OKRs are more than just a way to set ambitious goals — it’s a framework that helps you focus your attention on the most crucial aspects of your business. Tracking OKRs regularly can assist you in identifying where you are falling short and what to improve.
In this guide, you’ll learn about the strategies that will enable you to achieve your goals and how to track OKRs successfully.
Who Can Use OKRs
With businesses expanding exponentially, change is the only constant in today’s world. Unfortunately, many companies react slowly to these developments because they are unsure how to handle them. As a result, they can’t help but feel exposed, which has a negative impact on their profitability, sustainability, and staff engagement.
Excellent execution of good ideas is made possible by the OKR framework. Unlike KPIs, OKR goals are bolder and more ambitious. Setting OKR goals makes it possible for a business to be adaptable, flexible, current, and experience exponential growth. They can help you boost high-performing teams and tighten employee engagement.
Although OKRs were widely employed by technology businesses initially, any company that appreciates the ideas of openness, responsibility, and accessibility can embark on an OKR journey. Companies like Allbirds, Google, and Netflix, are some of the top companies that use OKRs.
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How To Plan and Track Company OKRs
Since aligning and cascading OKRs can be quite complicated, OKRs should be viewed as company-wide initiatives where various functional teams work toward an objective and are accountable for the key results. OKRs are therefore viewed as team OKRs rather than individual OKRs. Cross-functional team OKRs are often considered to work best.
That being said, if you want to improve the results of your work, keeping track of your OKRs is essential. This practice will help you identify what and how to assess, and provide a clearer understanding of your team’s overall progress. You can effectively design and track OKRs using these nine best practices.
Focus on Descriptive Objectives and Measurable Outcomes
Utilize concise, descriptive language to pinpoint the attributes you wish to improve when writing your objectives. You should then use the descriptions to write well-informed key results. Conversely, key results should be expressed in measurable, quantitative terms that support the company objectives.
Write Benchmarks for Every Key Result
Not every key result necessitates the same level of effort. For instance, if you’ve written an objective with four key results, it doesn’t mean you’re halfway done when two of the key results are achieved. Using weighted measurements for every key result will help you compute your progress more accurately and provide a more precise progress indicator.
Set Accountability and Responsibility for Every Key Results
There will probably be several teams or individuals allocated to the key results. To confirm that all participants can contribute to ensuring that all associated activities are performed, clearly outline the expectations and obligations for every key result.
Loop In the Whole Team
Not all OKRs will require the entire team to be involved in every OKR, but communicating the objectives and key results transparently will keep everyone informed about the company priorities and the goals you’re trying to achieve.
Schedule Regular Performance Reviews
The best company strategy to monitor progress and analyze the current success rates is to examine your OKRs regularly. To review your OKRs, schedule monthly, weekly, or daily meetings, based on the set timelines.
Discuss What You’ve Learned
It is crucial to revisit the key results achieved, along with the steps used to achieve them and what you can learn from them. For example, one of your key results for the quarter was to boost the number of newsletter subscribers by 20%, but you’ve only boosted it by 17%. If you want the team benefits from this outcome, talk about why this key result was unsuccessful.
Examples for Company OKRs
Each company’s OKR can focus on outcomes in different areas, such as revenue, brand, product, culture, service, and growth initiatives. Here are some of the top company OKR examples that can help you successfully implement yours.
Growth Company OKR Examples
Objective: Expand into the Italian market and achieve a 20% market share in 12 months.
Key Result 1: Conduct a comprehensive market study by January 15.
Кey Result 2: Launch an Italian-language product version with the top 3 requested features by April 1.
Key Result 3: Train and employ 5 bilingual customer support reps by March 15.
Brand OKR examples
Objective: Maintain an awesome customer experience
Key Result 1: Accomplish a Net Promoter Score of at least 25
Кey Result 2: Boost Net Customer Retention to at least 95%
Key Result 3: Accomplish 85% or higher WAU for product engagement
Objective: Win customer love and trust
Key Result 1: Identify customer requirements and add design features accordingly
Кey Result 2: Address customer needs and pain points
Key Result 3: Enhance the implementation process for managed customers
Culture Company OKR examples
Objective: Create an excellent company culture
Key Result 1: Launch an OKR platform to nourish company transparency
Кey Result 2: Accomplish an Employee Pulse Survey score of at least 8 within 5 business days
Key Result 3: Celebrate 5 or more “small wins” in our weekly meetings.
Objective: Build an OKR-centered company culture
Key Result 1: Achieve an average of 80% progress on company OKRs
Кey Result 2: Ensure 90% of key results are updated every two weeks
Key Result 3: Achieve an OKR design score of 75 on average
Customer Service Company OKR Examples
Objective: Enhance consumer retention to boost the profit margins
Key Result 1: Enhance product onboarding
Кey Result 2: Create a long-term nurturing strategy
Key Result 3: Improve client lifetime by focusing on corporate MQLs
Product OKR examples
Objective: Make our product a “must have” product
Key Results 1: Grow from 1,000 to 3,000 users
Кey Results 2: Attain 5,000 engaged users
Key Results 3: Enhance consumer experience by implementing competitor features
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The Bottom Line
Company OKRs serve as the foundation for organizational, departmental, and individual activities by outlining the company’s top priorities. However, a company OKR program isn’t meant to cover everything your business needs to get done because having too many of them might undermine organizational effectiveness through complexity and complication. When appropriately implemented, company OKRs assist individuals in producing practical and motivated work and assist leadership in connecting with the most crucial business objectives.
