How To Develop and Maintain a Business Moat With OKRs?

Whether in your personal life or business, we believe that developing a competitive advantage is key to long-term success. Leadership is more than just being a good leader. Leadership is developing (and protecting) your competitive advantage.

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It's not enough to just have a successful product. The goal is to get that product in the hands of as many customers as possible. But how do you build a lasting competitive advantage? 

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I'm going to share how some winning companies use early-stage technology to develop a long-term strategy that changes the rules of the game. Here are a few methods of strategic leaders who use OKRs to develop and maintain a business moat.

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The JUDO Move Approach to OKRs | Use OKRs As Leverage Points

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When it comes to a challenge, turn the situation around by identifying strategic points. If you can map it to your position and visualize how you can use it to your advantage, then you will emerge victorious. 

But we all know that it is not that easy. In fact, sometimes it takes a lot of effort and hard work to turn the situation around. But if you keep on doing this process, every day, until the day you get used to turning things around by seeing it as an opportunity, that’s when things will start working out well for you. This works especially well when you…

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… Apply It to a Company of Your Size.

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When you are a small startup, “Your moat is speed.” Your judo move is the speed of execution and ability to solve problems faster than others. Ask yourself the question “Do your OKRs reflect it ?” What are you doing faster than others in the market? How your solutions are making a difference?

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When you are mid-enterprise you may feel stuck, since you are not as fast as before while big enterprises with fat and deep pockets may be killing it. There is still a moat here: focus on building relationships, support the unique ability of your team to personsalise, and provide tailor-made solutions.

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If you are an enterprise, your brand and scale are not only the core of the resilience of your business in a changing world, your solutions and agility of execution matter to a great extent. Do your OKRs reflect that?

Clan of Hyenas/Pride of Lions Approach to OKRs | Pack Hunting

When hyenas hunt an animal that is bigger than themselves, they may hunt in packs and take down the prey by biting and dragging it to the ground. Similarly, lions hunt as a group to increase their chances to capture their prey. 

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Business is close in nature to the animal kingdom – you can either hunt or be hunted. A great way to develop a ‘moat’ is to hunt as a group of companies sharing similar interests. Establish legal agreements to protect the final Intellectual property and lock down the bonding with an exchange of equity.

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The benefits of pack-hunting as an organized team can be practiced as well in OKRs. The most strategic OKRs are best executed as Squads or Pods, composed of team members with diverse roles, capabilities, and responsibilities. Promoting this as organizational culture is definitely a recipe for success.

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Build Capability With OKRs in the Face of Failure

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Failure is a critical part of the learning curve, but it should not be an end unto itself. This is something that most entrepreneurs, CXOs, and leaders forget. If you are going to fail, let me tell you how you can turn it into a stepping stone to success.

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There is a great blog from Forbes “The value of trial and error in entrepreneurship” which essentially focuses on the muscles that entrepreneurs build as leaders to thrive in uncertainty, overcome the fear of failure, and focus on big wins by constantly increasing the size bets to win the game.

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Be it a baby elephant or humans or team members in your organization, they are bound to fail. 

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When things don't work out the way we want them to, it's easy to feel like we've failed. But when we look back on our lives and evaluate what we learned from past failures, one lesson stands out in particular: Failure can make your team stronger! Every startup has its failures, pivots, and A-ha! Moments – and that's what makes a great story. This has never stopped startups from setting new OKRs and bouncing back. 

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If your ability to defend a moat is failing, build a new one. If your product fails due to market conditions or capability, innovate and create a new one. Keep your eyes on the prize with your objectives. Objectives help you in the direction to establish business value and KRs help you measure success.

In Essence, Leaders Must Strategize for the Future.

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No matter the approach you take and the strategy you formulate, it's important to share it, act on it, measure progress and recalibrate. Analyze the patterns to build your company’s competitive advantage as a leader. Keep a sharp eye on your metrics and navigate dilemmas with OKRs.

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At Fitbots OKRs, we are intent on helping organizations execute strategy better with OKRs. Our software makes it easier to track progress towards outcomes, and guidance from our coaches keeps the motivation going – especially when times are tough and tricky.

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Click here to learn more about our customer stories.

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About The Author

‍Kashi is the Co-founder and CTO of Fitbots. Kashi has coached over 700+ teams on OKRs with the focus on helping founders and teams achieve more with OKRs. His niche focuses on the future of work by bringing technology to life.