Introduction
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are an organization’s goal-setting platform to track strategy execution. Once the strategy is set for a specific period you can measure how the progress is and measure the execution accordingly. Defining the goals and strategy is the most valuable time an organization spends. They set measurable metrics to evaluate how the organization is performing.
To be more specific
Objective – what are we trying to accomplish
Key Results – How are you going to achieve this?
OKRs provide a clear direction and guide the teams to progress on what matters to the business. These OKRs are aspirational and audacious in nature which drives organizations to reach the next level in each period.
An Objective is mostly a statement that communicates what you want to achieve and is time bound
A Key Result is a quantifiable or measurable metric that measures the progress of an objective and helps you understand the speed at which it is traveling and whether is on track or off track.
Why should you write OKRs for your company
To put it simply Company OKRs are the North star of an organization. It guides the team to create their team and individual objectives. This creates focus among the team to indicate where they should travel.
It is important that the organization starts with the company OKRs which will in turn promote top-down or bottom-up alignment. As objectives are very specific and timebound it helps the team to create OKRs and focus accordingly.
Benefits of having OKR (Objectives & Key Results) in your organization
As OKR framework is a well-proven frame used by organizations like Google, Uber, LinkedIn, and other established organization. The results were exponential. Organizations using OKRs had a minimum of 10x growth.
The benefits are immense. Let us discuss a few to understand the value OKRs bring to an organization.
Focus
OKR framework increases focus as the Objective count is less than 5. Less is more. Keeping fewer objectives increases focus and helps in prioritizing the goals. It helps the team to maintain focus and plan activities accordingly. This kills procrastination and increases focus
Alignment
OKRs’ very important benefit is increasing alignment and eliminating silos. Using the team and shared objectives help in creating alignment and collaboration. Where possible the team can contribute to the organization’s overarching objectives. Alignment is the core to decreasing the executions gap.
Transparency
OKRs are transparent in nature to ensure that the entire organization has the visibility to see the organi