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? […]
It is nothing new that planning and executing business objectives constitute a large part of most of the key challenges faced by an organization. In the context of globalization and an extremely competitive scenario in which organizations have been crammed, having a well-consolidated goal establishing and regulating strategy is critical for your organization to survive and grow. Despite this, many organizations still don’t give the attention needed and miss out on a lot of good stuff by not using OKRs. What are those? Let’s find out!
Let us start by defining what the term OKR actually means. These three magical letters OKR means objectives and key results, and this pretty much sums up what OKR is all about – setting out what you want your organization to attain(the objectives) and what success appears to be (the key results). The idea behind this massively popular approach is to define top strategic priorities, breaking them down into strategy (your O) and execution (your KRs). In a nutshell, you just establish a goal and then define how your employee or team will get there. It couldn’t get any more simpler and effective! Just imagine, how can your organization even function without setting a measurable objective?
The incredible short-term and long-term benefits of the OKR approach speak for themselves. This is the reason that it has been embraced by top Silicon Valley organizations such as Google and Twitter. As a matter of fact, Google investor John Doerr introduced this concept to the organization way back in the late 1990s. Google can be classed as the Obi-Wan Kenobi of OKRs. The OKR methodology has since unfurled far beyond Silicon Valley and has been adopted in all manners of the organization. As more and more startups and innovative business models are emerging, the popularity of OKRs is just soaring as we speak.
Even though there are numerous goal-setting methodologies, OKRs are just a different ball game altogether. You have to implement it if you want your organization to be able to implement changes at a higher pace and in interactive cycles. Through it, your teams will be able to focus on the priorities that matter the most for your business, in shorter time frames and are openly shared, measured, and communicated within the entire organization. This fosters everything that you desire in your organization and doesn’t want to miss out on – transparency, cross-team alignment, and accountability of the objectives and the key results.
The upside your organization is missing out by not using OKRs
Being a goal framework for hypergrowth, sooner or late you will have to take the decision of implementing OKRs, so why waste any more time and put your organization at the risk of being forsaken by your competitors? Let us look at the massive upside your organization is missing out on just by not using the OKR methodology.
1. Better results – Agility and Hypergrowth
OKRs make it a cakewalk to stretch the best objectives and get desired outcomes using OKRs. Google is the best example of using stretch goals for hyper-growth. As their founder Larry Page suggests, OKRs have helped google to 10x growth, many times over! No matter what industry your business belongs to, OKRs assure a scaled agile transformation for it.
2. Swift adjustments
As cliche as it may sound, change is the only constant, and guess what? OKRs help your organization with just that. The OKR methodology is designed for setting shorter and quantifiable objectives and key results. Setting these short-term goals that lead to the bigger targets will enable frequent reviews. This practice of regular reviews will help in understanding the challenges in a better manner. You and your teams will be able to solve these challenges at the initial levels and ensure that the long-term targets are still achieved.
3. Aligned organization
OKRs enable you to establish objectives at each level of the organization that aligns with the overall vision and mission of the organization. OKRs are set for the entire organization and then broken down into teams and individuals. An unaligned organization hinders the progress and functioning of the organization at each step. From your teams and departments not being able to function optimally to your employees and teams not having clarity around how their contributions help the organization in attaining the top objective, you just cannot afford to have an unaligned organization. But well, OKR helps you to avoid this all!
4. Accountable and committed workforce
As OKRs enable you to establish measurable objectives, it is no surprise that it is the best methodology to adopt if you want to have an accountable and committed workforce. Your employees will have complete clarity around their goals and organizational goals. As you know people on the field are better in-sync with the problems experienced in execution. So when they establish objectives and key results, it leverages their familiarity with the task for getting the best results. When you make your employees clear about their obligation, they tend to be more accountable and committed to their tasks.
5. Promoting innovation for achieving beyond
Promoters and experts of the OKR tool acknowledge the fact that the set objectives might not always be achievable. They work with a success rate of 70 to 80% at best. Why so? The OKR framework works to set challenging objectives, in the terms of OKR, this is known as Moonshot Objectives. Leaders do know that these might not be achievable at all times but it motivates the team to think outside the box for achieving such goals. OKR program will help you in motivating the individuals and make them more innovative.
OKR has set a key benchmark in the future of work and sooner or later, each and every organization will get onboard with this framework. Why would they even not? OKRs are here to stay and they have gone far and beyond leading to tremendous results in focused teams, employee engagement, and goal setting. Offering such a huge upside, you just cannot afford to let this incredible opportunity pass away. Contact us before it’s too late!
