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OKR as you probably know stands for Objectives and Key Results, which is of course a type of goal. But have you ever asked yourself why we invest time in setting goals?
Having a strategy without goals is like having a ship and deciding to drift on the open ocean in the hope that one day you might naturally arrive at your destination.
We have still not found a really successful company that doesn’t use OKRs or a similar framework, and the academic research on goal setting suggests that setting goals is worth in the region of $9,000 per employee.
But more importantly, you’ve got a winning strategy, and you want to see if it’s going to work, right?
I will show you that OKRs are the answer to “What does our strategy insist we learn to do and achieve?” and “What progress is essential next?”
This goal framework is compelling because OKRs are not about ‘could’, ‘should’, or ‘might’ – OKRs are the ‘must’, the imperatives and non-negotiables.
This means that OKRs are not daily to-do lists. They’re precise, outcome-focused and measurable definitions of what ‘must change’ and what success looks like. They narrate the ‘why’ and, through supporting OKRs and initiatives, illuminate the ‘how’.
They guide us every day and stop us from being pulled off course.
Once you’ve written your strategy, you will want Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timebound (SMART) goals to ensure you can plan and manage its delivery.
However, SMART goals lack some really important goal attributes and, therefore, need an upgrade. The best goals are also Frequently Discussed, Aligned, Ambitious, and Transparent (FAAT). OKRs, when used correctly, are SMART and FAAT.
All of that said, I now propose that you don’t get hung up on acronyms as they imply complexity, and that’s misleading. OKRs are simply a goal that aligns with your strategy.
Because all strategies are essentially hypotheses, you need to know what would be a good and negative result. You can even build what-if scenarios. If X does not achieve Y, we will pivot and do Z.
This way of planning is called adaptive strategy. The opposite is that regardless of the result, you will stick to the path, and nothing will change, which is, unfortunately, where many find themselves.
OKRs are the best way to use adaptive strategy to drive long-term sustainable growth.
In your company, OKRs will describe the desirable, measurable future state you must reach after a fixed period, usually a year or a quarter.
To help you optimize your planning, focus, and achievement, you will make some of your measurable outcomes (Key Results) ambitious—more on that later.
Because alignment is the key to strategy execution, and OKRs have alignment capabilities built in, you will be able to see how some OKRs support the achievement of another and your company strategy via supporting relationships between annual strategic OKRs or strategic pillars and KPIs (an alternative approach), quarterly cross-functional team OKRs, and single team OKRs.
Team and OKR silos are a terrible idea as it prevents alignment, cross-functional support and can create conflicts of interest. The solution is transparency. You will make your OKRs public and collaborative, sharing them on a central system.
Setting and forgetting strategically important OKRs because of distraction, firefighting, or conflict of interest is wrong. What will keep you on track is a formal update and discussion cadence. The optimal cadence for most teams is weekly.
OKR updates are called check-ins and do not happen in meetings. They will occur in your chosen management system via your phone or laptop. The updates can then be shared with the right people, with comment threads often starting.
Weekly OKR meetings are where teams come together, progress, issues and priorities are agreed upon, and any resource conflicts can be discussed and escalated where necessary.
At the end of every quarter, you will review progress and share learnings. Everyone’s new quarterly OKR might be the same as last quarter’s because you’ve not made enough progress, and it’s still the most important goal you need to achieve or an entirely new one.
At the end of the year, you can look back at where teams have completed a wide array of OKRs that have all helped you execute your strategy, and your KPI scorecards will reflect and correlate with their success. There will also be OKR misses, but with them will come valuable learnings and a greater understanding of what to do better next time.
The very first thing you have to know is your OKRs will describe a specific point in the future that you are committed to getting to. They are the measurable outcome that will tell you whether the work getting done to get to your future destination is working. Which means OKRs are not project management or a different kind of project management. They are the destination, your goals.
With that in mind let’s take a look at what Objectives and Key Results are and why you also often list the work getting done to achieve an OKR as a list of activities, initiatives or commitments (same thing, different words). There’s more on the importance of activities coming up.
An Objective is written as a sentence or two that describes what you have agreed to achieve. A written statement of intent that provides clarity on what the achievement would be without letting you know what the measures of success are.
Good Objectives usually include a verb that is active and motivational. Here’s a useful list I collected over the years with my personal favorites in bold.
To start the process of writing your Objectives, these are the questions that you and your teams need to answer:
For annual high level / strategic OKRs:
For a department, cross-functional or single team to support the execution of the strategy and drive high-level OKR(s) progress, supporting OKRs are created – these are in effect sub-strategies that answer the questions:
Because of the need for clarity an Objective is often improved if you explain why. For example:
“Systemize the lead generation process so we are less reliant on hiring new reps and can scale to meet our growth targets.”
So in summary, an effective Objective in the OKR framework is:
Equally important to the Objective itself is the ‘why now’. This is a long-form narrative that is separated from the Objective or Key Results. It answers the question: why is this Objective critical at this point in time and what makes it a priority? It needs to address the urgency and relevance of the Objective in the context of the strategy and other demands being placed on the business.
Continuing with the previous example, the ‘why now’ might be:
“Our strategy requires us to automate as much as possible, with a strong emphasis on AI. Not doing this will put us at a competitive disadvantage, and will also throttle future progress and investment in other areas of the business. Plus, what is going to be automated is mundane and best done by technology. We prefer to use people for creativity, nuanced conversations, and relationship building.”
Key Results are trickier to write than Objectives and are often where teams get stuck because they can’t agree on them or do not track the measures that make most sense.
Key Results are how you will measure the success of your Objective. As such the success of your Objective is conditional on the completion of your Key Results. Key Results can include:
Let me carry on developing that example:
Objective
“Systemize the lead generation process so we are less reliant on hiring new reps and can scale to meet our growth targets.”
Narrative
“Our strategy requires us to automate as much as possible, with a strong emphasis on AI. Not doing this will put us at a competitive disadvantage, and will also throttle future progress and investment in other areas of the business. Plus, what is going to be automated is mundane and best done by technology. The highest ever number of leads our current team has created was 760. We want to x3 this. We also need the quality to remain the same with a conversion to proposal at 15%. We prefer to use people for creativity, nuanced conversations, and relationship building.”
Key Results
Generate 2,300 leads in a quarter (Aspirational)
Achieve a conversion to proposal of 15% of more (Committed)
Note: the time-frame set is a quarter. However, OKRs can and often do roll-over between quarters. Either in exactly the same format with the same targets or with adaptation based on what has been learned.
If KPIs are new to you, leading KPIs, like the number of inbound leads or sales calls made, act as forward-looking indicators, offering early signals of future performance as measured by lagging indicators like closed won deals.
The integration of all these elements into Key Results creates a trackable story of goal progress. It’s a story that moves at a discernible pace and provides everyone with a clear understanding of where they are in relation to the Objective.
I mentioned the idea that some Key Results are made deliberately hard to achieve whilst other key results are expected to be fully achieved. The two labels for these that are most widely used are ‘aspiration’ and ‘committed’. You might have also noticed them in the example above.
Aspirational Key Results are inherently ambitious, often set to stretch the capabilities and reach of the team. Achieving 70% or more of such a target is typically regarded as a success, acknowledging the challenging nature of the goal.
Committed Key Results, on the other hand, denote targets where full completion, 100%, is the expectation. These are goals deemed essential and should be achievable within the set timeframe.
At the heart of this approach to OKR grading is a deeper philosophical stance that encourages ambition, transparency, and learning. It’s a stance that actively discourages setting overly cautious targets, concealing progress, or fostering a fear of failure. By embracing this philosophy, you can unlock additional performance benefits that come with being stretched and challenged.
However, for this approach to truly thrive, it necessitates a culture of psychological safety, a concept championed by scholars like Amy Edmondson. In a psychologically safe environment, teams feel comfortable taking risks, being vulnerable, and expressing candid thoughts without fear of negative repercussions. This type of culture is not just beneficial for OKRs; it’s a foundational element for any thriving, innovative organization.
The key to unlocking OKRs full potential lies not just in setting ambitious Objectives or specific, metric-oriented Key Results. Success also lies in identifying a series of concrete activities or what are often called initiatives or commitments. These are small steps that will drive Key Result progress and Objective success.
These steps range from ideas for things you should try that have never been done before, to things you know will work. Some of these might be a project, an activity with sub-tasks, or a simple task. The rules are loose. These activities, initiatives or commitments can also have a number of different owners.
What makes this an especially important part of the process is that when teams are involved in defining these steps they are more likely to believe the OKR is achievable and be able to weather any issues that may arise.
Let’s complete the example, but this time include Activities.
Objective
“Systemize the lead generation process so we are less reliant on hiring new reps and can scale to meet our growth targets.”
Narrative
“Our strategy requires us to automate as much as possible, with a strong emphasis on AI. Not doing this will put us at a competitive disadvantage, and will also throttle future progress and investment in other areas of the business. Plus, what is going to be automated is mundane and best done by technology. The highest ever number of leads our current team has created was 760. We want to x3 this. We also need the quality to remain the same with a conversion to proposal at 15%. We prefer to use people for creativity, nuanced conversations, and relationship building.”
Key Results
Generate 2,300 leads in a quarter (Aspirational)
Achieve a conversion to proposal of 15% of more (Committed)
Activities
Shortlist the tools we want to use (w/c 2 Sep)
Prepare a proposal for presentation (11 Sep)
Buy, start testing new tools (15 Oct)
An exception to this rule that is common to see is an OKR that does not require its own activities because its progress is being driven from supporting / aligned OKRs and the next level down in the OKR hierarchy.
In my book Force Multipliers I follow a fictional company called Healthier For Longer, creating their strategy by following a strategic planning process. Here are examples of these different types of Key Results coming together to tell stories and how the success of the Objective is measured.
I also wanted to show you how OKRs can support other OKRs through a process called OKR alignment i.e. one OKR is supporting the achievement of another OKR or sometimes specific Key Results.
Owned by the Leadership Team
Unifying Objective
Inspire customers to start and stick to a great healthspan extending plan
Narrative
If our strategy works we are going to experience rapid growth, customers are going to buy more from us over a longer period of time, feel the benefit of their investment and refer their friends and families.
Key Results
New customer increase by 300% Y-on-Y (Aspirational)
Increasing Average LTV from $900 to $3,000 (Aspirational)
3 in 10 customers refer new customers to us (Aspirational)
Activities
No activities listed as the progress is being driven by supporting OKRs.
Pillar: Value Based Innovation – To Be Uniquely Better
Objective
Prove that innovative packaging add value to our customers lives and will give us a competitive advantage
Narrative
We have some data and an early hypothesis that says that this will be valued by our customers, and differentiate us. We need to find out whether that’s true before we bet on this. A positive result is defined in our Key Results. A negative result will be – no discernible impact on these Key Results.
Key Results
Hypothesis – Will increase website conversion to over 2.5% for current 2% (Aspirational)
Hypothesis – Will increase multi-buy basket size to over 3 products from current 2 products (Aspirational)
Hypothesis – Will achieve Customer satisfaction (NPS) of 9 up from 7 (Aspirational)
Activities
Talk to leading suppliers, present learnings and make recommendations
Prototype & test with customers
Launch discreet test online using testing software
Pillar: Smart Working
Objective
Build our brand and accelerate new customer acquisition
Narrative
We need to build our brand, optimize acquisition channels, and get our loyalty and referral engine flying.
All whilst being able to attribute revenue to our marketing spend, and prove that we are being a more efficient marketing team.
This OKR success will require the support of a number of other OKRs that roll between quarters.
Key Result
Acquire 300K New Customer (Aspirational)
Reduce the CPA from $300 to $200 (Aspirational)
Activities
No activities – please align and support this OKR with your OKRs.
Pillar: Smart Working
Objective
Implement a referral management system that’s a win:win to drive growth and help support our drive to reduce our marketing CPA
Narrative
Success here will lay the foundations for our growth engine. We are going to evolve roles and responsibilities to allow us to focus on this strategic capability. It will require the support of a wide range of people from other teams and this will create resource conflicts. We will need to discuss and manage these.
Key Results
Generate first 1,000 customers from referrals (Committed)
Baseline the Referral Rate and track KPI (Committed)
Activities
Fully scope the project (12 Sep)
Tool selection competed (22 Sep)
Customer referrals launch by (1 Oct)
Pillar: Efficient Internationalization
Objective
Successfully launch in the Nordics to accelerate our global expansion
Narrative
Our marketing has a global reach and we want to monetize it. We know how to customize our products for new territories and global distribution and support partners to make the servicing of this business easy. Another desirable result of this goal is that by increasing total sales volume we can reduce the manufacturing cost per unit and increase margins.
Key Results
Analyze first 200 post sale reviews in Sweden and report rating (Target is 4.3 or more) (Committed)
Analyze first 200 post sale reviews in Denmark and report rating (Target is 4.3 or more) (Committed)
Analyze first 200 post sale reviews in Norway and report rating (Target is 4.3 or more) (Committed)
Nordics have average customer review rating of 4.3 or more. (Committed)
Activities
Follow launch process for Sweden
8 Sub TasksFollow launch process for Norway
8 Sub TasksFollow launch process for Denmark
8 Sub Tasks
Pillar: Smart Working
Objective
Our Google Core Vitals website health score has dropped and is impacting our CX and online search performance
Narrative
This KPI is underperforming. It is hurting the business and is priority 1.
Key Results
Turn Google web vitals Green from Red (Committed)
Activities
Diagnostics and recommendations (1 Sep)
What you have in those OKR examples is a blend of strategic OKRs (see pillars), with specific, measurable and mostly aspirational Key Results.
There is alignment between the strategy, the high level Objective and supporting Objectives, with narratives explaining the alignment.
The Key Results have created the conditional rules that define the success of the Objective. Some of the OKRs are highly likely to roll-over between quarters until those conditions are met, and that’s okay.
What needs to be done is contained within specific activities. This is adding a useful tracking layer and focus of weekly conversations. It’s clearly going to be easy to discuss progress, issues and priorities.
And right at the end, there was a dash of BAU, in the form of a fire that needed to be put out. That’s life and sometimes things come up that are more important than your strategy.
I created a structured deeper dive OKR course that uses Healthier For Longer Strategy Inc., as well as other unique examples. It also includes how to align personal OKRs and Performance Management.
The course gives you an affordable and scalable process for teaching managers and employees how to create OKRs and manage an OKR cycle successfully.
OKR Course Code: $20 Discount using code: FORCE-MULTIPLIERS
My team and I also offer strategy and OKR workshops to help you achieve your goals even faster.
Finally, you can also see these examples along with the other Force Multipliers being managed in our software. Request a trial.
How to harness the power of strategy, OKRs, people and technology to force multiply your revenue.
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