OKRs
7
min read
It is no longer an assumption that the traditional approach to annual goal setting and review has run its course. The VUCA world demands more quick and adaptable business models.
While the agile values and methodology was initially created for software delivery, you can apply the same to transform how you set and achieve your business goals.
In this article, we will focus on:
- Relevance of agile and OKRs in the VUCA world
- Importance of leveraging agile techniques for OKRs
- Best agile and OKR framework for growing organizations
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Why you need to reimagine goal setting in the VUCA world
Traditionally, goal setting has been a very static and long-term process for organizations. Here are a few key components of traditional goal setting and performance management:
- Annual or multi-year goals with little or no interventions at regular intervals to realign on changing priorities
- Top-down approach — goals being set by those at the top with minimal inputs from those working on the ground
- Only annual feedback cycles and the inability to identify or address challenges in real time
- Lack of flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances or situations, which are uncertain and ambiguous
This form of goal setting and performance management had relevance for organizations operating in steady and stable market conditions.
However, in today’s VUCA world, the pace of change is skyrocketing and organizations unable to tide with the same are finding it extremely difficult to survive, let alone thrive.
Some of the reasons to reimagine goal setting for VUCA world include:
- Increased globalization requires businesses to be agile and adapt to changes at all times
- Focus on creating short term goals and action plans
- Need to relook at business priorities due to changing market conditions and customer expectations
- Need to incorporate constant feedback from diverse stakeholders
- Need to focus on collaborative goal setting over top down command
Relevance of agile and OKRs for growing organizations
While it may not be apparent in the first look, agile and OKRs are quite complementary and combining the two can be a great step for growing organizations. Here’s why —
- OKRs can help you understand the end goal and envision what success will look like.
- On the other hand, the agile methodology can enable you to create the right roadmap with frequent experimentation to reach the OKRs successfully.
Here are a few reasons why you should combine agile and OKRs for your organization:
- Set shorter goals for each quarter with the flexibility to look at the results in real time
- Agile iterations based on learning which can be communicated across teams
- Shorter feedback cycles which prevent investment losses that might occur if the whole project/ goal has to be reworked
- Continuous improvement with frequent retrospectives which can enable you to reflect on what is working well
- Focus on collaborative goal setting and performance management with team autonomy
- Agile approach to progress tracking
How to use agile techniques for OKRs
Now that it is clear why working agile and OKRs together makes sense for growing organizations, let’s quickly explore the top ways in which you can apply agile techniques to your OKR framework to make goal setting and performance management suitable for the VUCA world.
Agile Value 1: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Ensure collaborative OKR setting, assigning OKR champions and the right team members to execute the same
- Facilitate clear understanding and communication of the intention and expectation behind each OKR and the responsibility for every team member
Agile Value 2: Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Focus on clear outcomes and key results instead of comprehensive literature on why something is important
- Facilitate shorter feedback cycles to gauge challenges early on and ensure feasibility of the OKRs
- Reduce administrative overheads and complex processes related to OKR setting and progress tracking by using a simple, integrated OKR tool
Agile Value 3: Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Ensure continuous development by taking real time feedback from internal customers i.e. stakeholders in the leadership
Agile Value 4: Responding to change over following a plan
- Facilitate dynamic planning over a static plan with quarterly OKRs
- Ensure adaptability to change, uncertainty and ambiguity
- Promote short cadence to gauge achievability and relevance of key results early on
Best agile and OKR framework
In this last section of agile and OKR for better goal setting and performance management, we will uncover the top framework.
We have combined the best components of different frameworks like waterfall goals, delivery agile, scaling, full stack agile, into a single framework with 5 major components that can help you enhance the complementary potential of agile and OKR
This approach can help you leverage the benefits of agile methodologies and OKR framework to impact all aspects of organizational structure for achievement of goals, including the culture, strategy, initiatives, tactics, etc. The framework is premised on:
1. Create value based OKRs
- Focus on creating value based OKRs instead of activity based
- Activity based OKRs are effective for specific projects, but for organizational goals, the focus should be on value
- Instead of focusing only on the outcomes, have a clear understanding about how each of the outcomes can create value for the organization
- The activities for each OKR should be a part of the agile roadmap and not the end destination
If you are struggling with combining agile and OKRs for your organizations, chances are you are focusing on activity based key results which often resemble agile steps, leading to confusion and inability to meet goals.
2. Facilitate horizontal alignment for shared OKRs
- Encourage collaborative OKR setting with realistic timelines and short intervals
- Make OKRs team/ department specific and acknowledge avenues for collaboration and alignment between teams on shared OKRs
- Acknowledge OKR dependencies between teams and facilitate transparency and horizontal alignment
- Avoid splitting OKRs for a shared goal between teams, rather create opportunities for working together
For instance, if you have an event coming up and wish to successfully execute the same, the objective will be common, with specific value based key results for each team.
Objective: Successfully execute the 7th edition of our annual event
Key Results
- Get 1000+ unique registrations
- Raise INR 20,00,000 in sponsorship
- Curate 5 high impact panels
- Get 10+ media and affiliate partners
- Get 5000+ impressions on social media with organic promotion
If you look closely, while the objective is shared, key results are spread across sales, marketing, and even product/ services teams
3. Combine quality and quantity results
Your agile and OKR framework should enable you to get the best of both worlds when it comes to results. Agile results by nature are qualitative in nature and focus on the features that you wish to ascertain in a specific period of time. On the other hand, OKRs are driven by metrics. Thus, you can use a combination of the two for effective results:
- Use OKRs to validate goals set using the agile methodology
- Ensure each key result has a quantitative (data) and qualitative aspect (value)
- Use a combination of agile and OKRs to ensure that your progress is positively impacting the organization
The combination can help you create an ideal balance between outputs and outcomes which are both critical when it comes to goal achievement and performance management.
4. Promote use of data
- Leverage data and evidence to create your agile based OKRs
- Instead of creating OKR based on leadership opinion alone, validate the same with market study
- Don’t rely completely on hypothetical representation, undertake primary and secondary research to ensure relevance and perceived achievability
Pro-tip:
Using data and not relying solely on opinions will help you set agile OKRs which don’t under or over estimate the goals. For instance, if the market data on traffic to a new website in your industry is 20,000 clicks in one week, your OKR can focus on reaching 25,000 to make it aspirational but achievable up to 80%.
However, if you set the target at 50,000 or above, it will become too far fetched and the team might not even strive for it. On the flip side, if the target is only at 10,000, it will not encourage your employees to push the boundaries. Thus, you need to replace opinions and command OKRs with data backed experimentation.
5. Build self organizing teams
- Provide you teams with a clear idea of what the larger vision looks like
- Encourage them to set their own OKRs and help with a direction to achieve the same
- Facilitate team autonomy and empower your team members with the right tools and resources like SuperBeings to not only set OKRs, but also track progress in real time and grade them at the end of the cycle. (Learn more)
Self organizing teams are important for growing organizations as they proactively take onus and ownership of achieving OKRs and lead to a greater degree of success. Step away from controlling detailed plans for each OKR and encourage the leadership to provide direction.
Wrapping Up
To conclude, if you combine agile and OKR, you have for yourself a clear model for success which you can easily apply to goal setting and performance management. Having the right technology to support your rapidly changing businesses processes is a must for any organization looking to thrive in a VUCA world. With SuperBeings you can:
- set, track and update goals/ OKRs whenever you need in just one click
- update goal progress quickly and directly in the flow of work (via Slack, Teams, or other chat tools you already use)
- have goal based 1:1s and performance check-ins to understand where your employees are stuck
- align all internal stakeholders with the constantly changing needs of the organization easily
- and much more
💡If interested, you can talk to one of our product experts to find out if SuperBeings can help you solve your specific challenges. We keep the call short at 15 minutes.
