OKRs
7
min read
For any growing organization, it is important to ensure that all team members are moving towards collective goals with a strategic approach. However, unless your team members have very clear objectives to work towards and key steps to progress on the same, they will find themselves caught up juggling between multiple priorities.
That’s where leveraging the OKR approach comes in. To ensure goal alignment and performance consistency, you need to adopt a robust OKR process.
To facilitate the same, we have come up with this step by step guide and help you create an OKR process that guarantees results.
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OKR Framework: Meaning and Components
To define the right OKR process for your team, you need to have an effective OKR framework to help you align your efforts towards setting OKRs and achieving results. There are several components that make an OKR framework effective —
I) Goals and Objectives
In your OKR framework, you need to have a clear sight of the goals and objectives that form the foundation of the OKRs. The goals and objectives can be categorized based on their duration and applicability.
- First, there are the company-wide goals which directly align with the mission and vision. These are generally for a long-term and all encompassing, i.e. take into account every aspect of the organization.
- Second, there are mid-term goals which are key milestones that you seek to achieve, as identified from the company-wide goals, usually defined for a year or so.
- Finally, there are short-term goals which are defined for a quarter generally, and are critical for setting the OKRs.
II) Planning and Setting
The second component of the standard OKR framework talks about planning and setting the OKRs for success. This generally involves writing down the OKRs, identifying those responsible for driving them and ensuring effective implementation.
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III) Review and Reflection
Finally, the third component of the OKR framework talks about review and reflection. This involves connecting regularly to check the status of the OKRs, reviewing achievement at the end of the OKR cycle and reflecting on the next steps.
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OKR Process Cycle: Setting and Implementing OKRs
Now that you have a fair understanding of the OKR process framework and the key components, let’s quickly move to discussing the OKR process cycle. Based on our experience with fast growing organizations, we have created this step by step process to help you set OKRs in the most effective manner with actionable insights —
1. Writing Effective OKRs
A robust OKR process starts with writing OKRs in an effective manner. If your OKRs are not clearly articulated and written in a way that illustrates your top goals and priorities, your success will be rather limited. Here are a few ways write OKRs effectively —
Identify long term company wide goals that you seek to achieve or which form an integral part of your vision.
- Divide the larger goals into team specific goals and encourage each to write their own OKRs which align well with the goals allocated to them. The objective is to encourage collective brainstorming and planning.
- Ensure that your OKRs are ambitious, but at the same time achievable. Make them measurable, especially the key results. Many organizations create key results which aren’t quantifiable and face a challenge when it comes to measuring the achievement.
- Validate your OKRs effectively. Adopt a bottom-up approach to gauge if you achieve all your key results, would you have achieved your objective. If not, you need to relook at your OKRs.
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2. Communicating OKRs across the Organization
The second important step in the OKR process is communicating the set OKRs across the organization. Simply creating the OKRs and expecting team members to align their performance with them will not bear any fruit. You need to explicitly communicate/ roll out your OKRs to ensure everyone is on the same page. Effective OKR communication needs to take into account:
Sharing with everyone in the team the identified OKRs along with a list of initiatives and plans to achieve the same.
- Communicating the success stories of OKRs across different organizations to garner buy-in. You will get many such stories here.
- Clearly stating the responsibility and role of each team member to achieve the OKRs.
- Creating organization wide visibility of OKRs by using platforms like SuperBeings to facilitate transparency and collaboration.
If you are able to communicate or roll out your OKRs in an effective manner, your efforts towards achieving the same will increase considerably. Book a free 21 day trial with SuperBeings to set and cascade OKRs effectively
3. Implementing OKRs to drive alignment
As a part of the OKR process, once you have communicated the OKRs and they have been rolled out, it is important to have an effective implementation plan. Implementing OKRs within the OKR process is about ensuring key results have been translated into relevant projects, everyone is aligned and working towards the OKRs.
Here are a few things to remember while implementing OKRs in your company —
- It is a good idea to start OKR implementation with the onboarding process itself. Have an OKR training module to ensure that everyone is on the same page right from the beginning.
- Have an OKR master or custodian. This person will be responsible for ensuring the OKRs are being implemented effectively and help address any challenges or blockers that come along the way.
- Make it easy to access OKRs. Often employees have to toggle between tools to view the OKRs which results in a situation where what is out of sight is also out of mind. Here, leveraging a platform like SuperBeings to give your employees real time visibility of OKRs in their preferred project management tool can facilitate implementation. The idea is to incorporate OKRs in the flow of work, rather than making it another box in the task list.
These three tips can be a great starting point for you to implement OKRs effectively. We also have an expert curated OKR implementation template that you can leverage to accelerate your OKR process.
4. Robust Check-ins for OKR Tracking
If you believe that setting and implementing OKRs is all you need to do as a part of your OKR process, you need to pause and think again. Since the OKR process is dynamic, you need to ensure regular check-ins aimed at ensuring OKR tracking. The following best practices can help you with effective OKR tracking —
- Set a regular cadence to track the progress of your OKRs. Try to make it as frequent as possible without overwhelming the team. Weekly OKR check-ins is a great idea for small teams.
- Focus on different aspects of OKR tracking including the status of achievement, blockers and enablers as well as next steps.
- Keep a broad view on the OKR status and compare progress over time using SuperBeings’ intelligent OKR tracker. It can also help you track daily OKR progress.
- Leverage automated OKR progress reports, check-ins and AI recommendations to take action and not spend time in gathering data.
OKR tracking based on the foundation of regular check-ins can help you keep your team members aligned to their initiatives and the overall goals and address challenges in real time to avoid any major risk at the end of the OKR cycle. Leverage our OKR tracking template to facilitate your OKR process.
5. Grading OKRs for Success
The final step in the OKR process that comes at the end of the OKR cycle is grading your OKRs to gauge how successful you have been in achieving them. Grading OKRs is all about measuring the achieving of your objectives based on key results using a scale or spectrum.
The more you feel you have been able to achieve, the closer you will be to the positive end of the scale. Based on OKR grading, you can —
- Ace your regular review cycles with clear data points about OKR performance and uphold accountability.
- Facilitate retrospective OKR analysis to collectively agree on what you need to start/stop/continue doing to achieve your long term goals.
- Decide which OKRs need to be continued for the next OKR cycle and recreate new ones for organizational success.
As the final part of the OKR process, OKR grading can help you gauge your level of success and help you gear up for the next cycle. Use this template for quick grading
Improving Employee Performance with a Robust OKR Process
If you follow a robust OKR process, you can improve employee performance with specific, aligned and measurable goals. A continuous approach to OKR review which involves reviewing daily progress and comparing it over time can enable you to encourage better performance across the organization in a variety of ways:
- Identify blockers to OKR achievement in real time, which can hamper performance across teams.
- Review what is working and what is not, before the OKR process cycle ends to realign initiatives.
- Ensure that everyone is on the same page about their expectations and are able to perform and deliver accordingly.
However, this can only be possible when you and your team members have real time visibility into the OKRs as well as their progress.
To achieve the same, you can collaborate with SuperBeings to leverage its unique OKR capabilities. Book a demo today!
Suggested Reading
The ultimate guide to drive business results with successful OKRs
15 OKR writing mistakes to avoid
How to choose the right OKR tool for your business
