Objective and Key Results Certified Professional training

The Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework can be a superpower for creating an environment where employees are able to work with purpose. Companies like Intel, LinkedIn and Airbnb have achieved amazing results with OKRs, but less often discussed is the fact that deploying a goal framework in the right way can create a vastly better working environment.

The venture capitalist and OKR guru John Doerr writes about four “superpowers” of OKRs:

1. Focus and commit to priorities: setting OKRs forces the conversation of what’s most important and makes it easier to let go of all the things that aren’t.

2. Align and connect for teamwork: committing to transparent OKRs across the entire organization means everyone knows the priorities and can self-organize to achieve the goals.

3. Track for accountability: regularly and transparently measuring progress uncovers problems earlier and drives the team to win.

4. Stretch for amazing: setting and then achieving or failing at hard OKRs will let you accomplish more than you ever thought possible

A strategy is simply a set of choices that can be distilled down into two;

• Where do we want to play?

• How do we want to win?

There are some common concepts which you’ll find amongst most approaches to strategic planning.

Most strategic plans contain the following 4 elements:

• Research

• Strategy Development

• Implementation Plan

• Measurement

Research

In order to figure out where you want your company to go, you need to figure out where you are before you can set a direction, and therefore, research is key to building a picture of your company and its current place in the world.

Key Stakeholders

One of the obvious places to start is with key stakeholders or, the people and organizations your company derives value from, and who your company provides value to. How detailed your understanding of these stakeholder roles is, has a direct effect on how focused the following plan becomes.

The most basic example of Key Stakeholders would be customers, employees, suppliers, and owners. However, this starts to get complicated when these groups occupy multiple roles like employee-shareholders or owner-distributors.

Target Customers

McKinsey, for example, doesn’t provide consulting services to small businesses or sole traders, they target large corporations with sizeable business challenges and the budgets needed to address them. This in turn effects affects their choice of employees, and they only hire those with experience and skills dealing with large corporate clients.

A well researched, clearly defined description of your target customers is crucial to a good strategic plan.

Company Value

Many companies approach the planning process by trying to understand how and where they provide value to their Stakeholders, without first understanding what value they want the company to receive from them.

For example, you might want to build the most incredible workplace culture in the world, but unless you’re crystal clear about what you want from your employees in return, you’ll never understand, or be able to measure what value “workplace culture” adds to the company.

Starting with the value you want to derive, helps you better understand and align what your company can offer in return.

Stakeholder Value

What do stakeholders want from your company? Getting clear here can uncover both problems and opportunities. Consider the fair trade coffee supplier whose customers demand ethical business practices and the institutional shareholder looking for a sound investment, who happens to have oil and mining stocks in their portfolio.

Understanding how they provide value to stakeholders from their point of view will have a big impact on the coffee company’s communication and investment strategy.

Understanding the value your Stakeholders derive from your company comes from interviews, focus groups or even immersing yourself in their experience. The goal is to understand how your company is viewed through their eyes and what’s important to them.

Strategy Development

The next part of the strategic planning process is to take your research and decide where to play and how to win.

Factors like product range, brand perception, customer service, and price can all be repositioned to provide both your company and Stakeholders with greater value.
These decisions can be shaped by long-term Objectives you set for your organization, for example:

1. Financial goals—“What financial goals do we have that will impact our organization?”

2. Customer goals—“What things are important to our customers, which will, in turn, impact our financial standing?”

3. Process goals—“What do we need to do well internally, to meet our customer goals, that will impact our financial standing?”

4. People (or learning and growth) goals—“What skills, culture, and capabilities do we need to have in our organization to execute on the process that would make our customers happy and ultimately impact our financial standing?”

How will increasing product range increase value you provide your suppliers? How will it increase the value you derive from customers? How will it impact your distributors?

Your decisions on where to play and how to win, as well as the rationale that supports them, should be documented and inform an implementation plan which describes how you’re going to act on them. This is where a framework like OKR can be extremely useful.

Mission & Vision

Clarifying your purpose and the kind of company you want to become, sets focus, allows you to imagine an ideal future and work backward, creating the long-term strategic Objectives you’ll need to get there. This should already be included in your strategy.

Company Objectives

OKR is a useful tool for planning broad strategic, or Company Objectives, that define a point or a position in the future you want your organization to get to, relative to your stakeholders.

We recommend you communicate Company OKRs to your organization once per year. As you work on executing your strategic plan, you can revisit these yearly Company Objectives and adjust them as necessary.

Group Objectives

An important part of any good strategic plan and an area many companies struggle with is getting buy-in from and aligning the entire organization behind the plan. The OKR framework promotes a top-down/bottom-up goal setting and with Group OKRs your teams have the opportunity to contribute to your strategic plan.

Measurement

With an implementation plan in place and your company and Group OKRs communicated the process of executing and measuring your strategy can start. It’s important to stress the importance of regular updates to both your Company and Group Key Results. These are the feedback mechanisms that help you judge both the success of your strategy but also how well it’s being implemented.

To gauge the success of the implementation, look at Group OKRs, their Key Results, and the Initiatives the Groups are working on to achieve them. How well are they aligned to your plan, and how far have they progressed?

To gauge the success of your strategy, update your Company Key Results regularly. Your Company OKRs will show you the distance from the strategic positions you decided company needs to reach.

Conclusion

Strategic planning is a topic that all senior executives have to confront, and it’s often a topic of confusion and complexity. 

Objectives are qualitative, and should be inspiring, e.g. “Ship an amazing MVP!”. An Objective can be long-lived, or you might set the deadline to be the end of the year, the next quarter, or even the next month (especially if you’re a startup where things change very quickly). The objective should be hard; the point is to push yourselves as a team or organization.

A KR is measurable and verifiable; there’s always a black and white answer whether it’s achieved. When possible, use a metric with a number, e.g. “Grow to 1000 active users in our private beta”. Setting around three KRs for an Objective is a reasonable place to start, and you’ll want to assign a specific person to lead the KR and be accountable to its’ success. Completion of all the key results means you’ve achieved the Objective.

OKRs are a statement of intent by any team in your organization. It’s a public way of announcing what the team is going to work on and who will be accountable for its success or failure. At the company level, OKRs act as a north star for your business-- goals that are counting on efforts from every level of the business. Setting company OKRs allows individual teams to set goals that help drive those overarching objectives while preserving their autonomy and enabling their own development and growth.

There are two basic types of Key Results:

1) Activity-based Key Results: Measure the completion of tasks and activities or the delivery of project milestones or deliverables.

Examples of Activity-based Key Results are:

• Release beta version of the product.

• Launch a monetizing tab.

• Create a new training program.

• Develop a new lead generation campaign.

Activity-based Key Results usually start with verbs such as launch, create, develop, deliver, build, make, implement, define, release, test, prepare and plan.

2) Value-based Key Results: Measure the delivery of value to the organization or its customers. Value-based Key Results measure the outcomes of successful activities.

The example Key Results from the first section are all Value-based:

• Improve Net Promoter Score from X to Y.

• Increase Repurchase Rate from X to Y.

• Maintain Customer Acquisition cost under Y.

• Reduce revenue churn (cancellation) from X% to Y%.

• Improve average weekly visits per active user from X to Y.

• Increase non-paid (organic) traffic to from X to Y.

• Improve engagement (users that complete a full profile) from X to Y.

The score defines whether a Key Result or OKR has been achieved or not. They use a scale from 0.0 to 1.0, where a 1.0 score means that the Key Result or Objective is “fully achieved”.

Many OKRs coaches will talk about the simplicity of Objectives and Key Results, and this is indeed one of the primary benefits of the model. However, our experience with over 250 global clients tells us that in addition to simplicity, a successful OKRs journey requires an approach that is also sophisticated and smart.

Simple – Ensuring your workforce can understand it and live it. Sophisticated – Informed by years of experience in management theory and best practices. Smart – The right tool at the right time to create robust deliverables.

In order to get your organization focused, aligned and engaged on what matters most, we present our proven OKR Framework:

Step 1: Context

For you to successfully implement an OKR framework in your organization, you need a starting point – context and perspective to drive and organize your initial efforts. It’s exceedingly difficult to walk up to a blank white board and start writing OKRs. Where do you start? How do you begin? At OKRsTrainnig.com we take the mystery out of the OKR creation process by providing you a defined starting line and context for the conversation. This starting line is based on our years of experience in working with organizations in strategy execution, and has proven its effectiveness time and time again.

Step 2: Craft OKRs

We believe in the principle that perfection is the enemy of the good. When crafting your initial Objectives & Key Results, it’s important to start simply. Beginning at the corporate level, we guide your team through the OKR creation process and benchmark to best practices as we go. By starting at the corporate level first, we give your teams and Business Units a destination – line of sight – as they create and align their OKRs. Remember the saying – in the absence of a destination, any road will do. We give you that destination right out of the gates and then teach your teams how to create OKRs that align to the organization’s Big Vision.

Step 3: Align & Engage

The successful implementation of an OKR framework requires a commitment to bottom-up engagement. Historically, strategy execution has been reserved for the corporate boardroom, with top-down dictates for performance improvement. No so OKRs. Objectives and Key Results is a transparent push-pull process between executives and contributors, managers and team members. By engaging with the people who are closest to the work, we tap into that rich collective mind called the workforce, and in so doing gain buy in to the effort and demonstrate how each employee is contributing to the Big Vision. You then align your collective efforts vertically and horizontally by creating rituals for cross-team communication and transparency, building synergy and reducing overlap in your OKR effort.

OKR alignment and engagement is like a performance dance where everybody in your organization has a turn on the floor. We teach you the steps.

Step 4: Build Sustainability with Our Suite of OKR Tools

Most OKR Coaches will help you craft OKRs and offer advice on how you move forward, but after that, they are on to their next client. Not us. We know that your success depends largely on how you build internal capacity to sustain the effort. That’s why we built our OKR Tool Kit. In this comprehensive suite of tools you will find everything you need to succeed with your OKR effort and build internal capacity. Some of what you will find in our OKR Tool Kit:

• OKRs Implementation Playbook – Key Principles for OKR success.

• FAQs – Answer questions fast and get everybody on the same script.

• OKR Best Practice Checklist – Learn from the pros.

• OKR Champion Job Description and Success Factors – Who, why, how?

• OKR Ambassador Job Description and Success Factors – Share best practices to accelerate your success.

• OKR Meeting Rituals and Meeting Templates – Meetings can be fun – we promise!

• 90-Day Roadmap – Your Yellow Brick Road.

• OKR Maturity Model – Test yourself against Best Practices.

• Library of OKR examples across industries.

The process of connecting OKRs and Product Initiatives is the process of aligning strategies across teams and converting strategies into action plans that will lead to results

To drive engagement, accountability, and focus OKRs must be created throughout the organization. We call this process connecting OKRs. The process of connecting OKRs is then explored, including: how deep within the organization to connect OKRs, the number of connected OKRs, preparing groups for the connecting exercise, and ensuring understanding of corporate-level OKRs. An effective method of connecting, known as mass connecting, is shared, followed by an explanation of both vertical and horizontal alignment. Tips for confirming the alignment of connected OKRs are also presented.

OKR is first and foremost an alignment tool. But alignment can only happen when teams have structured conversations with each other to set priorities and solve interdependencies. Creating OKRs in isolation, without talking to others, is a widespread mistake.

When Olympians or sports teams want to win a gold medal or championship, they focus on practice, analyzing the output, and using it to develop strong habits that are in line with their athletic goals. Yet, with most businesses, we don’t see the same logic: business teams are always focused on the end goal -- like product launches or revenue targets -- and not developing better habits that will help them achieve those results.

Based on years of studying how teams best achieve their goals, a major barrier to achieving our goals is our mindset. Organizations generally spend the bulk of its energy setting goals, rather than what it takes to reach those goals. More often than not, teams will spend time coming up with a great set of priorities and goals, and then return back to their “normal” daily work routine and won’t discuss those goals until it's too late.

The most effective teams around the world have realized that goals are not something you 'do' quarterly or yearly (the typical set-and-forget approach). Instead, breakthrough outcomes are achieved through weekly behaviors and feedback loops.

By integrating your goals into a self-reinforcing flywheel of consistent reflection and iteration, teams will spend less time asking whether your goals are the right goals, and more time on doing the work, learning from it and progressing forward. Typically a goal framework, like the OKR methodology can help reinforce this goal-reflection loop.

Our vision is to bring the power of goals and reflection to teams everywhere. We believe that healthy teams are sustained through alignment, which is fostered through the habits of setting goals and reflecting on progress. This guide will teach you how to embrace the goal-reflection loop for your own team or company.

Set goals

Focus and prioritize

Set measurable outcomes

Create resourcing plans

Reflect

Create a regular habit of reflection

Work transparently

Align, re-prioritize and move forward

Repeat

Close out the cycle

Start the cycle again

What’s the most popular OKR tool? For most teams making their initial foray into Objectives and Key Results, it’s the spreadsheet—and it’s a fine place to start. But then the company grows, and once-clear alignment descends into an increasingly unreliable tangle. You’ve outgrown the spreadsheet. What comes next?

Just like the OKR framework itself, OKR software is a means to end. An ideal OKR tool will build and reinforce great practices while fitting in seamlessly with the way your team already works. And a successful evaluation should always begin with the results you’re out to achieve. Some of the questions you should be asking as you evaluate different OKR tools include:

• Which OKR tool is easiest to use?

• Will the tool tell the whole story?

• Which OKR tools work best at scale?

• Which OKR tools reinforce best practices?

• Which OKR tools inspire the right conversations?

The Types of OKR Tools

Whether you’re new to OKRs and been managing OKRs for a while, figuring out the best way to track OKRs transparently can seem like a challenge. Here is a breakdown of some free and paid tools to help with goal-management and tracking for organizations, teams and individuals.

Free OKR Tools

The most popular free option to manage OKRs is the spreadsheet. There are a variety of accessible templates, where you can tailor the structure to fit your organizations needs.

OKR SaaS Tools

OKRs are designed to be collaborative and engage teams, but if this process isn’t comfortable for users, it's likely you won’t experience the full benefits. With spreadsheets, it's easy for OKRs to get forgotten about or lost in the day-to-day shuffle. As companies scale and usage of OKRs increases across teams, it’s wise to consider using an OKR software tool to help track goals more collaboratively, increase visibility and ultimately help facilitate the OKR process.

Which OKR tool is easiest to use?

Writing effective OKRs is hard. Even harder is keeping them up to date, but this is where a dedicated OKR tool can really shine. By pairing updates with the natural heartbeat of your team, software tools can begin forming habits that keep key results updated, trustworthy, and actionable.

Of course, it only works if people actually use it. It’s easy to lose an OKR process in a sea of features and unnecessary complexity, and team members that can’t update their OKRs or check status quickly will resent being saddled with “yet another tool.” Great OKR tools start simple and only reveal complexity on demand. OKRs are all about achieving results—not training your team on new software—and any tool you choose should support you in that.

Will the tool tell the whole story?

OKR dogma does little to discourage the notion that the status of an entire business can be collapsed into numbers—namely, the quantitative measures of its Key Results.

As you’re evaluating OKR tools, though, make sure you’ll have access to meaningful insights from the people actually doing the work. There’s a qualitative story behind each Key Result, and as issues arise or stretch goals are blown out of the water, you’ll want to be able to dive in and read it.

Many OKR tools will begin with the quantitative summary—as Marissa Mayer famously said, "If it doesn’t have a number, it’s not a Key Result.”—but if all you get is the number, you’re missing out on the critical insights that accompany it.

Which OKR tools work best at scale?

One of the OKR framework’s greatest strengths is its flexibility. Whether you’re five employees or five thousand; a traditional hierarchy or a cross-functional matrix; pods, squads, teams, cells, or tribes; OKRs can communicate business strategy and help drive great results. Your OKR tool should, too. As you’re considering an OKR tool, be sure to ask:

• Can we link Objectives and Key Results across teams and functions?

• Can our different business units set their own timelines?

• Are there any limitations on who will lead—or report on—each OKR?

• Is there a clear path towards our future needs?
  

Hopefully the answer is a resounding, “Yes!”—the tool can meet your present needs with enough flexibility to accommodate whatever changes lie ahead.

Which OKR tools reinforce best practices?

You’ll find many different opinions about the best way to organize, schedule, and run strategy within the flexible OKR framework. Still, OKR practitioners tend to agree on at least a few core principles. They’ll tell you to:

• focus on outcomes

• quantify key results

• set objectives from the bottom up

• avoid dependent, “cascading” tree structures

• share OKRs across the company

• collect frequent feedback
  

Sound familiar? Every OKR tool should be able to handle the basic accounting, but in an organization with a robust, well-established OKR process that may be enough. The best OKR tools will go further, reinforcing best practices and building effective OKR processes at every step of the way.

Which OKR tools inspire the right conversations?

Modern leaders understand the importance of collecting feedback and inspiring initiative at every level of the organization. OKRs can lend context and a forum for hierarchy-bending conversations—but only if everyone can discover and engage with them. At a minimum, a good OKR tool should help everyone:

• communicate status across the organization

• highlight issues before they become problems

• discuss and collaborate on relevant objectives
  

OKRs are meant to be shared, discussed, referenced, and acted upon. Getting the most from them means doing away with a closed dialog between employees and their managers and sparking open conversations at every level of the company.

Too many small-business people aren’t willing to ask for help when they need it. Entrepreneurs by nature tend to be independent risk-takers. They started the company and it is their baby. Obviously, they should know how to raise it.

However, none of us knows everything about growing and managing a business. Sometimes it makes sense to seek the counsel of others, but who is right for you and your business? When selecting a consultant, follow these five simple, but important, guidelines:

1. Unimpeachable character

First and foremost, an effective consultant must be a person of the highest character. He or she must be the consummate professional. The consultant must be willing to put the best interest of the client ahead of their own.

For example, the consultant must be willing to tell clients things that they need to hear, but may not want to — even if doing so means that the consultant loses business. The consultant must care deeply about her or his clients.

2. Solid experience

A good consultant should have experience with the challenges or opportunities you and your company are facing. She or he may not know your specific company or industry, but you and your people know your company and your industry quite well, don’t you? What the consultant brings to the table is experience in addressing the types of issues you face.

3. Creative problem-solving skills

You will want the consultant you engage to be an outstanding problem solver. After all, you are hiring a consultant to help you solve problems (or take advantage of opportunities).

Marvin Bower, the patriarch of McKinsey & Company, essentially founded management consulting and in the process grew the firm from a fledgling enterprise to a global operation.

He outlined his criteria for an outstanding consultant.

“Mental equipment — the successful consultant has outstanding analytical skill and the ability to synthesize his thoughts readily in reaching conclusions,” Bower wrote. “He is a quick and effective learner — imaginative and creative.”

When choosing a consultant, make sure to hire superior problem solvers.

4. Outstanding communication skills

A good consultant should be articulate. He or she should possess unusually strong communication skills, both orally and in writing. Of course, communication is a two-way street. Perhaps more important than her or his ability to speak articulately and write eloquently is the ability to listen.

No matter how smart a consultant is, she or he won’t be able to help you improve your business until they fully understand the challenges you face. This will never happen until the consultant listens to you.

5. Excellent interpersonal skills

Simply put, for any consultant to be successful in helping your company, a trust-based relationship is going to have to develop. You will need to be comfortable revealing the intimate details of your business. The relationship between consultant and client is not unlike the relationship between a doctor and patient.

Without complete candor, the consultant will be hindered in his or her effort to help your business. Chose a consultant with whom you can develop this kind of professional relationship.

The right consultant can create tremendous value. The wrong consultant can destroy value. Following these five guidelines will help ensure that you engage the right firm or individual.

OKR and project management OKRs and projects are quite different. Objectives deal with your long-term goals and the key results indicate if you have achieved a specific objective or not. Projects, on the other hand, are temporary endeavors that are divided into a series of specific tasks.

Why Choose OKRs for your Marketing Team

OKRs or Objectives and Key Results are a collaborative goal-setting tool used by marketing teams and other departments to set challenging, ambitious goals with measurable results. OKRs are how you track progress, create alignment, and encourage engagement around measurable goals.

OKRs can be a superpower for creating an environment where employees are able to work with purpose. Companies like Intel, LinkedIn and Airbnb have achieved amazing results with OKRs, but less often discussed is the fact that deploying a goal framework in the right way can create a vastly better working environment.

The OKR methodology is very simple, and when used properly, OKRs can help your marketing team create things like high output management, team alignment and increased communication in all your business goals.

Why Choose OKRs for your HR Team

OKRs or Objectives and Key Results are a collaborative goal-setting tool used by human resources teams and other departments to set challenging, ambitious goals with measurable results. OKRs are how you track progress, create alignment, and encourage engagement around measurable goals.

OKRs can be a superpower for creating an environment where employees are able to work with purpose. Companies like Intel, LinkedIn and Airbnb have achieved amazing results with OKRs, but less often discussed is the fact that deploying a goal framework in the right way can create a vastly better working environment.

The OKR methodology is very simple, and when used properly, OKRs can help your HR team create things like high output management, team alignment and increased communication in all your business goals.