OKR Canvas Instructions

This is a short collaborative exercise for you and your team that will help you plan and create OKRs.

OKRs are unique in that they have the concept of alignment and the support of other OKRs, both vertically and horizontally, built into the planning process. If there are any OKRs you should be supporting or aligning with, have these at hand during this exercise.

Step 1

Using the OKR Canvas describe your top challenges or opportunities – one per canvas, and put them in order of impact.

A good source of inspiration are:

• KPIs that are trending the wrong way or not improving fast enough.
• Insights from market analysis or Business Intelligence Systems.
• The key strategic battlegrounds you need to focus on and win.

You might want team members to have time before your workshop to think about these.

Step 2

Now turn your priorities into short Objective statements that describe the future state of what you want to achieve or become.

For example, if customer retention was getting worse, your Objective might be to “Increase retention fast”.

Step 3

Now name a group of 1 to 4 metrics that would allow you to measure the achievement of that objective. Don’t worry if you’re not measuring that metric at the moment.

These are candidates for use in Key Results.

Step 4

If you’ve got a baseline for metrics being used in Key Results then agree an ambitious target. A target that meant that even achieving 70% of the goal would be seen as an achievement.

If you don’t have a baseline for a metric and starting to measure it is possible, assign the task of baselining the metric.

Congratulations – you’ve created OKRs.

These are your top priorities and have alignment, measurement and ambition built in.

How many of these OKRs can you try and focus on in the next Quarter without impacting important Business As Usual activities?

Step 5

For the OKRs you decide to start – appoint an Owner and Collaborators for each. 

Did you know that OKRs are often worked on by a cross functional team brought together to achieve specific goals, not just more traditional teams like Sales and Marketing.

Step 6

Now name projects or tasks you are doing or could do to achieve each OKR. These too can be put in order of impact / effort. These Initiatives can be added to all the way through the lifecycle of an OKR.

Congratulations, you are now ready to share, collaborate and report on your OKRs with ZOKRI.