You might be wondering, how big companies like Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., were able to keep up and maintain their business success. If you are not aware, these huge corporations are using a framework that greatly helped them spike their organizational growth. The secret is utilizing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). What exactly is OKR? It is a goal-setting methodology to increase your operation’s success rate. It aids in the breakdown of objectives where you can visibly measure actions because OKRs are a vivid depiction of where the corporation is at and what course of action they want to go; you can make everything appear to each team using this tool. This works simply by using John Doerr’s formula. “I will _______ (Objective), as measured by _______ (Key Results).”.
The Why for OKRs.
If you are running a business, you might want to consider incorporating OKRs into your organization. Why? Here is the perfect answer to your pondering mind. This effective tool is positioned and proven as a game-changing framework, it will help you connect company corps and personal objectives to help manage your teams and reach your goals. OKRs are intended to drive purpose in the corporation by the layout of aspirational outcomes that are measurable. OKRs like Agile can be transformative to the organization and lay powerful capabilities to help establish alignment of what the organization is trying to achieve and solve a bigger systemic problem. MIT Sloan Business Review, Spring 2018, "No One Knows Your Strategy," says that only half of executives were able to define what are the top 3 of the priorities of their business and by the time front leads were asked to describe them, it fell to 13% accuracy, so you see, there’s a huge decay rate of understanding a company's strategic priorities.
“OKRs make you focus on working on the business, instead of just working in the business.” - John Doerr, Measure What Matters
As per John Doer, there are four superpower OKRs offer; focus and commit to priorities; align and connect for teamwork; track for accountability; and stretch for amazing results.
Superpower #1:
Focus and Commit to Priorities means that OKR is not for everything, rather it helps you highlight what must be done first and what could be parked for later. As they have said, “If everything is a priority, then nothing is.”.
Superpower #2 — Align and Connect for Teamwork:
OKR gives transparency through measurable actions, and lets everyone, every part of the team from the CEO down, openly share their goals and gameplan. This gives a chance for the corporation to foster innovation and individuals’ performance growth.
Superpower #3
Or Track for Accountability pertains to reviewing regularly to see if any restructures are needed. Remember, a 100% achieved goal doesn't necessarily guarantee it's a success but rather a not ambitious enough one.
Superpower #4 — Stretch for Amazing:
OKRs push people to expand their horizons of what a person can do, achieve, and create. OKR emphasizes that we must have outcomes vs output mindset. People assume that after delivering the project it would be automatically a success, but the real business outcome is lost. Are we delivering value? Are we doing the right work? OKRs pave the way for new organizational and managerial structures that are more suited to today's business.
Summary
Over the previous years, Objectives and Key Results have been shown to be reliable methods. Its major goal is to instill discipline to achieve big results in terms of performance and efficiency. By alignment, it overcomes challenges that hinder the business for much bigger growth. This is a function, an entity in the corporation that helps sustain the success over the long haul. Before letting you go, I’ll leave you a question. What is your knowledge and understanding of your organization’s strategic goals and objectives?
Key Topics:
Scaled OKRs
Employee Engagement
Low Alignment and Accountability
Measure What Matters
OKRs Result
OKR Framework
Installation Patterns
The OKR Cycle
Hierarchy of Purpose