Simple and effective steps to drive your OKR success

To reap the highly beneficial advantages of OKR, it is important to become aware of the simple and effective steps through which you can drive OKR success for your organization. So, let’s proceed!

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OKR (Objective and Key result) framework is becoming extremely popular day by day and rightly so. Organizations left, right, and center are becoming aware of the huge benefits this goal-setting framework yields for the organization. Some of the top organizations like Google, Netflix, Intel, and many more such names have been enjoying the fruitful impact of the OKR tool. If these organizations took the route of the OKR tools to achieve the desired results, why would other organizations let this glorious opportunity pass? Therefore, the demand for the OKR program has been soaring high as ever! This makes it extremely crucial for you to know about a few simple yet effective steps to drive your OKR success and make your organization’s dream goals turn into a reality. 

Establishing effective OKRs is known to propel your organizational teams to achieve the envisioned results. When you jot down and align the OKRs for your organizational teams, you provide them with a path and key focus on what matters the most for your organization. OKR success is well assured when your teams work collaboratively towards the set objectives. It is recommended for the leaders to refer to the organizational objectives and ask a few questions before aligning the set OKRs with the team OKRs. The questions can be as:

• Is there a link between the team and organizational KRs?
• Does any gap need to be fixed before aligning the team objectives?
• Do these OKRs include more than three key results?
• Are these OKRs motivating enough for the teams?
• Will the team be able to attain the organizational OKRs?

The key to driving the OKR’s success is to communicate, reevaluate and refine the objectives consistently at the team levels. Now we will look at a few steps to define OKRs at the team level that will enable you to set better OKRs for your organization. 

How to ensure OKR’s success with the team?

OKR gives a sense of direction and accomplishment to every organizational team. Hence, it is extremely significant to strategize with your organizational teams while establishing the OKRs. These OKRs serve as a steel thread to connect what the leadership thinks will move the needle to the daily output of the team. But when you have your entire team on the board, how can you write clear and effective OKRs?

Follow the 8 steps to define OKR at the level of your organizational teams

Step 1: Start with the objective of your organization.  This should stem from and be in line with the long-term objectives of the organization. 

Step 2: Choose the kind of objective you want to set. 

Committed: A target that can be achieved. For assuring that these are achieved, timetables and resources should be modified. 

Aspirational: A lofty objective that seems a bit stretched. These might be reassigned to various teams or rolled over from quarter to quarter or year to year. 

Step 3: Develop time-bound, adaptive, short-term, and transparent team objectives. 

Step 4: List down the most crucial outcomes. Select 3 to 5 team objectives and have 2 to 5 key results for each of them. It cannot be a key result if it won’t have a number.

Step 5: Clarify the actions and delegate them to the teams. 

After implementing steps 1 to 5 with a pilot team, you move to the rest of the steps that will reflect on the OKRs from the previous cycle. 

Step 6: A set of key results should be examined and analyzed. 

Step 7: Refine the key results and finalize the team-level OKRs.

Step 8: Coordinate and align the team OKRs for clearly defining the organizational OKRs

To inspire your teams to use OKRs effectively, it is vital to:

a) Set moonshot targets.

b) Celebrate the achieved targets

c) Quantify the key results and challenge the team.

d) Make regular cadence/goal cycles. 

2. Include tools for making tracking simpler

The absolute point of OKRs is to make things as simple as possible. So enlist the assistance of the OKR program or OKR tool for making the whole process easy sot hat everyone knows what is expected of them and what they need to do to achieve what is expected from them. Such OKR software will enable you to establish, align and track OKRs as well as have a bird’s eye view of the set objectives and integrate regular check-ins. Through these features, your team can achieve up to 50% far better results and retention. 

3. Promote values

Your employees absorb the basic belief and standard practices of your organization just by working there. Core values can also be communicated in a more direct manner, i.e through OKRs. Consequently, your employees will subconsciously mirror the shared values and qualities. 

a) Cultivate honesty and ensure transparency

b) Don’t track just the metrics but also the sentiments of the team

c) Learn from the past insights to take further steps 

d) Alignment with the ultimate vision of the organization 

4. Managing the team

There exists a hazy line between what people desire to do and what they ultimately do generally divides the organizational objectives. With time, if your team gets off track, the line will tend to become more visible. Aside from avoiding micromanaging and communicating effectively, it is significant to establish the objectives that drive your entire team to work towards the organizational objective. OKRs helps organizations to enhance their team alignment, transparency, and productivity in the following ways:

a) Understand that the individual OKRs cannot be taken as an indication of overall progress

b) Avoid micromanaging your employees and teams at all costs

c) Embrace both the top-down and bottom-up approach

d) Make your teams understand the distinction between outcomes and output clearly

e) Unlink performance rewards, incentives, and bonuses from OKR

f) Keep reminding about the goals to ensure scattering of momentum and focus

In a nutshell, the OKR program is an incredible way to drive your organization to the desired growth. However, at the same time, it is vital to implement this methodology in the correct manner. Contact us today for all the assistance regarding OKR and its implementation!