the solution to
the challenge of friction. They are our management meditation, creating
impact from day-to-day operations to new hires. But hiring the wrong fit can
complicate this balance.

So, hiring can tie into management, but how can we be proactive and find
opportunities in hiring?

Management, hiring, and OKRs have a positive feedback loop with each other.
Using OKR methodology as a management example, we can ask, “If a new
hire joined us tomorrow, would they understand where we’re at as a team and
what needs to be accomplished?”

OKRs clear the path to our desired outcomes. If we engage with our OKRs
consistently as a team, updating our Key Results and managing tasks to
achieve our Objective, we can answer “yes” to the question.

This is what remote/distributed team management looks like in the future

of work — hiring may seem like a small piece of the puzzle, but the hiring
mentality keeps us in check on maximizing our OKR focus.

On the front end of the pandemic, we realized we had to be more thoughtful

and cautious about hiring. OKRs are not only about outcomes — they
translate to the culture, long-term performance, and morale of teams. This
must be implemented from the beginning of the new hire process to the most
experienced team members.

We are not just hiring for the position we need — we are hiring the leaders
of tomorrow. How well a person embraces the OKR culture can tell us much
about the quality of work they will bring and their fit on our team, thus, how
well we can manage that team.

OKR Flexibility and the Problems it Solved

OKRs give us an aspirational and data-backed foundation, but they also give
us wiggle room for disruption and flexibility. As an organization, especially in
technology, we adopted a flexible mentality before the pandemic demanded it.

The conscious decision to create flexible frameworks, physically with laptops

and personal devices and operationally with OKRs, saved us headaches
throughout the pandemic.

Other companies had their employees in the dark. On the tech side,
programmers, software engineers, and countless others sat in the dark for
weeks with incomplete projects and a robbed sense of purpose. OKRs made

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 our Key Results clear and helped teams prioritize tasks at hand.

In our technology department, we could raise flags promptly because we

had up-to-date feedback on OKRs. Outside of Gtmhub, the outlook (on the
pandemic) seemed to change daily. Inside of Gtmhub, we used OKRs to
soften the transition to remote work.

Each team member knew what their outcomes were for the quarter, and while
the environment changed, the finish line was always visible. It would have
been easy to default to easy goals and coast as a company. But OKRs were
as much motivational as directional. Our teams were ready to push.

If someone was struggling or lagging with a task, that feedback would show
in our Key Result progression. Team members could get help and balance the
load where other companies were still figuring out how to get started. OKRs
saved us.

The Challenge: Which future of work model is best?

Now companies and teams have a choice: go back to the ways of old or
embrace change and forge a new path for the way we work. We don’t have
the right answer, but we do have a framework.

The pandemic gave us a glimpse of a world where the workforce is free to

work remotely. With the worst of the pandemic behind us, leaders must
decide if they want to establish a temporary behavior born out of necessity as
the new normal.

Hybrid work is evolving as a compromise between the past and future. Giving
employees the choice of where to work isn’t only idealistic, but brings with it a
compelling business case. Organizations that offer the freedom to work from
home are:

• Attractive to potential employees

• Subject to less absenteeism
• Open to the global job market and better hires
• Can scale up or down and achieve 24/7 coverage
• Less inhibited by overhead like office space and business travel
• Resilient to office disruptions and the friction of commutes
• More environmentally friendly
• More capable of achieving sustainability targets

This whitepaper isn’t written to to convince you that your organization should
shift to hybrid work.

You should get the choice: do you want a framework that works regardless
of where you decide to work? In the results-focused culture of OKRs, micro-
management and output obsessions are phased out. Leadership can sidestep
the behaviors that achieve rigid compliance and ego fulfillment. Instead, they
can focus on helping employees achieve the goals that matter to the business.

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 With Objectives stemming from top-level vision and made widely visible as
required by the Gtmhub software, employees at every level of the organization
can stay in close alignment with team, departmental, and company goals,
regardless of whether they are based at home or in the office.

OKRs gave structure to Gtmhub — the CTO, CEO, and beyond — amid the
largest shift in work since the boom of the internet. The future of work may be
uncertain, with the decision of remote, hybrid, or in-person setups depending
on your location, industry, and position.

What’s certain? The impact of OKRs, no matter the workplace they may find
themselves in.

A Practical Demonstration of OKRs

The illustration below shows how focus and alignment are made explicit
through the creation of aligned OKRs (strategy deployment) and enforced as
work is being delivered (strategy execution).

In this example, the CTO is accountable for a portion of the company’s

digital strategy, specifically the Objective to provide the firm’s core customer
services transactions via digital self-service.

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For Missions that Matter
 The strategy requires a better web experience and one that works well on
all device form factors (not just a computer browser) as well as high-quality
native mobile apps. Being a large traditional firm, the back-end systems of
record for core transactions are a mix of Java enterprise applications and
even some mainframe legacy systems.

For the web and mobile app transactions to be processed, the transactional
systems of record must have APIs or services exposed. You can see in this
OKR alignment view how the CTO is providing alignment and focus on this
strategic objective — organizational elements and teams are coordinated to
enable the strategic Objective to be fully realized.

In the strategy execution process, the CTO and others can track the work
progressing in real-time through progress updates on the KRs. Leadership
can intervene promptly if progress lags in any one area. Ideally, these KRs are
integrated with development and work management systems of record so the
status of the KRs is always accurate and up to date.

Effective OKR processes and tooling illustrate the extent to which these
aligned OKR objectives are, or are not, being achieved as work is delivered
throughout the quarter. Transparency created by OKRs permits effective
governance and early intervention for a strong strategy execution competency.

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For Missions that Matter
 Chief Technology Officers are on the edge of innovation in a post-pandemic
world. In this whitepaper, we’ve explored the varying layers of complexity
associated with the role:

• Top-level focus: from consumer experience to IT

• Shared responsibilities most common among CTOs
• Lack of direct control in traditional systems and teams for driving
impact

As CTO, you must manage shifting responsibilities and ever-increasing

expectations in technology, while providing leadership guidance and structure
at the team, organization, and public levels. Adaptation is your destination and
your competitive advantage. OKRs are the path to get there.

The power of OKRs can be leveraged as a connector to the responsibilities

of the CTO role to improve technology strategy. As CTO, you have the
privilege of incorporating OKRs through a variety of initiatives — whether
capitalizing on the ability of OKRs to align and focus the deployment of a well-
comprehended technology strategy or utilizing OKRs to enhance engagement
among knowledge worker teams.

The challenges of the CTO and the rewards of OKRs can work in parallel.

OKRs position the CTO to create immediate and long-lasting impact.

Real-world scenarios of OKRs, OKR best practices, and the practical
demonstration of OKRs in this whitepaper give you the lens with which to
observe the opportunities within your teams and organizations:

• Where would we benefit most from OKRs?

• How do we ensure our OKRs are well-crafted and measure what
matters?
• What can we do to make OKRs a low-risk, high-reward endeavor?

This whitepaper has shown you at a minimum that being CTO may come with
increasingly difficult and rapidly changing challenges in all industries, but you
do not have to fly without a safety net. Having the right system in place is a
critical first step in reducing complications in your role.

In a constantly shifting landscape, OKRs may serve as the north star for
guiding your technology strategy into the future.

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For Missions that Matter
At Gtmhub, we create solutions for Chief Technology Officers.
Inspired by the proven Objectives and Key Results (OKR) goal-setting
methodology, Gtmhub offers the most flexible results orchestration
software for mission-driven organizations. Our goal? Provide clarity of
strategy and execution across teams, functions, and business units.

Try now

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For Missions that Matter