“Companies with highly engaged teams outperform their peers by 147% earnings per share.”  

Source: Gallup  

Objectives and key results help in sustaining and thriving businesses, no matter what storm you are going through. When your business confronts difficult times, change your strategy and implement them using OKR. Objectives and Key Results can align your business objectives with employee goals and keep your teams engaged and focused. Engaged teams produce exceptional results, which in turn, boost the productivity and profitability of the organization.   

Objectives and Key Results are people-centric business strategy as it promotes transparency and open work culture. Employees also learn the concept of prioritization. OKR is an agile and powerful goal-setting framework that provides direction and guidance to all the employees and creates new realities in the organization with disruptive changes.   

“OKRs is a critical thinking framework and ongoing discipline that seeks to ensure employees work together, focusing their efforts to make measurable contributions that drive the company forward.”  

-Ben Lamorte  

What are objectives and key results?  

Objectives are the business objectives to be achieved in a quarter (the time differs with each business). The key results help you in measuring your progress toward that objective. For example, everyone did their best to make their entire workforce work remotely. In this case, the OKRs would be like:  

Objective:  

Make all the employees work from home in 10 days.  

Key Results:  

1. Provide the systems and laptops to employees in the last 4 days. 
2. Implement the required tech tools in the system to collaborate and communicate seamlessly. This has to be done by Saturday. 
3. Create the workflow and targets for every individual in the next 4 days (Date) to ensure business continuity and on-time completion of projects without any disruption.  

Now, the lockdown restrictions are being lifted, and the workforce is gradually going back to the office. The management has to prepare to welcome the employees back with the social distancing norms in place.  

Objective:  

Bring back the employees to the office without violating the public health guidelines.  

Key Results:  

1. Create shift plans and mail it to every employee. Mention the names of the employees, their shifts, and the days they are supposed to come to office. Send it on Monday. 
2. Make sure the workflow is not interrupted by setting up the systems and configuring the tools by (Date) 
3. Arrange a meeting and brief the employees on the company’s plans. Hold the meeting for two hours on Friday. Prepare the agenda and mail it to every employee. The hygiene guidelines to be followed within the organization should also be spoken of. Conduct a test by the end of the meeting. The pass percentage should 95% 

Every business unit, department, and team can align their goals with the above-mentioned overall business objective. This agile approach is one of the key factors for the success of OKRs. Objectives and Key Results is a strategy that can be used during emergency times too. 

HANDPICKED RELATED LINKS:  

• 5 Steps Action Plan to Roll Out OKR in Your Organization  
• Leaning into OKR – A Smart Way To Reach Your Business Goals  
• OKR – Your Savior in Crisis Time 

OKR’s ancestor – Management by Objectives (MBO)  

Peter Drucker, the Father of Modern Management came up with Management by Objectives in the 1950s. The organization sets goals that are agreed to by both employees and management, and the strategic framework encouraged measuring progress and rewarding the exceptional workers. However, MBO had its downsides by not taking the employee’s well-being into consideration. The time constraint and heavy workload put the employees under pressure, and they try to achieve the target compromising the quality and work ethics.    

History of OKRs  

Later, Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, improved the model and introduced OKR (Objectives and Key Results) to the organization. John Doerr, an employee in the organization, became the evangelist of OKR and carried it with him wherever he went. Google’s Larry Page was so impressed with the framework and leveraged its power to take Google to heights. Larry Page owes the success of Google to OKR in John Doerr’s book “Measure What Matters.”   

Many Global Organizations like LinkedIn, Twitter, Airbnb, Adobe, Amazon, DropBox use OKRs. Objectives and Key Results can give excellent results to companies if implemented and used effectively.  

Dos of Objectives and Key Results  

Set Time-Bound Goals  

When you decide on an objective, set a deadline to achieve the goal. If you do not, employees might work on that for eternity. It is not their fault, but that’s because they lack direction. The time-bound goals motivate the employees to achieve the objective before the deadline and also, the productivity of the workforce increases due to the focused approach of the team.  

Clear Communication on the Goals  

Make sure that employees have clearly understood the goals of the organization. If not, the understanding might mislead them leading to the collapse of an entire fiscal year. On the positive side, if communicated effectively, the employees try their best to achieve the objective and take the organization a step forward together.  

Alignment, Autonomy, and Accountability. Triple A’s to Achieve the Best  

When a business sets its objective, the units, departments, teams, and every individual set their goals and check whether they are aligned with the company’s objective. Transparency helps in checking the alignment. Besides, giving autonomy in setting the goals and holding the employees accountable for the goals help to motivate the workforce and keep them engaged. This also helps to bring the best out of employees as the company trusts its employees. An employee who feels cherished and trusted performs well.   

Be Patient and Flexible  

A novel strategy in an organization takes time to give results. Do not keep changing the OKRs. Be patient and measure the progress through continuous check-ins. If the key results do not lead you in the right direction, then change the key results so that you can reach the objective within the stipulated time. When business conditions change, be resilient and change OKRs to meet the new demands.  

Don’ts of Objectives and Key Results  

It is always the best to know the don’ts rather than dos. It prevents you from making the most obvious mistakes.   

Some of the don’ts are as follows.  

Creating Unachievable Goals  

Setting too aspirational goals than committed goals can discourage your entire workforce. It burns them out. The employees either abandon the goals or develop a defensive attitude and blame others for the failure of goals. Do not become over-ambitious with the goals. Set realistic objectives that will help the organization to progress slowly and steadily. Remember, success does not happen overnight but happens only over time.  

Not Assigning a Directly Responsible Individual  

When you set a key result, assign it to an individual and instruct him to keep you updated on the progress. If you do not assign, no one will take responsibility for the target, and eventually, your company fails to meet its objective.   

Do not Follow Only Top-Down Approach in Setting OKRs  

Your employees are on the frontline, and they have a better knowledge of what the customer needs. Only when you understand the demands, you can create a better product or service. Therefore, follow both top-down and bottom-up approaches in setting OKRs. Taking the inputs of employees in setting objectives helps to motivate the employees and engage them.  

Treating OKRs as Tasks  

Objectives and Key Results are not your everyday tasks. They are outcome-based, not output-based. Tasks are outputs, whereas key results are outcomes. Do not treat key results as tasks.  

Setting Vague Key Results  

When you set a key result, numerically define them. Numerically defined key results help in increased completion rates and ensure progress toward the objective.  

Setting too Many Objectives  

Do not set too many objectives. If you set more than 3 objectives, you might forget them, and your objectives become your distant dreams rather than your business growth. When you start with OKRs, set only one OKR. Once you have learned the process, you can increase it to 3, but not more than that.  

Not Providing Enough Resources  

When you set OKRs, provide the required number of people to achieve the objectives and key results. In addition to that, provide the necessary tech tools to increase the productivity of the team. At the same time, sandbagging should not be done. It will reduce the profits of the organization.  

100% equals failure  

Do not set business regular goals. Set stretch goals, and reward your team if they achieve 0.7 of it on a scale of 0 to 1. Achieving 100% implies that the goal is not challenging enough and achieving below 0.5 shows that the employee has not tried enough.  

Once you follow these rules in implementing OKRs, your organization can definitely thrive, no matter what the condition is.   

Stay safe and keep your workforce engaged and focused!