S2: Ep 19 Measuring What Matters: OKRs, KPIs and Stage Gates

Transcript

Matt Wilkinson and Jasmine Gruia-Gray work through why the first stage gate decides whether a post-launch review becomes a clean verdict or a negotiation, and why a regulatory clearance date is a milestone rather than the objective the program exists for.

Where teams write the failure mode in at MS1

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [00:17]

Hi Jasmine, how you doing?

Speaker: Jasmine [00:19]

Hey, good. How are you?

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [00:22]

I'm very good. And I know that today we're going to be talking about one of your blogs about measuring what matters. You open the blog talking about one of the early stage gates in product development, one that you call MS1, and say that this is where most life science teams write the failure mode into the program. What are they doing wrong?

Speaker: Jasmine [00:44]

This topic is near and dear to my heart. Every organisation I've been in talks about measure what matters, and they fill business cases with KPIs or key performance indicators and call them success criteria. You know, something like reorder rate, units shipped, bookings against forecast. Real numbers for sure. Wrong altitude. There's no clear definition of what winning means sitting above them. So at the post-launch review gate or MS5, you get R and D saying they won because the product works. But commercial says they lost because it drifted. Regulatory says it was fine because clearance landed on time. Nobody's wrong. They were measuring different things for three years and nobody caught it.

Nesting OKRs and KPIs instead of running parallel tracks

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [01:42]

You suggest the fix is nesting objectives and key results and KPIs rather than running them as parallel tracks?

Speaker: Jasmine [01:51]

In my experience, the nesting is super important. So the objective is the bet, a time-bound market position. The key results are the falsifiable evidence that the bet paid off, and the KPIs sit underneath, owned by the function closest to each signal, telling the team whether they're on track. So you have one picture at the top, and then different altitudes. The moment you split them into separate documents, every function treats it as its own version of success and the MS1 gate becomes a formality rather than a commitment.

Why the bet has to be agreed in the room

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [02:34]

So here's the part I believe teams underestimate. You have to believe the objective and key results in the room and not just circulating a draft. Why does that distinction matter so much?

Speaker: Jasmine [02:48]

The in-room conversation is wildly different, because a circulated draft gets you four sets of individual comments stitched into a document nobody fully owns. The room surfaces the problem inside the first hour, four functions using the same words to mean four different things. Ask each one what adoption means and commercial might say it's the logo counts that mean adoption to me. R and D says it's active users. Operations says it's consumable velocity. Without that conversation in the room, you leave MS1 with a document everybody signed and nobody really agrees to, and that's a huge danger.

What makes this different from OKR rollouts that died

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [03:38]

I'm sure some life science teams have already tried this approach before and in some cases it didn't stick. They went back to their KPI dashboards. So what makes this approach different from the last OKR rollout that just quietly died?

Speaker: Jasmine [03:53]

Those rollouts ran OKRs as a planning exercise alongside the stage gate. This puts the OKR at the centre of the gate itself. You can't progress without the cross-functional bet that everyone has signed off on. The gate is the forcing function, and that's structurally different from an OKR that lives in a deck nobody reads after Q1.

A regulatory milestone is not an objective

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [04:20]

Okay, so your blog makes the point that a regulatory milestone is not an objective. The 510(k) clearance date is a milestone. The market position after clearance is the objective. Your regulatory affairs lead has spent 18 months making that date happen. You are telling them that their biggest deliverable is not what the program is for.

Speaker: Jasmine [04:42]

Yeah, the precision really matters here. A milestone is a commitment on the critical path. The clearance date makes the objective achievable. It doesn't replace it. Most regulatory leads find that a more compelling role once it's framed that way. Their work is the foundation. The objective is what gets built on top of it.

When a competitor enters and the bet looks stale

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [05:06]

So six months into a development, a competitor enters the target segment. The bet you made at MS1 is stale. You said lock the OKR until the next gate. So the team is either stuck with the wrong objective or reopening a negotiation that already closed. Which is it?

Speaker: Jasmine [05:24]

Yeah, that's a really important point. You lock the bet, sure, and update the KPIs underneath that quarterly or more frequently if you need to. The signals are your early warning system. If something's drifting, you interrogate the signal. You don't reopen the objective. The gate transition is the legitimate moment to reassess. But here's what I actually think is going on when the objective comes up in the room. The team never agreed on the bet in the first place, and market movement is giving them permission to reset without admitting it.

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [06:06]

That seems like it's a harder claim than it sounds.

Speaker: Jasmine [06:09]

It is, and it's also what I've seen repeatedly. The locked OKR is not the problem. The discomfort with having made a public bet might be part of the problem.

The product manager's first move at MS1

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [06:21]

So for the product manager at MS1 right now with a template that has no OKR field, just a KPI list, what should be their first move?

Speaker: Jasmine [06:31]

My suggestion is to split the success criteria field that already exists into two altitudes. The top half, the bet or the objective, and the three key results. The bottom half are the signals, the KPIs owned by the function closest to each one. Most leaders accept it immediately because it makes the MS5 review or post-launch review easier to run. You're not adding work, you're making the implicit visible.

The same structure at every gate

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [07:06]

So you're saying this framework doesn't just apply to MS1 but throughout the whole process.

Speaker: Jasmine [07:10]

Exactly. It's the same structure at every gate, different content. So MS1 is about market position, while MS3 is about what the beta program needs to prove. And MS4 is launch readiness. MS5 is the comparison against the key results set at MS1, which is why getting MS1 right is so disproportionately valuable. That MS5 conversation is either a clean verdict against a shared definition or it becomes a negotiation about what success was supposed to mean. And the difference was set at a session most teams treat as a formality.

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [07:55]

Interesting. So the MS5 renegotiation was written into the program at MS1.

Speaker: Jasmine [08:02]

Spot on.

Where to find the full blog and book a consultation

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [08:03]

Fantastic, thank you. So I know that the full blog is available on the Strivenn website at strivenn.com. Measure what matters, OKRs, KPIs and stage gates. And we'll include a link to it in the show notes. The blog contains worked examples, the regulatory milestone distinction, and a practical FAQ on what to do when your template only has a KPI field. What should they do next?

Speaker: Jasmine [08:26]

I'd like to suggest, if you have a gate coming up and want to work through what this looks like for your product, find me on LinkedIn or book a growth consultation with us at strivenn.com.

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [08:39]

Brilliant, thank you. So looking forward to hearing from you all. Thanks again, Jasmine.

Speaker: Jasmine [08:46]

Thank you, Matt. And just a quick reminder to the audience, don't inherit last year's launch metrics. This is your chance to level up.

Speaker: Matt Wilkinson [08:57]

Excellent, thank you.

Speaker: Jasmine [08:58]

Bye for now.

Q&A

How do I run the in-room OKR session without it turning into a three-hour debate?

Time-box it to 90 minutes and open with one question: what does adoption mean to your function. Capture the four answers on a whiteboard before anyone proposes wording. The disagreement surfaces in the first hour, which is the point. You only need one product manager, the gate template you already have, and a room. The cost is a meeting, not a budget line.

My regulatory lead will push back on hearing the clearance date is "just a milestone". How do I frame it?

Don't strip the date of importance. Tell them it sits on the critical path and makes the objective achievable, so without it nothing else happens. Then ask what market position the clearance unlocks. That reframes their 18 months as the foundation everything is built on. Try it next week in a one-to-one before you raise it in the gate room with everyone watching.

Our template only has a KPI field. What is the smallest change I can make this quarter?

Split the existing success criteria field into two altitudes. Top half: the objective as a time-bound market position, plus three key results. Bottom half: the KPIs you already track, each tagged to the owning function. You add no new tooling and no new meetings. You make the implicit bet visible, which is what makes the MS5 review defensible.

A competitor just entered our segment. How do I know whether to hold or reopen the objective?

Hold the objective. Interrogate the signals first. Update the KPIs underneath quarterly and watch which ones drift. If the drift is real, the next gate transition is the legitimate moment to reassess. Reopening mid-gate usually means the bet was never agreed in the first place. Test that honestly before you reopen anything, ideally with the original gate owner in a quiet conversation.

How do I stop this becoming the next OKR rollout that dies after Q1?

Put the OKR at the centre of the gate, not alongside it. Make gate progression conditional on a signed cross-functional bet. The gate becomes the forcing function that a planning deck never is. Start with one upcoming gate, one product, one filled-in template. Prove the MS5 review runs cleaner, then let that single worked example sell the structure to the next team.