OKR has grown in popularity as a popular and successful goal-setting method. The attractiveness of OKR stems from its simplicity; it’s a compilation of best practises culled over 75 years and significantly reduced. The modern workplace is complex, which usually results in low employee engagement, unimplemented initiatives, and firms that fail to connect teams around shared goals and visions. Issues that stifle innovation, slow development, and prevent individuals from enjoying lives that are meaningful.

OKR is well-equipped to deal with these problems. This post will help you choose the right OKRs and set them up in a way that will guarantee your success.

Define OKR and why is it important?

OKR stands for objectives and key results, and it’s a goal-setting framework that helps firms define and manage their goals (or objectives). The framework is designed to help companies create long-term goals in days rather than months.

OKR has been around since the 1970s. Andy Grove came up with the concept, but it was popularised by John Doerr, one of Google’s earliest investors. OKR was quickly prioritised by Google, and companies like as LinkedIn, Twitter, Dropbox, Spotify, AirBnB, and Uber rapidly followed suit. The Objectives and Key Results (OKR) approach is a popular goal-setting technique that aids firms in developing and executing strategies. If effectively implemented, the framework provides a stronger emphasis on vital goals, more transparency, and better (strategic) alignment. OKR does this by concentrating people’s efforts on achieving common goals.

How to do OKRs

An OKR is made up of an Objective that tells you where you want to go and a number of Key Results that tell you how you’ll get there. Initiatives relate to all of the programmes and actions that will help you achieve your Key Results. To support a goal or vision, OKRs should be quantitative, adaptive, open, and aspirational. They’re frequently determined by management and aren’t tied to salaries or performance assessments. Finally, OKRs may help companies establish aspirational goals and then focus on achieving them over the course of a quarter.

OKRs in a nutshell:

• The goals are ambitious and may make you feel uneasy.
• The key outcomes should be measurable and straightforward to rate with a number (Google uses a scale of 0–1.0).
• OKRs are made public so that everyone in the company may see what everyone else is working on.
• The “sweet spot” for an OKR grade is 60%–70%; if someone routinely meets all of their goals, their OKRs aren’t ambitious enough, and they should think bigger.
• Low grades should be considered as information that may be used to improve the next set of OKRs.
• Employee evaluations are not the same as OKRs.
• How to do OKRs aren’t the same as a shared to-do list.

In practise, OKRs differ from other goal-setting strategies in that they strive to set extremely ambitious goals. When used in this way, OKRs can help teams focus on the big bets and achieve more than they thought was possible, even if they don’t completely reach the stated target. OKRs may help people and teams step out of their comfort zones, prioritise work, and learn from both triumphs and mistakes.