On Lessons from Implementing OKRs at Free Now

Have you done the pre-work needed to be in order before adopting OKRs in your organization? For OKRs to work, you must first work on alignment and then do the basics before going large scale.

In this episode, Jenny Herald interviews Flavia Neves, Director of Product Management at Spotify and former VP of Product at Free Now. Flavia shares Free Now’s OKR journey. She explains the importance of doing strategic work for things to align before launching and executing OKRs in an organization. 

Listen in to learn the importance of data to build working and repeatable processes for organizational efficiency. You will also learn how to approach OKR basics by starting with a single objective before jumping to a large scale without fear of making mistakes.

“Trying to nail OKRs in a 1200 people company without the basics covered is just not going to work.” — Flavia (43:45)

Show notes

• (1:37) Flavia’s career journey from marketing to product growth and eventually to core product. 
• (5:00) She explains the challenges she faced when she first became VP of Product at Free Now. 
• (13:51) The importance of having a strategy and minimum alignment for OKRs to work for you as an organization. 
• (31:37) She describes the five cycles of OKRs she and her team at Free Now adopted and executed successfully. 
• (43:39) How to approach OKRs by starting with the basics and not being afraid of making mistakes. 
• (46:01) Why OKRs become difficult due to alignment issues, especially in bigger companies.
• (52:01) She describes the key moment when she was proud of what she had accomplished with her team.