OKRs can help focus on goals that really contribute to business outcomes.
OKRs drive performance management process along with employee engagement levels being held intact. When employees are able to view their work results and there is transparency in the process which again is simple, employees feel confident and tend to perform to their fullest.
Amongst several benefits of OKR, here are a few notable and definitely to be considered factors for adoption of OKR software system.
1. OKRs drive action and make teams more agile and ready for any kind of challenges.
2. OKR life cycle doesn’t confine itself to quarters or annual performance measurement, rather it is a constant driver with simple steps: Plan – Engage – Execute – Course correct (PEEC).
3. OKRs help deliver greater customer value with better quality of execution. It works on the principle of learning from success and failures.
With OKRs, keeping track of daily management activities with controlling KPIs which require daily check-ins is made possible. This is indeed a need-of-the-hour considering the virtual being as the new norm for a year now.
While it may sound as if OKRs are complex with jargons floating around, it is important to know that OKRs are simplified sentences with deliverables and measurements. It all boils down to “how effectively can OKRs be written?”. Here is the reference guide that gives brief understanding of writing OKRs.
While wanting to set OKRs, it is obvious that we need to refer examples or at least with someone’s OKRs already set. The actual writing of OKRs is simple: Objectives are the goals, key results are time-bound and measurable indicators under these objectives.
Before drafting OKRs take time in answering few critical question which will help to draft OKRs
1)Core purpose of your company? what keeps us driving?
2)What is your top 3 problem statement that will slow down your progress?
3)What are the gaps in current product or process those are bottle necks?
4)What you want to achieve as company in next 2 to 3 years?
For instance, while planning a meeting about setting OKRs, John Doerr, author of “Measure What Matters”, recommends these OKRs:
Objective: Meaningfully improve your operating excellence in the next hour.
KR1: Finishing the session on time.
KR2: Getting a 4+ quality rating from our first draft of team OKRs.
KR3: 100% commitment to trying OKRs.
SOURCE: MEASURE WHAT MATTERS TRAINING MATERIALS
In the above example, there are 3 examples listed. There can be maximum of 5 KRs for each of the objectives set. These objectives can be activities to measure or a daily activity that is expressed verbally and not necessarily measured. This might however have a connection for completion of related KRs.
Whatever be the size of your organization, there are automated OKR softwares. We are extending our one month free trial usage to our ORK software system along with supporting you set OKR for your teams.
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We would love to know what you are thinking. Email us at cs@datalligence.ai and learn more about our OKR software by exploring our website.
