Gaurav SabharwalUltimate Guide to Objective and Key results – OKR Meaning and Examples
Do you dread setting goals for your organization as you don’t see useful results? […]
Andy Grove called the father of OKRs, and gave a word of caution, talking about OKRs. He said it takes time to adapt to a new framework such as this, especially for a company operating in a traditional top-down reporting and management system.
The company has to ease into them; otherwise, they may make the mistake of designing the wrong OKRs that do more harm than good for a growing business. A better way to understand and implement OKRs is to slowly adopt the related practices and train OKR champions internally within the organization.
Let’s dive deeper into the whole organizational OKRs training.
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Typical steps you can follow to train individuals and implement the OKRs
- Top-leadership buy-in
It isn’t easy to sell the idea of the OKR framework to the founders and C-suite executives who have been operating in traditional top-down management for a long time. A Coach or any leader who believes in OKRs should first sell this idea by testing the framework for a team or two.
The OKR framework challenges the old ways of management and team structure. This framework is a mix of top-bottom cascading goals and bottom-up alignment of individual OKRs with company-level objectives.
Moreover, if you go the ideal way, the OKRs of top leaders and everyone else should be publicly transparent to the whole company. This transparent ownership of objectives makes the leaders accountable for them, and they are more likely to invest the required time and energy to manage OKRs for their company.
- Hiring an OKR Coach/Consultant
It’s a time when fast and effective strategy execution is a powerful advantage for businesses. OKRs may not be new to the business world, but they help the organization focus on the right goals that support the rapid growth of startups and small businesses.
You may try to implement OKRs on your own, but unless any of your leaders have experience with them, you must take the help of an expert. OKR Coaches will enable you and your people to follow the right approach every time they design a strategy plan and implement them in a powerful way.
Creating the OKRs is a small part of the process; the main change happens through the movement of KRs. KRs move when people align and work towards organizational-level objectives. These Coaches also help in training OKR Champions in your organization.
- Training the OKR Champions
You may think it’s okay to have a brief knowledge of the OKRs, and that you can design and manage them moving forward, but it’s not. Leaders tend to forget that this goals-based framework is not a tool to manage day-to-day tasks and that they must not implement a new framework quickly in the whole organization.
Leveraging this framework is not an easy process. You learn to utilize it better by experimenting and analyzing the ground-level work. You know you can’t reach out to every employee often, but you can delegate some OKR-passionate managers a responsibility to implement this framework effectively. We call these people OKR Champions. They are responsible for training the team to align their work with OKRs and adopt best practices that support this alignment.
- Rolling out OKRs among the team
Your people may be accustomed to taking directions and new projects from a manager, but when employees realize why they are doing what they are, they start owning their roles and taking the initiative to achieve essential goals.
When you try to implement the OKRs in one go, things may go wrong. You may set goals that are too ambitious or too many of them. You also must remember that once you make goals for the top-level leaders public, people will look up to them.
An effective way to train everyone down to the junior level is to make them understand the basics with the help of learning material and workshops. If you are rolling them out to a few people, spreadsheets will do fine, but as you scale to more people, remember to get on board an OKR management software platform. The software can also help you educate people on OKRs with on-platform resources.
You then implement the training process by delegating this responsibility to your OKR champions. They will make sure people follow all the proper practices associated with OKRs.
- Updating OKRs and conducting check-ins
Regular OKR check-ins are done to review the progress, take out helpful insights and align employees’ work with the important business goals. These activities are required to figure out actions that move the needle on the percentage of goals achieved.
The above processes are very practical, and the team cannot master them without actually doing them. As a leader, you should take ownership of your OKRs and make the team accountable for engaging in any activities required to achieve their OKRs.
If you believe in the OKR framework and want to align your business strategy with it to support better strategy execution, then we can help you do exactly that. Plus, you get guidance on creating OKR champions for your company and training your people.
Reach out to us to learn more about the process.
FAQs
1. Which are the important points for the OKR training program to be effective?
For the OKR training program to be effective, it is critical to establish a positive work environment, communicate the need for implementing OKRs, create a clear cadence and promote a culture of feedback in the organization.
2. What are the benefits of OKR training for managers?
OKR training is fruitful for the managers as it allows them to initiate the OKR process on the right note. It provides them with the knowledge and the foundation they need to understand the principles and benefits of the OKR software.
