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Rick Klau goes into detail regarding how to use OKRs for the organization. He talks about what OKRs are, how these are used by Google and how to adopt these for an organization. He notes that objectives should be ambitious. Key results should be measurable and public.

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On the day Google's acquisition of FeedBurner closed in 2007, it was also the first day of a new quarter at Google. My new manager at Google asked me to draft my OKRs for him to review. I had no idea what he was talking about.

I've now gone through the process of setting my Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) 24 times, and each time I marvel at what an effective mechanism they are for focusing my effort as well as aligning my work with the company's objectives. Last fall, I led a workshop about OKRs at the Startup Lab, which we're making public today.

John Doerr originally presented OKRs to Google's leadership in 1999 when Google was less than a year old, and they've been in use ever since. In the video, I present a portion of John's original deck, then lay out how we've implemented them at Google over the years. I also shared a few of my OKRs from my time as a Product Manager on Blogger, and answered some questions from the employees at our portfolio companies who were present for the workshop.

Though the video goes into more detail, here are a few keys to what make OKRs work at Google:

Objectives are ambitious, and should feel somewhat uncomfortable

Key Results are measurable; they should be easy to grade with a number (at Google we use a 0-1.0 scale to grade each key result at the end of a quarter)

OKRs are public; everyone in the company should be able to see what everyone else is working on (and how they did in the past)

The "sweet spot" for an OKR grade is .6 - .7; if someone consistently gets 1.0, their OKRs aren't ambitious enough. Low grades shouldn't be punished; see them as data to help refine the next quarter's OKRs.

One comment: in talking recently with one portfolio company who's implemented OKRs, I realized that I should have been more emphatic in pointing out that OKRs are not synonymous with employee evaluations. OKRs are about the company's goals and how each employee contributes to those goals. Performance evaluations - which are entirely about evaluating how an employee performed in a given period - should be independent from their OKRs. We'll cover employee evaluations in an upcoming workshop.

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On the day Google's acquisition of FeedBurner closed in 2007, it was also the first day of a new quarter at Google. My new manager at Google asked me to draft my OKRs for him to review. I had no idea...

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Webinar: How To Use OKR Goals to Align & Grow in 2018

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Webinar: How To Use OKR Goals to Align & Grow in 2018

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This is a webinar that goes into using OKRs and how to launch them in your organization. It shows data on how companies are not making the most out of their workforce. It also discusses the OKR mistakes to avoid.

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Webinar: How To Use OKR Goals to Align & Grow in 2018 [September 21, 2017]

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A Goal-Setting System I Learned From Google (And Still Use At My Current Venture) - posted

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A Goal-Setting System I Learned From Google (And Still Use At My Current Venture) - posted

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This article is written by Karl Sun and discusses his experience with OKRs while he was still with Google and why he decided to use it when he started his own business. He highlights the different benefits of using the OKR in an organization.

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During Google's first year, investor John Doerr pitched the idea of using an organizational system called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for goal setting. He presented it as an effective way to both set high level goals and also measure progress toward these goals in a quantifiable way. I'm sure he made a pretty persuasive pitch, because they were quickly adopted across the entire company and, during my first week at Google, I found myself outlining my very first set of OKRs.

The OKR system is an effective way of setting and communicating goals within an organization by connecting company, team, and personal objectives to measurable results. It pushes your company and employees to stretch and grow while staying focused on a defined and collective goal.

My Google OKRs were just the first of many. Fast forward 15 years - today, every new hire at Lucid Software spends a portion of his or her first week watching Google Ventures partner Rick Klau present John's original slides in a YouTube video (which you can view here).

When I left Google to start Lucid Software, I didn't take OKRs with me because it was what I was used to-I did so because the system had been so successful at Google. I firmly believed it could produce the same benefits at Lucid-and the system hasn't let me down yet.
Benefits of OKRs
Setting stretch goals: OKRs establish a clear and simple pattern for setting goals within your company at the individual, team, and organization levels. When you write an OKR, you solidify a goal and draw a line in the sand. At the end of the day, you can measure yourself against this line to define your success. In contrast, without setting objectives in advance, you are stuck trying to justify your accomplishments.

At Google, we were constantly reminded that OKRs are specifically designed to push you, not t o make you look good. In other words: Goals should be hard-not slam dunks. Write them aggressively.

Promoting accountability: At Google, we made all our OKRs public. We are doing the same at Lucid by having every employee upload their personal OKRs to our internal wiki. Doing so promotes accountability and transparency and makes that line in the sand even more pronounced. It's easy to forget about goals that only you know about-it's a game-changer when there are others (sometimes hundreds to thousands of others) also holding you accountable.

In addition to their public nature, OKRs promote accountability because they are graded each quarter. Google uses a scale from 0 to 1. You're not supposed to crush it with consistently perfect scores-once again, these are stretch goals, so if you hit between 0.6 and 0.7, you are making good progress. In fact, if you are easily hitting all of your OKRs, you have either reached superhero status or are sandbagging.

However, it's important to always go back and account for why you fell short on an OKR, especially if you score below a 0.4. Life happens, and priorities change-but you need to be honest with yourself about the root cause.

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A Goal-Setting System I Learned From Google (And Still Use At My Current Venture)

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During Google's first year, investor John Doerr pitched the idea of using an organizational system called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for goal setting. The idea was so good that I stole it, and I've been reaping the rewards for the last 15 years. Read on for a CEO's quick guide to OKRs.

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John Doerr explains why OKRs are more than OK to set goals - posted

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John Doerr explains why OKRs are more than OK to set goals - posted

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John Doerr is an evangelist of OKRs, which he learned as an intern in Intel four decades ago. He explains what OKR is and how he has used it in running his business. He explains how important OKRs are for organizations to achieve their goals.

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John Doerr, the chairman of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is a fervent evangelist of OKRs (objectives and key results), a management tool he learned as an intern at Intel Corp. from its legendary leader Andy Grove four decades ago.

In a new book, "Measure What Matters," Doerr talks about OKRs and how they have been adopted by everyone from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to Bill and Melinda Gates at the Gates Foundation and rock star Bono at his One Campaign to end extreme poverty and preventable disease.

In advance of the book's release today, Doerr spoke with the Silicon Valley Business Journal to explain more about the power of OKRs and why he believes every business can use them to be more successful. We'll have more from Doerr - one of the most prominent Silicon Valley figures in venture capital - this Friday in our weekly print edition and also online.
What are OKRs (objectives and key results)?
It's a simple goal setting system that works for companies and teams and even individuals. You write down and share with everybody, transparently, your objectives. These are the goals, what you want to have accomplished. Then you do the same with your key results, which is how you're going to get it done.

An objective might be to build the world's best browser. And then the key results would be ship 20 million of them by the third quarter, with 10 times higher speed and four major distribution deals.

The objectives are the "whats." The key results are the "hows." Really good objectives are significant, concrete, they're action-oriented and inspiring. Key results are specific and time bound. They're aggressive, but realistic. They're measurable and verifiable.

At the end of a period of time, you can be sure a key result is going to be done or not done, and they get graded. In the end, though, these grades don't count for anything. It's very important that you not use OKRs for bonuses or for promotions. They're used for focus, for alignment, for commitment, for tracking.

If you're getting 100 percent of your OKRs done, that's not good. You probably weren't aggressive enough. A good grade at Intel or Google would be 70 percent.

I want to hasten to add they're not a silver bullet. They're not a substitute for a strong culture or even stronger leaders or good management judgment. They're not easy to do. But when they're implemented faithfully, and they do get adopted, the system always works. I've never seen it fail.
You write that when you did your first OKR at Intel, you typed it on an IBM Selectric and posted it on your cubicle. Transparency is an important part of all this, right?
Yup. Andy Grove's were posted on his cubicle, too.

What really makes or breaks this system is whether or not the leader, the CEO, the general manager or the department head, is personally committed. When that's the case, this system can take your team to the mountain top. I don't want to dwell in history, but I'm quite convinced that if Intel did not use OKRs, they would have lost the microprocessor wars to Motorola.
When was your "ah-ha moment" with OKRs?
At one point in my career at Kleiner, I took a sabbatical. It was supposed to be for just a year but it went longer. I went to work at Sun Microsystems, leading their desktop computer division. Suddenly, I had almost a thousand people reporting to me. I wanted that experience. I wanted to get outside of my comfort zone, because at Kleiner I was trying to coach entrepreneurs doing the same thing. OKRs really saved me. I used them to organize staff meetings, to do one-on-one reviews, to structure our organization. That's when it really came home how useful and powerful this kind of goal setting is.

Now, OKRs, I'm going to add, are not the only tool in the toolkit of this handbook. Another one is CFRs (conversations, feedback, and recognition). They're a sibling of OKRs.

If the objectives in OKRs are the goal posts at the end of the football field, and key results are the markers in between, CFRs are what you do in the huddle and how you call the plays. The two combined together are really potent.
Do you have to have OKRs for CFRs to work?
No. You do not. OKRs with CFRs is the best thing going.
CFRs are a reaction to and an alternative to the annual performance reviews that have been so prevalent, right? What's wrong with the annual review and why are CFRs better?
The first thing wrong with the annual review is that it's annual.

The second thing wrong with it is it's almost always backward looking.

The third thing is that it takes a lot of time to dredge up the facts of that review. Usually you're combing through emails or other reports.

The fourth problem with them is all the data shows they're tremendous de-motivators. The number of people who quit or move on after an annual report - good or bad - is unreasonably high.

Another problem with them is they take so much time.

On almost every count, they fail. But some companies aren't willing to ditch them. So they combine an annual review with a lighter touch and more frequent one-on-one style feedback.

But I think we're entering a really interesting era at this moment in time in several ways. I believe these approaches and techniques - now that we have the cloud and shared collaborative social systems - can really improve the people science. Not just better analytics, but actually getting greater performance, higher performance, higher commitment, out of teams.

Every business I've seen benefits from a stronger team and stronger leaders. They are just now getting modern tools to help them do this.

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John Doerr writes "Measure What Matters," gives guidance on how to set goals at work - Silicon Valley Business Journal

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John Doerr, the chairman of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is a fervent evangelist of OKRs (objectives and key results), a management tool he learned as an intern at Intel Corp. from its legendary leader Andy Grove four decades ago.

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OKRs: How organisations can keep focused as they grow - posted

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OKRs: How organisations can keep focused as they grow - posted

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This article takes a deeper look on OKRs. It discusses how OKRs are different from KPIs and how these are essential to keep the organization and the members going. It also notes that organizations need to pin down the basics of OKRs before jumping in. Organizations need to be clear and accountable while also choosing the right OKRs.

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You could easily spend months on something that doesn't matter, or on something that doesn't make you happy. Most of the time, the problem isn't even your job or your colleagues. It's because you aren't clear on your objectives and you can't isolate what matters from what

doesn't. Knowing your objectives is like having a North Star you can follow.

This principle is at the core of the "Objectives & Key Results" (OKRs) system, which was made popular by Google. The company reached a stage in its development, about a year into its existence, when it needed a better way to manage itself as it kept

growing. They chose OKRs and have been using them ever since. OKRs had actually been around for a long time under other names, like strategic

planning execution.

But to this day, this incredibly

powerful tool, although increasingly popular, remains misunderstood.

OKRs is often confused with key performance indexes, or KPIs. KPIs tell you how you're doing. It's a benchmark. But the O in OKR, which stands for objectives, leads to the question, "What are we trying to accomplish?" It starts at the top, where the answer might be something like, "Make our shareholders more money". Then it gets passed on to the level below, where the OKR for the head of

marketing, for example, might be, "Be the number one brand in our field".

In the end, every level of the

company defines concrete objectives that support the top-level objective.

That's why at Google, employees' OKRs are accessible by all their

colleagues. You can look up the CEO's OKR or your boss's at any time. This allows employees to know why they're coming to work in the morning. Everyone knows how their OKRs feed into the company's.

This isn't to say KPIs are bad. Actually, KPIs and OKRs work really well together. KPIs allow you to benchmark how you're performing on your OKRs. But OKRs force you to ask, "Why?" Are you pursuing objectives what will "move the needle" for your company? Are you supporting the business's growth?

Before even jumping into OKRs, start-ups and large organisations alike should therefore be careful that they've worked out the fundamentals of their strategy. But even when that is clear, there are four common failures to watch out for when implementing OKRs.

One, not being clear enough and not being accountable enough. Two, not knowing who owns the OKRs. Three, leadership not following up. And four, choosing the wrong

OKRs.

The objectives should not be too easy - they should be inspiring. Moreover, the reason behind each objective should be clear. Let's say your objective for your website is "achieving a 20 per cent conversion rate". Why? Why does this matter? If I ask a company "why" and they can't answer, then the objective is wrong.

This is why OKRs aren't a standalone topic. They are an extension of growth. OKRs force you to focus on the tangible things you need to accomplish to say you have met your objective. And if every team in your company does that, everything falls under the same objective. That's the beauty of this

system. Everyone is accountable and everyone works in unison.
Hai Habot is a tech executive from Silicon Valley. Has been practising and teaching OKR at top accelerator programmes, including Google Launchpad and dtac accelerate.

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OKRs: How organisations can keep focused as they grow - The Nation

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You could easily spend months on something that doesn't matter, or on something that doesn't make you happy. Most of the time, the problem isn't even your job or your colleagues. It's because you aren't clear on your objectives and you can't isolate what matters from what doesn't.

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How Google and Others Succeed with OKRs - posted

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How Google and Others Succeed with OKRs - posted

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This article gives examples on how different organizations are using OKRs. Although OKRs have fundamental steps, these can be used differently by different organizations. It also notes that it can be a great tool for SMEs and there is no downside to implementing this. It can be a one size fits all solutions to every organization.

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Objectives and key results ( OKRs) is a popular method for setting and tracking goals. First developed in the 1970s by the late Andy Grove in Intel, it's now increasingly popular and used not only in big companies like Google, LinkedIn and Twitter but in many SMEs as well.

OKRs can be used in any company, with any team size and there really is no downside for having clear goals. The methodology helps people be more productive and focused.

John Doerr, one of the advocates for OKRs, has said:"I remember being intrigued with the idea of having a beacon or north star every quarter, which helped set my priorities. It was also incredibly powerful for me to see Andy's OKRs, my manager's OKRs and the OKRs for my peers. I was quickly able to tie my work directly to the company's goals. I kept my OKRs pinned up in my office and I wrote new OKRs every quarter, and the system has stayed with me ever since."

Big objectives and measurable key results.

Although used a little differently in every organization, OKRs have some fundamental similarities. Objectives are set every quarter on personal, team and company level and they should summarize the most important things that a person or the team has to do.
Related: 3 Ways to Help Your Employees With Goal-Setting
Each objective should have three to four clearly measurable key objectives. It's very common to use the SMART goals methodology for that. SMART stands for "specific," "measurable," "achievable," "relevant" and "time-bound." For instance, "selling more products" is not a good key results. Instead it should be "to sell 20 percent more products than last quarter in U.S. market."

Key results must be 100 percent measurable and looking at your OKRs, you should easily see, how well you're doing.

Google's ambiguous goals.

It was John Doerr who originally introduced OKRs in Google in 1999 and they've been using the methodology ever since.

In Google, the quarterly goals are set as high as possible to make people really push for the stars. At the same time, each goals have easily measurable key results on a scale from zero to 1.0.

It is a common belief that if you can achieve 100 percent of all your OKRs each quarter, you're not aiming high enough. The OKRs must be structured. In Google, each individual and team has it's own objectives that contribute to a higher (department) level objectives. That helps to make sure that everyone is working in sync.

One other key thing about OKRs is openness. Anyone in Google can see anyone's OKRs and so, everyone knows what others are working on and how they contribute to the whole.

OKRs make your mission actionable.

Using OKRs has been very good for LinkedIn.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner defines them more broadly. They should be about "something you want to accomplish over a specific period of time that leans toward a stretch goal rather than a stated plan. It's something where you want to create greater urgency, greater mindshare."
Related: How to Seesaw Between the Why and the How of Goal-Setting
He has also said that good leaders show to each person in a company, that they can make a real difference and OKRs help you with that.

SMEs need an OKRs management tool.

OKRs are a vital tool for smaller enterprises as well.

In 2015, one of the team members in Zlien, which makes preliminary notices, lien waivers and mechanics lien compliance, suggested using objectives and key results.

They first tested it with their technology team, but quickly included the department managers as well.

Scott Wolfe Jr., CEO of Zlien, recommends using OKRs in general. It's very good to align and focus your team on the main things you are trying to work on as a company. He said: "I like the structure and how it breaks down each department and team."

Lyle Stevens, co-founder and CEO of Mavrck also loves the objectives and key results framework.

"It makes it easier to align what every individual of the company wants to achieve each quarter," said he.

For Mavrck, it's a great system for prioritizing resources and for making sure everybody is focused on the right goals. OKRs help them to make trade-off decisions. For example, if they have a new potential priority, OKRs help them to compare it to what they already want to achieve.
Related: When SMART Goals Don't Work, Here's What to Do Instead
No downside.

I can think of no reasons, why implementing a clear goal setting system in a company would do harm. From Google to two-people teams, OKRs are a "one size fits all" solution and your competitors probably already know that.

OKRs can be managed in an Excel spreadsheet or using a specific tool like Weekdone and taking the time every quarter, will save you a lot of time along the road.

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Objectives and key results ( OKRs) is a popular method for setting and tracking goals. First developed in the 1970s by the late Andy Grove in Intel, it's now increasingly popular and used not only in big companies like Google, LinkedIn and Twitter but in many SMEs as well.

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Want To Set Goals Like Google? Use OKRs - posted

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Want To Set Goals Like Google? Use OKRs - posted

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In this article, a former Google employee relates how OKRs have helped her while she was still with Google and how it is used in her own startup starting from its inception. She relates the different mistakes that you should avoid when using OKRs, although it might be used differently by every organization. She notes that one should never set unrealistic expectations, skip regular check-ins, and shortchange celebrations.

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Sometimes it takes time to see everything that an experience has taught you. When I left in 2011, I felt prepared for my adventure in the startup world. I'd learned the art of online sales, dabbled in Google's nonprofit arm, worked on key strategic partnerships at YouTube, and even helped influenced Google's global expansion strategy.

But looking back on the job, Google taught me much more than I'd realized then. I recognized, for instance, that I'd learned to handle rejection and to seek out mentors. And as I worked with early stage companies and eventually started my own business, I realized the importance of a tool from Google: OKRs.
The OKR Methodology
Google, in its first year, debuted OKRs - objectives and key results - to track progress toward its goals. Especially at a fast-moving company like Google, OKRs are essential. Some objectives last years, while others change every quarter.

Even today, Google employs OKRs at the company, departmental, and individual levels to create timelines for achievement. I recommend watching this presentation by Google Ventures' Rick Klau for a better understanding of how the system works.

I remember Google's OKRs fondly. During my four-year tenure, I used the system to monitor my own growth as well as my department's contributions to Google. Without even realizing it, OKRs became ingrained in me - an essential part of my work.
OKRs at Node
When I founded Node, I thought about my objectives. How would we know when it was time to hire the first developer? When would we seek our first round of funding? How long would we stay in stealth mode? Those questions snapped my mind back to OKRs.

Our earliest OKRs were product-focused. We drafted a timeline for release, set mile markers, and planned for product-market fit. Today, OKRs help us chunk the company's annual goals into quarterly, function-specific objectives.

The cardinal rule of OKRs is that they're measurable. A sales OKR, for instance, might be to hit a certain revenue target within the quarter. Marketers might set a benchmark for qualified leads, while human resources could plan to hire a particular number of engineers within the quarter.

As your company grows close to the 20-person mark, OKRs should become more individualized. How does each sales member contribute to the function's goals and, ultimately, the company's success? It is no longer enough at that point to just have OKRs by function; you need each person to own his part of the equation.

If you're a startup CEO, company OKRs are up to you. As you bring function leaders aboard, though, those individuals should take responsibility for drafting team OKRs.

OKRs vary as widely as companies themselves, so your business objectives are, well, your business. There are, however, three crucial mistakes to avoid:
1. Setting unreasonable expectations
Done right, OKRs give your team challenging objectives that link clearly to company goals. But if you make them too far-fetched, they lose credibility and can demotivate employees. Balancing stretch goals, available resources, and employee abilities takes a bit of practice. Basically, you want employees to get close to their goals, but not necessarily hit them every time.

At Google, employees set four to six quarterly OKRs; more than that is too many to manage. At the quarter's end, each employee grade his performance on a 0 to 1.0 scale. If someone hits 1.0 on every OKR, his objectives aren't ambitious enough. On the flip side, low scores shouldn't be punished but rather be used to refine the next quarter's OKRs.

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When I left Google at 23, I knew I'd learned a lot. But it wasn't until I'd started my own company that I realized just how much the tech giant taught me. Today, I employ one of those lessons - Google's OKR methodology - to help Node set and track individual, function, and company performance benchmarks.

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Beginner’s guide to writing effective OKRs - posted

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Beginner’s guide to writing effective OKRs - posted

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This article guides one on how to write objectives and key results. It provides a checklist of how these two should be written properly in order to make the most out of OKRs. Writing OKRs is a prerequisite to execution.

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One of the major challenges while adopting any management framework is to figure out how to get started. Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), the agile goal setting framework is not an exception to this rule. We have already written a few articles around best practices in OKRs (listed at the end of this post), in this one we will provide a checklist. It can be used as a quick reference to write effective Objectives as well as Key Results.

Why should you care?

A common question that pops up in everyone's mind - does it really matter how the OKRs are written? After all, isn't OKRs a goal management approach just like any other goal setting methodology

The answer lies in the fact that OKRs are not just goals for individuals but they are connections between the strategy & execution. OKRs are nothing short of a communication channel for conveying strategy. And we all know how good strategies end up in a trash can because they weren't executed properly. Writing good OKRs is a prerequisite to executing the strategy successfully.

In addition, putting in sufficient efforts for collaboratively writing the OKRs can reveal new & innovative ways goals can be achieved.

There are two major components of the OKR designing process. One focuses on how the objectives should be written & the other one concentrates on key results.

Writing an Objective

Objectives are the qualitative goals. They are usually broad in their outlook & inspiring in nature. First & foremost, the objective should help in achieving the company goals & should be aligned with the corporate strategy.

More importantly, finalising objectives can be a tough task. People who have experienced OKR setup process before, will know how tempting it is to set myriad objectives at every possible level. Use the five why analysis to figure out if the 3-5 objectives that are being chosen are really the critical ones.

In a nutshell, you are spot on if you can answer following questions affirmatively with respect to the objective.

Is the objective broad in outlook?

Is the objective inspiring?

Does the objective help in achieving the company goals?

Does the objective align with corporate strategy?

Is the objective indispensable?

Is the objective timeboxed?

Writing a Key Result

The way key results are defined, is the soul of the entire OKR philosophy. Key results are essentially measurable indicators of success of the parent objective. Key results, unequivocally tell you how much of the objective is achieved. Some literature calls them the sub-objectives or even at times they are (wrongly) called as KPIs.

If they cannot be objectively measured, they are not KRs. Numbers form an integral part of the key result. Do note that key results are results & not activities/tasks. Again, the key lies in limiting the number of KRs in the 3-5 range, against every objective.

Ask these questions to ensure you are writing effective OKRs:

Does the Key Result adhere to SMART? (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Time bound)

Is the KR a result and not just another task/activity?

Does the KR help in achieving the objective it belongs to?

Is there a timeline identified for the KR?

Does the KR belong to either a stretch or an operational goal category?

Is the KR important enough to appear in the top 5 KRs for the objective?

Template & Examples

Although there is no one size fits all template that works for all possible use cases, there is a generally acceptable way of phrasing OKRs. You are now probably writing effective OKRs but do they fit the below 'template'?

We plan to succeed in ______________________ , as measured by ___________, ____________ and ____________. We plan to achieve this by _________

1st blank is a placeholder for the objective & rest of the blanks (2-4) are going to hold related key results. The last blank adds a deadline to the entire OKR structure.

Let us look at a few examples for writing effective OKRs.
Example 1:
Increase in employee engagement

Decrease attrition rate from 7% to 3%

Increase eNPS from 78% to 90%

At least 3 engagement activities are executed within each department.

Example 2:
Raise funds to fuel our growth in APAC

4 growth centres with maximum anticipated ROI are identified

Pitch to at least 25 institutional investors

A non-binding term sheet is finalised

Additional reading for writing effective OKRs:

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Beginner's guide to writing effective OKRs | UpRaise

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One of the major challenges while adopting any management framework is to figure out how to get started. Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), the agile goal setting framework is not an exception to this rule. We have already written a few articles around best practices in OKRs (listed at the end of this post), in this one we will provide a checklist.

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How to Make OKRs Actually Work at Your Startup - posted

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How to Make OKRs Actually Work at Your Startup - posted

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This article takes an interesting look at how one startup uses OKRs to reach goals. It covers specific examples of OKRs that can be used in different departments.

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In 2013 alone, Swipely jumped from 30 to 80 employees. Teams swelled and split, and people filled new roles with new directives. It reached that ironic point where, while growing strong, a company is also at its most delicate - with culture, productivity and alignment all in flux. Smack in the middle of this sprint, at 50 employees, CEO Angus Davis knew he had to do something to keep everyone moving forward as a team.

He chose a well-known tool: OKRs. The system made famous first by Intel and now by Google asks all employees to outline their major objectives and the quantifiable actions (i.e. key results) it'll take to achieve them. It's a technique designed for accountability and enforced with scores. But Davis knew he'd have to go further. After becoming Netscape's youngest employee in 1996, working to launch Mozilla, and co-founding Tellme, he'd seen how hard it is to implement something that actually makes a difference.

That's why, at Swipely, OKRs have become much more than a goal-setting system. They serve as a layer of communication that holds the company together and elevates its game at the same time. And in short order, they've become fundamental to Swipely's culture, helping it hit a record $1 billion in sales under management this fall.

How did this happen? Davis says it was all in the execution. Just because a system's worked like gangbusters before, doesn't mean one size fits all. You have to figure out how to put OKRs to work for you.
Breathing Life into Acronyms
There are few things people hate more than corporate acronyms - especially corporate acronyms that mandate work. To escape this stigma, Swipely has shifted the spirit of OKRs to be less about action items and more about collaboration.

The reality is, a system was needed. "We had grown to the low eight digits in revenue, and we've got a lot of teams dependent on one another to succeed - no one person knows everything going on inside the organization anymore," Davis says. "The right way to look at OKRs is a way to communicate so there's clarity of purpose."

At Swipely, OKRs are made up of a high level objective, a more detailed description of why that objective is important, a summary of how the objective aligns with the broader goals of both the person's team and the company, and the three to five key results that will help them achieve that goal (see below for examples).

When personal objectives are directly and clearly connected to the broader goals of the company, they're suddenly more inspiring, less myopic. Make them public so everyone can see what's on their co-workers' plates and employees no longer feel like they're toiling in a vacuum, or for their manager's approval, Davis says. That way, OKRs become a built-in way for people to ask for resources, or easily spot where they can come to their colleagues' aid.

"Having public goals forces different types of thinking around how people ask for help from others," Davis says. Swipely's implementation of OKRs is all about bringing this type of dialogue to the fore. Airing things out releases anxiety and let's people get creative - and that's when interesting things happen.
The Musts
Davis embraces the fact that Swipely's OKR system is probably different from Google's, which is different from Intel's and so on - but there are some key tenets that every system needs to be effective. As he puts it, "Every church or temple might have a different interpretation, but the overall philosophy stays the same."

All high-performance OKR systems have these commonalities:

"The ability to track results on a quantitative basis." Key results are not general or subjective actions you plan to take. They should always include numbers to make it clear how much has been achieved. For example, if Mary's objective is to improve her sales prospecting skills, one key result might be to spend two hours a week shadowing Jennifer, the team member who demonstrates the most prospecting success.

" Make it something people look at, every quarter, every week, every day." This consistency turns goal-setting into a habit and changes how people think about their work and approach their everyday to-dos. "It puts in place natural milestones that make you think about what you need to do next and aim high."

" They have to be a stretch. " Most people wouldn't consider 70% to be a good grade, but for OKRs that's just about perfect, Davis says. You want your objectives to be ambitious enough to push you beyond your limits. When everyone does this, it forces the tough conversations about what's truly needed to beat expectations.

Davis created the following examples (and many others) to help guide people in defining their OKRs:
Paul, a member of Swipely's engineering team
Objective: Ship [X] feature to increase engagement.

Description: Our [X] will allow merchants to access Swipely anywhere, increasing engagement, value and differentiation which will reduce churn and differentiate our offering with an exciting new value proposition.

Alignment: A company-wide objective is to "Become a 'must-have' tool merchants love to use," which has a key result, "Ship [X] product to increase engagement and drive excitement in sale." The individual objective to ship [X] is aligned with this company-wide objective.
Key Results:

Deliver alpha version to targeted devices for alpha testing feedback from 10 early customers by [date: mm/dd/yyyy].

Provide screenshots/screencast to support marketing launch of the app by [date: mm/dd/yyyy].

Release beta version by [date: mm/dd/yyyy].

Achieve engagement DAU / MAU metric of [X] with beta audience.

And on the other side of the spectrum...
Cindy, a sales account executive who wants to turn more dials into demos.
Objective: Develop better prospecting skills.

Description: By improving prospecting skills, I will get into more initial presentations and win more business!

Alignment: A company-wide objective is to "accelerate revenue growth," which has a key result, "grow booked ARR by $XX to $YY mm, thanks to new AEs, channel, and fully ramped AEs." The individual objective to improve prospecting skills is aligned with this company-wide objective because it will help Cindy attain her quota targets. It also aligns with a company-wide objective to strengthen the team.
Key Results:

Review training materials from our online coaching resource.

Do 2 60-minute game tape reviews with the sales manager, reviewing 20+ prospecting calls for coaching on what's working, what's not working.

Do a role-playing session with Allie, who has our team's top connect-to-meeting rate.

Test 5 new "compelling reason" pitches on prospecting calls to introduce humor, rapport and other techniques.

Increase my weekly connect-to-meeting rate from X% to Y%.

Davis spent hours assembling these archetypes and a central document about the OKRs process. This is solidly CEO territory, he says. As he wrote in his introduction to the document, "OKRs are critically important to me, to our board, and they should be important to you too. Having clear objectives, especially those tied to developing your skills, are a key part of career development here at Swipely."

He beats the drum every quarter. Since OKRs launched, the first All Hands of every quarter has been devoted to talking about them. "The idea is to spend the beginning quickly running through results from the previous quarter, and then use the rest of the time improving how to use OKRs and why they are important. Only then can you talk about the objectives for the next quarter."

During this part of the meeting, Davis asks the heads of each department to talk about how they performed against past OKRs and what they plan to do over the course of the next three months. "Everyone should come out of this meeting with a clear understanding of where the company's going and why," Davis says.
Why Stretch Goals?
People love hitting their marks. Crossing off every to-do is always the goal. But when it comes to effective goal-setting, you should never get to 100%. If you do, you're not trying hard enough.

If you don't set your goals high, you won't force the right questions.

It's not enough to say you want to see 10% improvement when you know that's well within your reach. It means you'll just keep doing the same things, just working ever so slightly harder.

"But if I said to you, I need 50% improvement in what you're doing," Davis says, "you'd probably say, 'Gosh, in order to do that, I'd have to completely solve this hard problem' or 'I need to completely rethink how I'm addressing X or Y.' That's what OKRs are supposed to do. When you aim higher, you think harder about the steps you need to take to really achieve something."
The Kiss of Death: Performance Reviews
While some companies fold OKR results into annual performance reviews, Davis is adamant about decoupling these processes, especially if compensation is involved. "OKRs are not designed to be used as a weapon against your employees," he says. "They are a tool for motivating and aligning people to work together. They increase transparency, accountability and empowerment."

For example, Davis says, members of Swipely's sales team have part of their compensation tied to the number of deals they close. That makes sense. But if OKRs were always tied to money, you'd never see other, diverse objectives in the mix. A salesperson would never create an objective to improve a training program, for instance, even though training programs are vital to the company's overall success.

But that's not the only problem. "Let's say we bring OKRs into a performance review, and punish the person for scoring lower than maybe they had hoped - they go without their bonus. That just encourages them to sand bag their OKRs from there on out. They won't stretch. They won't push hard." In short, they'll play it safe. And that's when startups stagnate.

Putting distance between reviews and OKRs has another positive side effect. Before the OKR system was instituted at Swipely, most employees got all their praise and/or feedback in one big chunk during their performance reviews. Now, with regular OKR updates and reviews spurring increased dialogue between employees, their co-workers and managers, recognition can be spread out over time, which tends to be more rewarding.
How it Works in Practice
At Swipely, OKRs aren't only a quarterly affair. Davis checks in on his immediate reports every week, and encourages his leadership to do the same. They believe people should be held publicly accountable for failing to regularly update their OKRs, and Davis even shapes his management meetings around them.

"We start each meeting and I ask people to give me their quick wins - one or two things they or their team has achieved in the last week that are notable. Then I say, 'Okay, now looking at your OKRs, what progress has been made? What are the areas that are still keeping you up at night? Where do you need help?' Everyone shares one or two things that are causing them the biggest concerns about hitting their OKRs and that guides the meeting's conversation in the right direction." Because they're always focused on removing roadblocks, they never feel like they're wasting time, Davis says.

Outside of management meetings, he believes OKRs make it easier than ever to keep people focused and collect feedback. Employees are encouraged to spend time defining their own OKRs and then to meet specifically with their managers to incorporate their feedback. This update should happen within the first week of a new quarter - after the prior quarter's OKRs have been scored and discussed.

Swipely uses SalesForce's Work.com platform to track people's OKRs even as they make progress.

If, for example, your objective is to drive more leads, one of your key results might be to create a live chat feature to drive a certain number of new leads a month. "When you get the live chat feature pushed to the website, you can mark your key result at 30% done. Then when you start getting close to your target number of leads, you might mark it at 60% done." At any point, your manager can check the system to see where you're at and if you need help.

"Grading should be a simple exercise at the end of every quarter, five minutes tops," says Davis. You score an objective by averaging the individual key result scores underneath it. This is also why it's so important to make those key results quantitatively measurable.

Measuring OKRs should be easy. Defining them is where you want to spend your time.

Swipely's Work.com system also makes offering feedback to people or their managers as simple as clicking a button - same goes for requesting feedback from someone specific. "You can tag the people who you want feedback from just as easily as you add tags to a photo, and they can give you private one-on-one feedback about whatever you want."

Skill-building is a major emphasis for Swipely's OKR system, and Davis is especially keen about helping people develop in areas where they want to improve.

"When it comes to developing skills, it's more about continual coaching," he says. "We actually require that every person on our sales team have at least one skill development objective. It's not something like book a certain number of sales. It's about their personal career development. It could be as simple as someone wanting to read more on a particular topic."

Davis is so intent about this that he has a standing meeting with the head of sales every month to see how each person's skill development objective is coming along and whether they can leverage any of the company's resources to help them win.
Bottom Up, Not Top Down
In order to maximize impact across the board, OKRs need to be a tool for the bulk of employees, not a requirement.

You want 60% of your company's OKRs to be defined by employees, not leadership. You don't want the executives coming in dictating what all the goals are going to be and letting them trickle down.

As an example, he highlights Swipely's commitment to improving training programs, especially for its large and rapidly growing sales team. "We heard from a number of people that they want to develop better skills in certain areas, and now we have a goal at the very highest level of the organization to keep expanding our training opportunities. As key results, we've hired a dedicated sales training person and brought in an outside consultant to talk about particular skills that will help the team win more consistently."
The Beauty of Alignment
Just over four months ago, Swipely opened up an important new source of revenue - channel partners who promote the service to their networks. Before that, the company was solely dependent on in-house direct sales, so this is an exciting development. And, to a large extent, OKRs made it possible.

In order for the channel partnership team to get traction, it was going to need heavy duty marketing support from day one. Not only did they need to explain the program to prospective partners, they needed to empower them with marketing collateral and build a community to engage them, answer questions and track their progress. There were a lot of big asks all at once that weren't easy to anticipate.

Because the OKR process is standard across teams, Davis had the ability to make sure marketing's goals were in line with channel partnerships' needs.

"I could shuttle the marketing OKRs to the person running the channel partner program and straight up ask him: 'Ok, if we do even just 70% of this stuff, it'll be a home run for you guys, right?'" Davis explains. "But the first time I showed him the list he said no, what we really need is X, Y, Z. It forced the conversation, and let me go back to the head of marketing to say, 'Hey, this isn't going to cut it.' If it hadn't been for OKRs, we might not have had that conversation until the end of the quarter."

The result: The channel partner team got the resources it needed from not just marketing, but also sales and operations to become a major and growing stream of revenue for the company.

Still, Davis says, one of the best outcomes is that he now hears people talking casually in the halls in the context of their OKRs. It's a sign that people feel connected to the company and where it's headed. And that gives him faith, he says.

"We created OKRs because we were getting to a size where I or the leadership wouldn't be able to and wouldn't want to weigh in on every little decision - now everyone in the company has the framework to make decisions in Swipely's best interest and a support system to build the skills that will take them to the next level."

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How to Make OKRs Actually Work at Your Startup

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In 2013 alone, Swipely jumped from 30 to 80 employees. Teams swelled and split, and people filled new roles with new directives. It reached that ironic point where, while growing strong, a company is also at its most delicate - with culture, productivity and alignment all in flux.

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OKR Vs MBO: What Is The Difference? - posted

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OKR Vs MBO: What Is The Difference? - posted

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Although OKRs and MBO are quite similar. There are differences to them. This article breaks down the differences of both including how these are implemented and used.

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MBO (which stands for "management by objectives") has been a popular management tool for decades. But there's an alternative approach that's gaining a lot of traction at the moment: OKR (or "objectives and key results").

If you've read anything about OKRs, you might have noticed it has some distinct similarities to MBO. However, as we'll see in this article, there are some clear differences between the two.

Defining MBO
MBO was formulated by Peter Drucker in his 1954 book The Practice of Management as a way to improve organisational performance. In essence, MBO describes a process of defining specific and clear objectives for employees and is designed to create a culture of working towards common organisational goals. The concept spread widely, and has become the "norm" for many companies. Indeed, if you think of the classic way of managing performance - i.e. a manager agrees objectives with each employee, and then their performance (and compensation) is assessed against these objectives - what you're thinking of is MBO.
Digging into OKR
Because it's getting a lot of attention at the moment, and has been popularised by tech companies like Google, you might think OKR is a new approach. In fact, OKR has been around for decades. The concept was introduced by Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, in the early 1980s and caught the eye of venture capitalist (and early Google investor) John Doerr. Doerr picked up the approach from his time at Intel and took it to Google, who loved it, and OKR spread from there.

Like MBO, the OKR approach is about setting strategic goals. However, it goes further than MBO, breaking down strategy and execution into two parts: the objectives (the Os) and the key results (the KRs). Essentially, this means you set a goal and then define how you will achieve it.
So what exactly is the difference?
It's clear that the MBO and OKR approaches are related - OKR evolved from MBO, essentially cherry-picking some of the best bits of MBO and building on them. And ultimately, both provide a framework for setting and communicating goals, as well as measuring performance. Both move people towards achieving common objectives.

That said, there are some clear differences between the two approaches, namely:

MBO sets out what you want to achieve, while OKR sets out the what and how
The MBO approach is about defining what it is you're trying to achieve. How an employee or team achieves that goal, and how their performance is measured against that goal is relatively flexible and open.

OKR, on the other hand, drills down into much more detail. The key results clearly define what success looks like, and therefore what needs to be done to achieve the goal, and these results translate into quantitative performance measures.

MBO is reviewed annually, while OKR is usually quarterly
Traditionally, MBO works on an annual cycle, setting goals for the year ahead, which are then evaluated and revised a year down the line. I say "traditionally" because this annual review cycle isn't so suitable for today's fast-paced world, and many companies are now choosing to review MBOs more regularly. (Indeed, if Peter Drucker was writing his book today, I've no doubt he would specify more regular reviews.)

OKR is designed with a shorter cycle in mind, with goals and progress being reviewed at least quarterly, sometimes even monthly. This allows you to better track performance, highlight where things might not be on track, and take appropriate action.

MBO is private and siloed, while OKR is public and transparent
MBO objectives are set in a confidential discussion between an employee and their line manager, and the objectives remain private. Partly this confidentiality is because MBO is linked to compensation (which we'll get to below).

In contrast, OKRs are much more transparent and tend to be created through wider team discussions, with the whole team deciding how to support the bigger-picture company goals. Anyone can see anyone else's OKRs, from the CEO to the shop floor worker.

This highlights another key difference between MBO and OKR: the former is a top-down process, with the manager setting goals (that have, in turn, been cascaded down to him or her from the leadership team), while the latter is more of a bottom-up and sideways process.

MBO is tied to compensation, while OKR (usually) isn't
Pay rise and bonus decisions are heavily influenced by MBO - an individual's annual performance determines their compensation. As I've written about extensively, this can lead to some skewed results, and not necessarily the desired performance improvement.

OKR is divorced from compensation - or, at least, that's the idea. Because OKRs tend to be quite aggressive and aspirational (see the next point below), they are not tied to compensation. The idea is to aim high, try new things and push boundaries, not to determine how big Kevin's bonus should be this year.
MBO is naturally risk-averse, while OKR is aggressive and aspirational
When compensation is linked to objectives, as it is in MBO, the expectation is that people will achieve their objectives in full. Otherwise, it's a reduced bonus for you, Kevin. Therefore, with MBO, people are expected to achieve their objectives, and this means objectives are often "safe".

OKR is quite radically different in that it's okay to not achieve all of your objectives. The goals should be aggressive, aspirational and tough (although not impossible) to achieve, so getting only 60% or 70% of the way still represents great performance. This makes perfect sense if you think about it; consistently achieving 100% of your objectives means you're not being challenged. There's a willingness to let people fail (at least, in part) with OKR, and this encourages innovation.

In conclusion, while MBO remains a popular way of setting goals and measuring performance, the OKR approach is gaining a lot of traction. And with good reason. Particularly because of its more regular review cycle and aspirational quality (and, let's be honest, its association with Google), I think we'll be hearing a lot more about OKR in the near future.

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MBO (which stands for "management by objectives") has been a popular management tool for decades. But there's an alternative approach that's gaining a lot of traction at the moment: OKR (or "objectives and key results"). If you've read anything about OKRs, you might have noticed it has some distinct similarities to MBO.

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10 Tips for Setting and Meeting Your Corporate OKR Goals - posted

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10 Tips for Setting and Meeting Your Corporate OKR Goals - posted

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When setting up goals and OKRs for the organization, there is the possibility of failure. This article lists the different ways organizations should set their OKRs and meet them.

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Specific goals lead to successful management outcomes. Yet, many companies fail to set objectives and key results (OKR) goals. Meanwhile, of the companies that do set these goals, many still fail to implement a management strategy that keeps people focused on them. Goals provide managers and employees with direction, reminding them to stay focused on productive tasks that are central to their company's success. They also tend to be used by the more successful companies, including Google, which widely popularized its OKR goal-setting and performance management system. The combined impact of carefully aligned goals at all hierarchical and departmental levels is enough to make or break a career, a fiscal quarter or sometimes even a company altogether.

It is difficult to be motivated without a purpose, and it is impossible to tell whether goals are being achieved without a measurable sense of progress in mind. Here are some tips that will come in handy during your goal-setting process.

1. Use SMART Criteria

Using this criteria is a a great place to start. SMART stands for specific, measureable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. SMART criteria applies well to OKRs because the KRs (Key Results) are written in a SMART way. Specific goals set a clear criteria that allow for more accurate performance. Measurability is a similar means of tracking progress and holding people accountable. While aspirational goals are sometimes important, goals should not be completely unrealistic. Screening for goal relevance and time specificity are also key elements of goal-setting. The reality of harsh market competition means that time should never be squandered.

2. Weekly Check-Ins Make a Huge Difference

You should always know what your top goals are. Often times, a surprisingly short 10-minute check-in will help you stay on-task. What is a weekly OKR goal check-in? It's simple-you just invest 5 to 10 quick minutes at the end of your week going over your goals and updating the measurable progress (i.e. the key results) towards these quarterly OKR goals.

3. Take a Break

It may sound excessive to some, but truly motivated entrepreneurs and managers often use at least a small portion of their time away from work to get a sense of perspective and reconsider how things might be done differently when they return. With a little introspection, one might realize that being busy all the time does not necessarily lead to optimal productivity. Take a bit of time while you're away from work to give more consideration to how your efforts might be more directly linked to better business outcomes, and be specific in defining them.

4. Stay Focused on What Matters

Companies that go through periods of abundance sometimes begin to spend excessive resources on goals that are not related to revenue generation. Meanwhile, companies that are suffering are generally doing so for the exact same reason. This is often caused by selecting goals that aren't impactful or a failure to set goals altogether. Many of the most successful companies have both quarterly and annual goals that are outcome oriented, and this quarterly process means that goals continue to be updated, which is necessary in a sometimes fast-changing market environment. Have an adaptational mind-set that leads to a shift in priorities when necessary. This also means being willing to admit it when something isn't working.

5. Start with the Outcome in Mind

If you're not sure what to do next, start with the outcome in mind and project what would have to take place between now and a realistic future date in order for that goal to be met. If you're struggling, look at other companies that have achieved the goal you're working towards. An astonishing amount of success can be achieved by simply seeing what has worked for others in the past.

6. Simplicity

The goal creation process is less daunting when kept simple. This also increases the ease of understanding for your managers and employees. Don't worry about using too much technical language. While many or most goals will require technical expertise to accomplish, this is not the case for the language of the goals themselves.

7. Measurability

It's a good idea to have a system for tracking the progress of your goals. Without a system, it is very time-consuming and virtually impossible to track progress of goals of many different employees in the organization (will take up too much time doing it in Excel or waste too many emails). Also, since goals need to be specific and measurable, a system can help track all the metrics/KPIs. Otherwise leading managers will have no way of knowing whether they are making progress as fast as they need to.

8. Vision

A vision is required to understand what a company's future outcomes should look like. The reason the company was founded in the first place was that the founder(s) began with a vision. In order for goals to be understood, you need to think about what the future of the company ought to look like. A little imagination can be an incredible asset in the goal-setting process. It also helps you stay optimistic and gives employees a sense that things could be better in the future.

9. Employee Engagement and Motivation

You may have goals that seem perfectly suited to your company, but they won't work out unless both you and your employees maintain high levels of motivation in the process of executing on those goals. Employee engagement is directly correlated with giving people autonomy that extends to the level of their competence. It also is related to benefits, rewards and compensation. Leading managers at top-performing companies understand that they need to pay their employees well in order to remain competitive in bringing in top talent. Goals also help motivate employees by giving them a greater sense of unity and purpose.

10. Performance Reviews

Be sure to evaluate your success rate at the end of every quarter or half a year. Don't do it just once a year at the end. Those annual performance reviews can actually make your organization ineffective. The performance review must always start with OKR goals first and foremost and thus will tell you and your team what's working and what isn't. The most important thing is to monitor your goal progress often and also do your performance reviews more often than just once a year-say, quarterly or even monthly. That cadence will make your company more productive, effective, and much more efficient too. This emphasizes the importance of staying goal-oriented and shows all employees that the process is taken seriously by the CEO and the management.

If all these tips are implemented, you'll be headed in a good direction towards making considerable improvements in your company's efficiency and revenue generation. The best thing you could do is to sit down for a few moments right now and do some brainstorming, rather than putting it off for the future. As the saying goes, there's no time like the present.

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10 Tips for Setting and Meeting Your Corporate OKR Goals

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Specific goals lead to successful management outcomes. Yet, many companies fail to set objectives and key results (OKR) goals. Meanwhile, of the companies that do set these goals, many still fail to implement a management strategy that keeps people focused on them.

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Fundamentals of OKR Goal Setting - posted

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Fundamentals of OKR Goal Setting - posted

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This article goes through the essentials of goals in businesses and how it has evolved. It also discusses OKRs and what the best practices are for using OKRs.

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Posted at in by Performance Ari Kopoulos

OKR, which stands for objectives key results, describes a management style that connects employee work tasks to overall strategic company goals. The objectives key results approach can include both company objectives and personal goals for career development. Objectives are the goals that your company - or your employees personally - want to accomplish, and key results provide a roadmap of how to get there.

An illustrative example of the differences between objectives and key results is NASA's celebrated space program that used goal setting in a highly visible way - determining to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, which was the objective. A key result of NASA's goal setting was building a lunar module that weighed less than 40,000 pounds by December of 1965. Most company goals aren't quite this ambitious, but no organisation can accomplish its business objectives unless it first sets challenging goals. Goal setting is a highly publicised way of getting employees, managers, and executives to work towards common goals through objectives key results techniques.

Why Goals Matter

Statistics compiled by Kaplan and Norton shed light on why goal setting matters:

About 90 percent of companies fail to develop a comprehensive goal setting strategy.

When companies do develop a strategy, only about 5 percent of their employees truly understand it.

Only 25 percent of managers link work tasks to achieving company goals.

85 percent of executive teams only spend about one hour each month discussing OKR strategy.

Most organisations - about 60 percent - fail to link their budgets to support a goal setting strategy.

Using this methodology for achieving company objectives gets everyone on the same page for achieving company objectives while leaving room for each employee to work on personal goals as part of the larger context of advancing the company's agenda. Goal setting - when managed strategically - provides guidance, facilitates better planning, inspires employees and helps management evaluate and control performance to achieve company objectives.

Goal Setting Considerations

Developing a strategic approach to OKR simplifies achieving objectives key results. Some of the key considerations that are common to most businesses include:

Alignment
Aligning your goals with the skills of employees is a critical step. One recent study found that there's a strong correlation between financial success and developing a strategic goal setting process, andaligning goals with talent and skills offers the best chance of achieving objectives key results in the most efficient way possible.

Communication
Linking communications to achieve the company's objectives key results goals is also essential. All departments, company stakeholders and employees play a role in goal setting, and the success of the approach depends on maintaining clear and frequent communications. Communications might involve publishing content to your customers to increase product awareness or motivating employees to achieve concrete sales goals.

Discipline
Discipline, or willpower, is a powerful tool for achieving company objectives. The best methods of fostering discipline include organizing the work and workspace, removing the temptations that waste time, learning to tolerate long hours and emotional discomfort and not getting discouraged when over mistakes.

Measurement
The OKR approach lends itself to measuring your progress because you can set incremental objectives key results standards for yourself, each team member and specific company initiatives. It's important to assess what each person's abilities are so that you don't set impossible goals, and unexpected difficulties should be considered when measuring progress. Use clear measurementbenchmarks so that managers and team members understand what they're expected to achieve. Clear measurement criteria also simplify the process of measuring achievements against goals.

Engagement
Igniting workplaceengagement can encourage even the most disconnected employees to achieve greater success. This is an area where setting personal goals and encouraging career development can foster better employee engagement.

Performance
Performance management in OKR is the process of aligning company objectives and key results with performance. Managers can specify tasks and results, set targets, outline time frames and prioritise goals. Breaking down OKR into sections allows goals to be assigned to supervisors, employees, HR departments and executives because each stakeholder plays an important role inperformance management.

Culture
Culture is often neglected in OKR, but it's important to consider your company's culture when setting objectives and key results. Do any of your company's goals solidify or support the company's culture? If not, then your plans haven't been adequately developed.

Evolution of Goals

Finding the right OKR cadence for your company doesn't need to be set in stone. Quarterly, semi-annual and annual goals are common, but your company could benefit from regular check-ins on a daily or weekly basis, frequent performance reviews and periodic updates. One expert on the OKR framework recommends that companies begin by setting company and team goals and adding individual and personal goals at a later time as the process becomes clearer.

Other methods of updating objectives and key results include:

Drucker's MBO Approach
Drucker's Management by Objectives theory, which was developed by Peter Drucker, seeks a balance between achieving company objectives and each employee's personal goals. This approach involves integrating personal goals with company objects by setting goals for employees at the quantitative and qualitative levels. The goals must be challenging, and best practices include providing daily feedback. Rewards and recognition are essential motivating factors, and the approach depends on positive reinforcement instead of punishments.

Doran's SMART and SMARTER Goals
Goal setting is an important aspect of personal and business success, and George T. Doran developed SMARTER goal setting in 1981. Setting SMART goals involves choosing goals that are specific, meaningful, achievable, relevant and timely or time-bound. Doran's SMARTER goals go further by requiring decision-makers to evaluate and readjust their approach.

KPIs
If you decide to use OKR goals, it's important to set a range of metrics in your key performance indicators or KPIs. This approach provides greater utility because you can set specific goals while defining what happens if you fall short or exceed your goals significantly. These ranges of actions can be applied equally to KPIs and OKRs.

Balanced Scorecard
New goals must be measured by today's more precise analytic measurements. For example, it's impossible to measure newspaper success today by the standards of previous decades when news media commanded a larger percentage of advertising dollars. The Balanced Scorecard refers to setting realistic measurements based on today's expectations and indicators of success. Managers can use four perspectives for measuring performance that include customer performance and satisfaction, internal processes, improvement activities and innovation.

Objective Key Results

Google developed a grading system for objective key results when it adopted this management approach early in its operations. Google helped to define setting goals in ways that have resonated throughout the digital ecosphere. Instead of setting a goal to increase sales, try setting a goal of increasing sales by 30 percent and profit by 15 percent. Google recommends measuring OKR performances quarterly and annually at the company level, team level, managerial level and personal level. Employees should have at least four to six OKRs per quarter as their contributions to achieving company objectives. Google grades each OKR between 0 and 1. If employees consistently achieve a '1,' then the goals are considered too easy to achieve. An ideal score ranges between 0.6 and 0.7.
Goal setting and Behavioural Science
Psychological studies show that those who set goals achieve greater success than those who don't. Employees earn faster promotions and pay raises, and college professors earn tenure in record-setting times. Even students can learn up to 250 percent faster when they break down their studying habits into manageable, incremental goals. [6]

Best Practices for Using the OKR Framework

You can reach your objectives - personal and business - with the objectives key results approach. Leading companies such as LinkedIn and Google endorse the method, and you can enhance your success by using OKR best practices. Although there are many best practices that you can follow as your experience in this management process grows, the following practices are of major importance:

Make sure that your goals are aligned with your employees' skills and the company's technological capabilities.

OKR needs to be supported at the executive, managerial and personal level to succeed.

Your strategy must be adaptable in the face of a continuously evolving company environment and marketplace.

Your efforts should be progress-based and offer rewards instead of punishments for failure.

The best practices include developing aspirational OKRs for transformational change and support of the company's culture.

Agile Performance Management Using OKR

Agile performance management has become increasingly popular in today's rapidly evolving markets where new technologies are constantly and continuously developing. Using the objectives key results approach complements today's agile approach to performance management by setting concrete goals, monitoring performance and adjusting goals based on changing conditions. Regular check-ins, daily feedback and support for achieving personal goals helps to ensure success when using the objectives key results approach. If one key result doesn't work, it's easy to break it down into more easily achieved parts or reassign duties to employees who can better achieve the desired key result.

Goal setting with the OKR method is an excellent way to build a more favourable future for your company and better careers for your employees. It's impossible to predict the future with 100-percent accuracy, but you can facilitate a probable, possible or preferable future by setting SMARTER goals, using the OKR method and developing talent by encouraging workers to set personal goals and achieve key company objectives.

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Posted at in by Performance Ari Kopoulos OKR, which stands for objectives key results, describes a management style that connects employee work tasks to overall strategic company goals. The objectives key results approach can include both company objectives and personal goals for career development.

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by Foo Chek Wee

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Summary of Measure What Matters How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs.docx

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The article gives an overview as to what the Google OKR is. It discusses the benefits and how this is used. It is a very robust discussion about the nitty-gritty details of OKR. This also includes examples and templates that one can use in creating OKRs for the organization making every step actionable.

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Felipe Castro - OKR Coach, Speaker, Author

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OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal system used by Google and others. It is a simple tool to create alignment and engagement around measurable goals.

OKR: Google's approach to goal setting

The big difference from traditional planning methods? OKRs are frequently set, tracked, and re-evaluated - usually quarterly. OKR is a simple, fast-cadence process that engages each team's perspective and creativity.

Creating alignment in the organization is one of the main OKR benefits. The goal is to ensure everyone is going in the same direction, with clear priorities, in a constant rhythm.

OKR's original concept came from Intel and spread to other Silicon Valley companies. Google adopted OKR in 1999, during its first year. It supported Google's growth from 40 employees to more than 60,000 today.

Besides Google, other companies use OKR, including Spotify, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Airbnb.

But the OKR system is not only for digital companies. Walmart, Target, The Guardian, Dun and Bradstreet, and ING Bank are also using OKR.

The Components of OKRs

John Doerr is one of the most successful venture capitalists of all time. He started his career at Intel and went on to invest in companies such as Google and Amazon. Doerr, who introduced Google to OKR, has a formula for setting goals:
Doerr's Goal Formula I will ________ as measured by ____________.
A proper goal has to describe both what you will achieve and how you are going to measure its achievement. The key words here are "as measured by," since measurement is what makes a goal a goal. Without it, you do not have a goal, all you have is a desire.

Doerr's formula is the best way to explain the structure of an OKR:
I will (Objective) as measured by (this set of Key Results).
So, as the name implies, OKR has two components, the Objective and the Key Results:

Objectives are memorable qualitative descriptions of what you want to achieve. Objectives should be short, inspirational and engaging. An Objective should motivate and challenge the team

Key Results are a set of metrics that measure your progress towards the Objective. For each Objective, you should have a set of 2 to 5 Key Results. More than that and no one will remember them.

All Key Results have to be quantitative and measurable. As Marissa Mayer, a former Google's Vice President, said:

"If it does not have a number, it is not a Key Result."

Example One

First of all, we need an Objective. An example might be "Create an Awesome Customer Experience." This sounds great, but how would you know if the experience is awesome? Remember, without measurement you don't have a goal.

That is why we need Key Results. How can we measure if we are providing an awesome customer experience? Net Promoter Score and Repurchase Rate would be two good options. Do our customers feel so good about dealing with us that they would recommend us and buy again?

But measuring NPS and repeat purchases alone can send the wrong message. It might encourage us to make the customer happy at any cost. Therefore, we can include a countermeasure such as Customer Acquisition Cost. We want to make our customers happy while keeping the costs under control.

The complete example would be:

Objective: Create an Awesome Customer Experience
Key Results:

Improve Net Promoter Score from X to Y.

Increase Repurchase Rate from X to Y.

Maintain Customer Acquisition cost under Y.

Example Two

Now consider a team that wants to increase the engagement with a digital service:

Objective: Delight our customers
Key Results:

Reduce revenue churn (cancellation) from X% to Y%.

Increase Net Promoter Score from X to Y.

Improve average weekly visits per active user from X to Y.

Increase non-paid (organic) traffic to from X to Y.

Improve engagement (users that complete a full profile) from X to Y.

Once more having a set of Key Results helps create a healthy, sustainable OKR. We want to increase the weekly visits, but we want it to be organic, not through an expansion of marketing spend.

Key Results are crucial. Most of all, they define what we mean by "Delight our customers." A second team or company could use the same Objective with different Key Results.

What's unique about OKR?

There is not a single way to use OKR, each company or team can adapt and tweak it, creating different versions of it. But there are some core concepts:

Agile Goals

Instead of using annual static planning, OKR takes an agile approach. By using shorter goal cycles, companies can adapt and respond to change.

Simplicity

Using OKR is straightforward, and the OKRs themselves are easy to understand. Intel's original model set goals monthly, which required a lightweight process.

Companies that adopt OKR reduce the time spent setting goals from months to days. As a result, they invest their resources in achieving their goals and not on setting them.

Transparency

The primary purpose of OKR is to create alignment in the organization. To do so, OKRs are public to all company levels - everyone has access to everyone else's OKRs. The CEO's OKRs usually are available on the Intranet.

Nested Cadences

OKR understands that strategy and tactics have different natural tempos since the latter tends to change much faster. To solve this, OKR adopts different rhythms:

A strategic cadence with high-level, longer term OKRs for the company (usually annual).

A tactical cadence with shorter term OKRs for the teams (usually quarterly).

An operational cadence for OKR tracking results and initiatives (usually weekly).

Bidirectional Goal Setting

The traditional top-down cascading model takes too much time and does not add value. As Laszlo Bock, Google's former VP of People Operations wrote in his book Work Rules!:

"Having goals improves performance. Spending hours cascading goals up and down the company, however, does not. It takes way too much time and it's too hard to make sure all the goals line up. "

That is why OKRs do not cascade. OKR uses a market-based approach that is simultaneously bottom-up and top-down. The company sets the strategic OKRs that each team should use to draft their tactical OKRs.

Tactical OKRs should align to the company strategy to the other teams. In a typical company, around 60% of the OKRs are set bottom-up in agreement with the managers.

This model improves engagement while creating a better understanding of the strategy. It also makes the process simpler and faster as you won't spend time "cascading goals up and down."

Ambitious Goals: Moonshots and Stretch Goals

The philosophy behind OKR is that if the company is always reaching 100% of the goals, they are too easy.

Instead, OKR targets bold, ambitious goals. Besides aspirational objectives, OKR believes in enabling the team to set challenging goals. Goals that make the team rethink the way they work to reach peak performance.

Ambitious goals are so important that Google's "Ten things we know to be true." mentions them directly:

"We set ourselves goals we know we can't reach yet because we know that by stretching to meet them we can get further than we expected."

OKR's ambitious goals are known as moonshots or stretch goals. The usual recommendation is that in average you should achieve only 60-70% of them.

But that does not apply to all OKRs, as some goals should be predictable. That is why is important to understand the difference between moonshots and roofshots.

Decoupling Rewards

Separating OKRs from compensation and promotions is crucial to enable ambitious goals. Employees need to know they will not lose money if they set ambitious goals. It is hard to set moonshots when you need the bonus to pay for your kids' college.

Companies should reward employees based on their impact on the business. As Andy Grove, Intel's former CEO, wrote in his book High Output Management:

"[OKR] should be just one input used to determine how well an individual is doing."

OKR is a management tool, not an employee evaluation tool.

Adopting OKR

Adopting OKR is a journey, not an event. As in any cultural transformation, change does not happen overnight. But it is possible to modify the company's dynamics in a few months, aligning and engaging the team.

Furthermore, you should customize OKR to your organization, as this framework explains.

Common OKR mistakes
1) Using OKR as a task list.
Use OKR to measure if you are adding value, not if you are delivering tasks. Therefore, you need to understand the difference between Value-based and Activity-based Key Results.
2) Setting too many OKRs.
This mistake is a common consequence of the first one. Rather than being a laundry list of every single thing you do, OKR lists your top priorities. OKR is your definition of what most important during that quarter.

Even if you are using Value-based Key Results, you need focus, or your team will not remember their OKRs.
3) Not aligning your OKRs
OKR is an alignment tool, so you should never set your OKRs in isolation. You have to talk to the other teams.
4) "Set it and Forget it."
OKRs are not New Year Resolutions. Without regular follow-through, you will never achieve them.

Tips for writing good OKRs

For Objectives:

First of all, Objectives should be simple, short and easy to memorize. If you have to stop to breathe while reading your Objective, you are doing it wrong.

Second, Objectives shouldn't be boring. They can fit the organizational culture and be informal and fun. You can use slangs, internal jokes and even profanity - whatever fits your culture.

For Key Results:

Separate metrics from initiatives

Set few of them. Usually between 2 and 5 per objective.

You can also use some OKR tools to help you understand the goal system.

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OKR: Learn Google's Goal System with Examples and Templates

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OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal system used by Google and others. It is a simple tool to create alignment and engagement around measurable goals. The big difference from traditional planning methods? OKRs are frequently set, tracked, and re-evaluated - usually quarterly.

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All About OKRs: How To Set Them, Achieve Them, And Track Them In Trello - posted

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All About OKRs: How To Set Them, Achieve Them, And Track Them In Trello - posted

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This article is written by Kevan Lee of Buffer. It briefly goes into what OKRs are and its benefits. He also shows how Buffer uses OKRs in an organization perspective starting from top-level OKRs trickled down to employees. It guides you with how Buffer uses Trello to setup and track their OKRs including using some checklists and charts.

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So you want to go places?

We do, too!

We have big plans at Buffer to build a social media tool that is as ubiquitous for social marketers as Google Analytics is to website owners. It's a big, hairy, audacious goal, right? How do we even begin to work toward something like that?

We also have big marketing plans to ship major projects (courses!), explore new channels (Snapchat!), and not spend all day in Slack (single-tasking!). It's tough to stay on track. How do we prioritize when every goal is so exciting and, well, so big?

Sound familiar? Imagine having a way to reach the goals you set (no matter how large), and stay on track all the way there.

Our solution these days is to focus on OKRs, a rigorous method of goal-setting and progress-tracking that we've found to have a great impact on our focus, excitement, and results. Read on to see exactly how OKRs work for us at Buffer, from how we chose them to how we track them.

An OK-What? A Brief History And Definition Of OKRs

OKRs stand for Objectives and Key Results. The Objectives tend to be the desired outcomes that you want, and the Key Results are the measurable ways you know you're on track to reach them.

Put another way ...

An Objective helps answer the question, "Where do I want to go?"

A Key Result helps answer, "How will I know I'm getting there?"

Here's what OKRs look like in practice:
Source: https://blog.weekdone.com/introduction-okr-objectives-key-results/
OKRs arrived at Google in 1999 when VC John Doerr introduced them to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They've been used at Google ever since - and it seems Google has done quite well with growth since the 90s. Talk about social proof!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJB83EZtAjc
For a look at how the company implements their OKR processes, Rick Klau of Google Ventures Startup Lab describes what OKRs look like (using San Francisco 49er references) and how Google thinks about setting and tracking them:

3 Reasons Why We Do OKRs At Buffer

Teal (based on the book Reinventing Organizations )

No managers , very flat structure, almost Holacracy

No goals

Lots of goals

OKRs

At the same time, we've grown quite fast. The team was 17 people when I joined two years ago. There are 82 of us now.

As we grew and as we dreamed, we felt that a system might be useful for helping us all stay on the same page with the big goals we wanted for the company. We've used OKRs to chart our path toward these goals, setting them in each quarter of 2016. Here's what we've found most valuable:
The main goal of OKRs is to connect company, team and personal objectives to measurable results, making people move together in right direction.
OKRs Increase Clarity

And when you get a team of dozens or hundreds all moving as one, you achieve some pretty incredible results!

I felt this clarity right away with our first quarter (January to March) OKRs at Buffer. I was working to create customer case studies, which is a great and fun task on its own, and which became all the more paramount with the perspective gained from OKRs. I could draw a line from my OKR of case studies all the way up to our company-wide OKR for revenue:

Case studies lead to ...

middle-funnel, bottom-funnel traffic, which leads to ...

higher conversion rates, which lead to ... (a marketing-wide OKR)

more trial starts, which means ....

An increase in monthly recurring revenue, or MRR (a company-wide OKR)

OKRs Increase Focus
"Does this get me closer to meeting my goals?"
Among the best practices for OKRs is to revisit them regularly - ideally every week. I have even found myself revisiting them daily.

Whenever I was faced with a new task or felt myself drifting with my work, I would stop and ask:

Then sure enough I'd pull out my OKR Trello board (more on that below) and check to see where my current tasks fit within my stated goals. If things were in line, I could get back to work and feel confident that I was moving in the right direction. If there was conflict, I would have a built-in excuse for moving on to other tasks.

OKRs Increase Collaboration

This is probably a good lesson to learn early (thank you, OKRs!) - I can't do everything alone.

Many of my personal OKRs relied on the involvement of my teammates. I couldn't set a new landing page live because I don't have front-end development skills. I couldn't create three to five new infographics because I can't design one.

We noticed these arrangements were common across the board at Buffer, so we made sure to include a period of negotiations before finalizing any OKRs. You'd simply get in touch with the people you'd need to work with on these projects and find a common ground with them so that the work ended up on each person's OKR list.

How We Do OKRs For Marketing At Buffer

A couple weeks before the start of a new quarter, we'll all take time to reflect on what we want to achieve in the coming months. Joel and Leo will help set the company-wide OKRs, then we'll work together as a marketing team to negotiate what OKRs might look like in our area.

Here is a quick list of some of our top tips for setting OKRs at Buffer:

Objectives are to be ambitious and should feel slightly uncomfortable.

Key results are measurable; they must have a number.

Ideally, you'll only achieve 70% of your OKRs.

Getting 100% means your OKRs aren't ambitious enough.

Low grades aren't to be punished.

Be careful not to set too many. Generally, a maximum of five objectives with a max of five key results each is enough.

And probably our biggest learning with OKRs: They can (and should) change during the quarter. Especially at a SaaS startup, things happen fast, we learn fast, and the objectives we set may not be the right ones in a few weeks' time.

Our marketing OKRs for quarter two (April through June) included five different objectives that we were excited to take on, each with three to five key results attached. Here's one OKR for what we hoped to do on Medium last quarter:

Setting them is really fun. It is a chance to dream big, reflect on where you're at and where you want to go, and brainstorm how to get there.

Also quite fun? Tracking them! I've found a lot of joy in of the system we use for our marketing OKRs.

How To Track OKRs In Trello

^ our Buffer marketing OKRs

At Buffer, we have the freedom to track our OKRs however we feel best. There are some great tools out there for robust OKR tracking. I found everything I needed in a Trello board. Here's how I put together the board for Buffer's marketing OKRs:

Initial Setup

The basic layout is organized like this:

Each Objective is summarized in a list title

Each Key Result gets its own card under its Objective list

Each card has a rich description of the OKR details

Labels show the status of the Key Result

One of my biggest goals with the Trello board was to make it a) useable, b) scannable, and c) pretty. Fortunately, all three wishes tied nicely together!

I knew I couldn't fit a whole Objective into a list title. Something like, "When people think about companies that are some of the best on Medium, they should name Buffer as the #1 brand that comes to mind" just wouldn't fit very neatly. So, I summarized. Each Trello list name is a high-level synopsis of the Objective, sometimes captured in as little as one or two words.

Similarly, each Key Result receives its own Trello card, with a highly-abbreviated description on the front:

Then within the card, I go into greater detail about the full Objective and Key Result:
All of our color-coded Key Result status labels.
I also use a very simple label system, showing how far along we are with each Key Result:

Planning: "We haven't started yet, but we sure are thinking about it lots!"

In Progress: "Currently working on it!" (This is our most-used label.)

Done: "Success!"

Done (for now): A nice way of saying, "we didn't quite reach this one ... but we might someday."

Checklists

Here's one for the result "Run 8 experiments to grow traffic towards the social blog":

For those results that are not so easy to turn into to-do lists, we have a bit of a different tracking setup. The checklist becomes a series of mile markers throughout the quarter, helping us stay accountable for checking in regularly and updating the card with the latest stats or activity:

Waterfall Charts

We've set a number of target goals for the quarter, things like "grow sessions to our new posts by 30% in the first 28 days" or "get to 150,000 sessions per month on the Open blog."

These goals are exciting to stretch for! And one thing I'm keen to ensure is that we're not in a place where we set the OKR in April and don't realize until late June that we're not even in the ballpark.

What we've found works well here is a waterfall chart. You can see them attached to a number of cards on our board:

A waterfall chart is a pair of line graphs, one showing where you are when you set your goal and where you want to be at the end of the goal period, and the other line showing your progress throughout the period.

1. Set a goal, based on a time period;

2. Determine how much daily progress you need to make in order to reach the goal;

3. Chart this progress on a line graph;

4. Track your daily progress; and,

5. Add this progress to the line graph, too.

The variations we've added to the chart came from a realization we made in quarter one. The idea of OKRs is to set aggressive, ambitious goals to hit, with the understanding that you're expected to reach only 70 percent of your OKRs in a quarter. So we added this element into our waterfalls, which now include three different growth lines:

70% - On track

85% - Wow, going great

100% - Home run! Fireworks! Party rock!

So here's what a chart of ours looked like early in the quarter:

And how do we add it into Trello?

Now, It's Up To You

If you're looking for a way to jumpstart your productivity, your focus, and your results, we've found a goal-setting system like OKRs to be a real boost. There can be a lot to dig into with OKRs, though we've found that just these basics can be enough to get the ball rolling toward achieving great things:
Have you tried out OKRs at your organization? Any other goal-setting tips or tricks you've learned? It'd be great to hear from you in the comments! Next: The 4 Mistakes You're Constantly Making In Your Marketing Campaign

1. Set ambitious goals with measurable results.

2. Place them into Trello.

3. Check-in regularly to see your progress.

Then, when the quarter is up, celebrate!

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All About OKRs: How To Set Them, Achieve Them, And Track Them In Trello

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So you want to go places? We do, too! We have big plans at Buffer to build a social media tool that is as ubiquitous for social marketers as Google Analytics is to website owners. It's a big, hairy, audacious goal, right? How do we even begin to work toward something like that?

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MEET YOUR HR GOALS ON TIME WITH THIS FREE EXCEL OKR TEMPLATE - posted

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MEET YOUR HR GOALS ON TIME WITH THIS FREE EXCEL OKR TEMPLATE - posted

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This article goes into details with how HR departments can make use of OKRs. It gives examples of HR objectives and key results using the OKR system.

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The Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a way to plan and manage goals that more and more small and medium business are using for their usefulness and efficacy. For the Human Resources Department can be very helpful to meet objectives in less time and less effort.

Summary:
What are OKRs
How to apply the OKR methodology in your SMB?
OKRs for human resources
Download the excel template

In essence, when working with OKRs the Key Results (KR) are classified by the goals the company or department wants to achieve. the difference with other systems is in how clear that objectives are detailed and the steps to reach them. The OKR aren't more than a route for the company to evaluate in a concise and agreed upon way the objectives to meet.

What are the OKRs

OKR, Objectives and Key Results, are defined as the technique to plan and establish goals in any department or kind of company. This system got popular thanks to Intel and Google, two of the big companies using the OKR system. It's a very easy system, you just write the objectives to meet and the quantifiable actions needed to meet them.

These are some of the main characteristics your OKRs should have:

Quantifiable: All the detailed OKR should be quantifiable and measurable. "Get more clients" isn't measurable. Every Key Result must be accompanied by a number, either a fixed quantity, a percentage or a date. Make sure you can measure your results.

Qualified: When the time you established to meet your OKR, give yourself a qualification. At the end of the quarter or the year set a note for each objective where 0 is "not even close" and 1 is "objective met".

Public: All goals must be accessible for everyone on the company. Not only directors or managers, every employee should know them. Visibility furthers collaborations between people and departments and offers a clear idea of the goals.

Ambitious: It's always better to fall short than reach something without effort. If your team o company don't find any difficulties to meet their goals it may be you are not reaching far enough. OKR should be ambitious and a little bit higher than your previsions. Think big and be fearless.

How to apply the OKR methodology to your SMB?

It really is very easy.
One of the particularities that distinguishes OKR from other planning strategies is that objectives are discussed in a circular way between the employees and the directors and at least half the goals are proposed from bottom to top.
Employees are a part of the process of defining goals. The ideal is to define from 3 to 5 ambitious, but realistic, objectives following the above specifications. Once set these objectives, the next step is to detail de results to reach them. By each goals, we'll think at least two measurable results.

For example:
Objective: Improve employee engagement and their happiness at the company.
KR1: Plan 3 team meetings every month with motivational talks.
KR2: Interview 15 employees to know their needs and preoccupations.
KR3: Offer 2 yoga classes each month to the employees as a benefit.
KR4: Pass around a satisfaction survey each month and improve a 10%

These are thought as quarterly objectives so every three months an evaluation of the KR must be conducted to determine the qualifications of the goal (0-1). If the final number is close to 1 the objectives have been reached!

OKRs for Human Resources, the best way to meet your objectives efficiently

When redacting a plan for the department of human resources is very important to have in mind that any OKR must be aligned with the general goals of the company. The HR Plan must be design to be a part of the bigger picture.
If you need some OKR examples for the Human Resources department, here you'll find a few:

1. Talent Acquisition
Objective: Recruit and retain employees to satisfy company needs.
KR1: Increase the percentage of active open positions in the company's job board.
KR2: Reach the employee retention rate higher than 75%
KR3: Increase the percentage of managers with open positions with the HR department help.

2. Employee motivation and loyalty
Objective: Improve employee compensation without increasing company costs to motivate employees and promote company loyalty.
KR1: Activate 3 flexible retribution plans before the month ends.
KR2: Offer 1 benefit to all company employees.
KR3: Offer courses and training to the employees.

3.Company Culture
Objective: Maintain a positive workplace environment based on the company values.
KR1: Increase a 20% the percentage the employees that agree on a positive workplace environment according to the survey.
KR2: Give employees a special space or room to relax before the year ends.

4.HR department eficiency.
Objectives: Decrease the time destined to holiday and leaves administration.
KR1: Implement a software to manage company leaves before Christmas.
KR2: Spend a 50% less time between the time the employee asks for a leave and the time they get it (now a week).
KR3: Spend 4 hours less managing leaves thanks to the software without increasing response time.

If you want to improve fast motivation, workplace environment and spend less time managing documents, take a look at what Factorial can do for you.

How can this Human Resources OKR excel template help you.

With this free Human Resources OKR excel template, you can meet your objectives in less time and effort. In Factorial we've created this template specially for the companies that want to improve their human resources management and to help them on their day to day.
If you want a template to start detailing your human Resources objectives with the OKR system you can download here the free excel template: Human-Resources-OKR-Template-By-Factorial.

¡But to meet your objectives you need time! Register now and use your time for what really matters, your employees not your papers ??

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Meet your Human Resources goals with our free OKR template

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The Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a way to plan and manage goals that more and more small and medium business are using for their usefulness and efficacy. For the Human Resources Department can be very helpful to meet objectives in less time and less effort.

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This is a guide that takes you to the different examples of how OKRs are used in different departments. It has concrete examples that can be used by customer service, marketing, sales, engineering, and other departments,

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Setting OKRs, especially for the first timers can be a daunting task. Here are a few OKR examples for your easy reference.

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When using OKRs for the HR department, this post has it all covered. It has different examples and templates on how OKRs can be implemented in HR, such as for hiring, culture, and employee retention.

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OKRs and Continuous Performance Management | 7Geese

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Human Resources OKR Examples: How to Write OKRs

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Using OKRs is a great way to provide focus and align priorities with the rest of your company. Here you'll find extensive Human Resources OKR examples.

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OKRs Examples and Guide to How to Set Goals for All Teams - posted

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OKRs Examples and Guide to How to Set Goals for All Teams - posted

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This is a play-by-play guide that takes teams on how to set their own OKRs. What's great about this guide is that it makes setting OKRs a team effort that takes teams through every step.

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For remote teams, start by creating a collaboration document, like a Trello board or Confluence page. You can use the templates provided, if you'd like, or create your own.

For in-person teams, create a collaboration that you plan to share on a screen during the session.

As a team, decide what period of time you're setting OKRs for. If your company runs on quarters, quarterly is a good start.

Share any information that will help inform your OKRs with your team before the meeting. This could include broader company goals, project roadmaps, customer metrics, customer feedback, or previous quarters' OKRs.

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OKR Guide & Template | Learn How to Set Team Goals

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For remote teams, start by creating a collaboration document, like a Trello board or Confluence page. You can use the templates provided, if you'd like, or create your own. For in-person teams, create a collaboration that you plan to share on a screen during the session.

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OKR Examples for Marketing, Sales, HR, etc, - posted

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OKR Examples for Marketing, Sales, HR, etc, - posted

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This post gives examples of how OKRs can be implemented in every aspect of the organization. It starts with the general OKR of the company and moves down to different departments such as sales, HR, marketing, and others.

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OKR Examples for Marketing, Sales, HR, Product, etc. | Goalify

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How to effectively set up your OKRs and some OKR examples of Goalify for your HR, Marketing, Sales, etc. team.

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OKR Goals: Practical Examples For Companies and Startups - posted

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OKR Goals: Practical Examples For Companies and Startups - posted

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This article gives examples on how companies can set up OKR goals. This gives organizations an idea on how to write their own using the most common goals.

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OKR Goals: Practical Examples For Companies and Startups

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When getting started with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) the most common questions we get at Steer are: To answer these questions we are launching a series of practical and comprehensive OKRs...

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Webinar: How To Use OKR Goals to Align & Grow in 2018 - posted

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Webinar: How To Use OKR Goals to Align & Grow in 2018 - posted

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This is a webinar that goes into using OKRs and how to launch them in your organization. It shows data on how companies are not making the most out of their workforce. It also discusses the OKR mistakes to avoid.

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Webinar: How To Use OKR Goals to Align & Grow in 2018 [September 21, 2017]