Get started with OKRs with ease 

Objective and Key Results
Objectives and Key Results

Objectives and Key Results (OKR):

 This OKR methodology, popularized by John Doerr by his book “Measure What Matters” helps for a cultural shift at your organization to an environment that is a goal-oriented, with your Objectives driving day-to-day work. For this to happen, leadership must be bought-in to the program and drive decisions and execute with goals top of mind. To know more about objectives and key results (OKRs) visit our website.

Find samples: https://okrstars.com/resources-okr-examples

Objectives:

Objectives are memorable qualitative descriptions of what you want to achieve. They should inspire and challenge. For example: “Double the revenue to create a profitable and sustainable organization”.

Key Results:

 The metrics that measure progress towards the objective, and tell us if we’re getting there. For example. “Increase revenue from 10m to 20m USD”.

Refer our other article related to this topic: article

Types:

Type can be organization, team or individual ones. Type indicates the level at which the goal and key results (metrics) are at priority.

Time period:

They are timebound. Time periods help you plan, check-in and review the goals and its metrics at the right cadence. The goals and metrics (KR / KPI) have 4 Quarters time periods in a year and followed with Annual overall employee performance cycle.

Owner:

Owner is the person accountable for the success of the objectives. It is good to have a clear owner even for a team or organization level objective.

Progress:

You can measure progress as a percentage (0 to 100%) or as a KPI. Select KPI, if you are looking to move a metric from a starting to target number. For example, increase revenue from 10m to 20m USD.

Average Score: 

When the the goals are closed at the end of the quarter and the score is generated. Those un-closed Objectives and Key Results can be cloned and cascaded to next quarter based on the decisions.

Alignment: 

OKRs Alignment

Alignment is one of the most powerful features of OKRStars. By aligning your Objectives at an individual, team and organization level, strategically aligned Objectives and Key Results rapidly get everyone on the same page, working towards results that matter.

Goal Transparency: 

An employee can see the goals of anyone in the system, including the CEO, managers, and peers. Transparency promotes openness and eliminates work conflicts and redundancies. Employees can see how their work connects to the organization’s overall strategic goals.

Dashboard:

The summary of the over all goals appear on the OKR tool as shown below. We will write more details in coming blogs about it.

OKRs Dashboard


How can I ensure OKR (Objectives and Key Results) success at MY company?

  • OKR Champions: Quite often, it’s the effort of one key person in an organization (it could be you!) that takes initial ownership of a project and ensures its success. It could be a Chief of Staff, operations lead, or the most organized person in a given department. We love our OKR Champions and strive to give them all the support they need.
  • Leadership Support: While the energy of the OKR Champion is key, we’ve found that most successful rollouts also gain support from upper management / CEO. Thus, it’s critical that senior leaders educate their organization on the value of OKRs, explain why they are being implemented, reflect on their current culture, and identify key stakeholders.
  • Use the right SaaS tools: We believe OKRs are the best way to set goals, and that OKR Stars™ is the best tool to manage your OKRs. Why? Unlike spreadsheets or manual processes that quickly become unwieldy, Ally scales with your business and provides transparency across your organization.

Why have OKRs lead to success at so many companies?

Modern business moves at breakneck speed, and entire industries are being disrupted through new customer behaviors, aggressive competition, and changing market dynamics. 

OKRs provide a framework to allow companies large and small to set goals, stay agile, and make sure employees are on board with the latest strategy through the 5 superpowers mentioned in this video.

  • Focus: Because OKRs focus on just 3-5 goals per quarter, it forces organizations to focus on only the work that matters — and make hard choices to eliminate the tasks that don’t matter.
  • Alignment: Research shows that only 7% of employees understand their company strategy. OKRs help align company goals from top to bottom so that everyone is rowing in the same direction.
  • Tracking: OKRs are driven by data. Gone are the days when a manager and employee would set an annual performance goal. Today, agile companies use data to inform action and guide strategic decisions.
  • Transparency: A core tenant of OKRs is that anyone can view the goals and progress at any level of the company, from CEO to individual contributor, fostering accountability and collaboration.
  • Stretch: When employees are encouraged to set stretch goals to achieve what might not seem possible — and receive support when things fall short — amazing things happen.

Integration steps and summary of OKR framework implementation:

  • O and KRs (OKRs) setting with time periods (example: quarterly plans: Q1, Q2, Q3 & Q4)
  • CFR Automation (integration with      Microsoft Teams,      Slack tools & mobile apps) for instant goal updates visibility on team collaboration channels
  • Manual or Automatic Check-ins through KPI data source software integrations (example:      Jira Software). You can update progress of an O and KRs automatically by Jira as a data source or via rollup from children.
  • Continuous Performance Management options: Private & Public CFR automation, Check-in activity trends (goal status & metric)

Read more: Google Story, Scale Agile, Moonshot OKRs for VCs, CFR (Conversations, Feedback and Recognition).

Recognize for Moonshot OKRs, Aspirational OKRs, and OKR Champions (HR) Achievements

Implement CFR in your Organization

OKR empower you to implement CFRs (Conversations, Feedback, & Recognition) and drive employee engagement. OKRs and CFRs are often referred as sibling to each other. Together with OKRs and CFRs combine to become Continuous Performance Management solution in one software integrating the human side of OKRs.

  • Regular Performance Conversations, Private 1:1 Feedback & Coaching
  • Goal alignment dialogues towards contributing impacts on business
  • Frequent goal check-ins, status updates with comments for visibility
  • Social recognition by peers, management for remote engagement
  • Manager’s recognition transparently to team members (Public/Private)
  • Realtime KPI escalation, mitigation, course corrections before it is too late

Enable your managers with right orientation about CFRs during OKR cycle to include goal-setting, reflection, and ongoing progress updates during 1:1s with reports. Encourage highly constructive feedback. Establish clear criteria to recognize people for actions and results. Institute peer-to-peer feedback as a culture.

Engagement, Experience and Collaboration

Continuous Performance Management to enrich employee engagement, elevate your employee experience and make team collaboration as a priority. With tools like OKR Stars™ you can easily schedule 1on1s and solicit and receive feedback. Thus alignment, transparency, collaboration and recognition become reality for your team..

OKR guide managers and employees to have regular lightweight performance conversations with feedback and continuous employee development. The platform make everyone to give and receive feedback transparently for a job well done. Remember better employee experience drive better business results through their continuous performance.

CFR on OKRs by Team collaboration tools

OKR Stars™ is integrated (Data, SSO) with Microsoft Teams and Slack which are leading, powerful and advanced tools used globally for Team Collaboration. So, enable CFR on-the-go using mobile/tablet also on your desktop/laptop, 24/7/365 days and perform instant Conversations, Feedback and Recognition (CFR) about OKRs remotely using public/private channels.

Post Covid-19 crisis, companies/HR/managers/employees and IT Dept. realizing that a “simple HRMS mobile app” is not sufficient compared with these market leading tools for comprehensive, 360° communication types with video/voice meetings, chat, digital badges, file attachments, storage and document management tools with powerful OKR content search options.

So, bring your team together with various day to day OKR communications across organization/department/ teams/manager – employee and enable CFR for OKR management. Check out our Integration pages (Microsoft Teams & Slack) on this website for more details.

Let’s see a short video to see how the OKRs are connected in a start-up context along with problems, investors recommendation towards Measure What Matters book and CFR practices, team’s OKRs commitment and till its successful execution results.

Recognize for Moonshot OKRs, Aspirational OKRs, and OKR Champions (HR) Achievements

Implement CFR in your Organization

OKR empower you to implement CFRs (Conversations, Feedback, & Recognition) and drive employee engagement. OKRs and CFRs are often referred as sibling to each other. Together with OKRs and CFRs combine to become Continuous Performance Management solution in one software integrating the human side of aspirational OKRs.

  • Regular Performance Conversations, Private 1:1 Feedback & Coaching
  • Goal alignment dialogues towards contributing impacts on business
  • Frequent goal check-ins, status updates with comments for visibility
  • Social recognition by peers, management for remote engagement
  • Manager’s recognition transparently to team members (Public/Private)
  • Realtime KPI escalation, mitigation, course corrections before it is too late

Measure what matters (OKR)

Enable your managers with right orientation about CFRs during OKR cycle to include goal-setting, reflection, and ongoing progress updates during 1:1s with reports. Encourage highly constructive feedback. Establish clear criteria to recognize people for actions and results. Institute peer-to-peer feedback as a culture.

Engagement, Experience and Collaboration

Continuous Performance Management to enrich employee engagement, elevate your employee experience and make team collaboration as a priority. With tools like OKR Stars™ you can easily schedule 1on1s and solicit and receive feedback. Thus alignment, transparency, collaboration and recognition become reality for your team..

OKR guide managers and employees to have regular lightweight performance conversations with feedback and continuous employee development. The platform make everyone to give and receive feedback transparently for a job well done. Remember better employee experience drive better business results through their continuous performance.

Engagement, Experience and Collaboration

CFR on OKRs by Team collaboration tools

OKR Stars™ is integrated (Data, SSO) with Microsoft Teams and Slack which are leading, powerful and advanced tools used globally for Team Collaboration. So, enable CFR on-the-go using mobile/tablet also on your desktop/laptop, 24/7/365 days and perform instant Conversations, Feedback and Recognition (CFR) about OKRs remotely using public/private channels.

A “simple HRMS mobile app” isn’t enough for companies, HR, managers, employees, and the IT department after the Covid-19 crisis. These market-leading tools for comprehensive, 360° communication types with video/voice meetings, chat, digital badges and file attachments are better than a simple HRMS mobile app because they have all of these tools.

You can do this by having your team communicate with each other about their OKRs on a daily basis across your organization, department, teams, managers, and employees. Then, you can use CFR for OKR management. Take a look at the pages for Microsoft Teams and Slack on this site for more information.

Let’s see a short video to see how the aspirational OKRs are connected in a start-up context along with problems, investors recommendation towards Measure What Matters book and CFR practices, team’s OKRs commitment and till its successful execution results.

Read more: Get started with OKR, Google Story, OKR limelight

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