fbpx

“There are too many people who work too much to achieve very little”

Andrew Grove Former CEO of Intel

Do you know OKRs?

One of the challenges facing organizations today is related to the gap between execution and strategy. Two out of three senior executives say that strategy falls short due to the organization’s inability to understand its market environment and its ability to execute, but why is this? Let’s do a test. Could you name three objectives or results that the company you work for wants to achieve? It’s not that simple is it? And even sometimes it is also difficult to answer how our daily work contributes to the fulfillment of those goals. This is where OKR (Objectives and Key Results) can help you, a methodology that allows you to easily define what you want to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. Here I will explain how it works.

What are OKRs?

Talking about OKR is referring to the history of the technological giants of Silicon Valley. They have been used by Google, Samsung, Netflix, Amazon, LinkedIn and many other companies, but were first implemented in the 1970s by Andrew Grove (former CEO of Intel) at the time. It would then be perfected by John Doerr (Google shareholder), who would help popularize it when he brought it to Google by becoming its shareholder in 1999.

OKRs in their structure are very simple, but at the same time incredibly beneficial. They are a set of goals aligned with measurable key results that will be scored and updated quarterly giving companies an incredibly powerful execution framework. The structure of an OKR is very simple, it consists of an objective that defines a goal to achieve and up to five key results that measure your progress. This would be an example of a well-defined OKR.

Structure

Objectives Definition

OKRs define clear and ambitious objectives that articulate what needs to be achieved. These objectives serve as the guiding focus for teams and individuals

Measurable Key Results

Each objective is accompanied by measurable key results that define the specific outcomes or milestones indicating progress toward the objective. Key results provide a quantifiable way to assess success.

Strategic Initiatives

OKRs often incorporate strategic initiatives, which are specific actions or projects designed to drive progress toward key results and objectives.

Benefits of adopting OKRs

 

According to John Doerr, OKRs give the company the following four benefits:

  1. Focus and commitment to priorities
  2. Alignment and connection for teamwork
  3. Follow-up of responsibilities
  4. Training to achieve the “impossible”

OKRs also increase the organization’s response speed by allowing short cycles that continually reorient the company towards what generates greater strategic value.

 

Who are OKRs for?

 

This system is incredible because it can be used by both large companies and startups, small businesses, entrepreneurs or even you individually.

Although it does not require a large structure, two things are key:

The alignment and commitment of the staff to achieve the proposed results.

You should think about using OKRs One hundred teams have different sources of data for the metrics or KPIs and nobody understands them, also if there is no clarity about the key results to be achieved if you do not know the reasons why you are not achieving the results or if they seem too much to you complex systems of work by objectives.

You should also take into account the OKRs if you do not have defined objectives or if you do not know the results.

 

What is not an OKR

 

OKRs are a tool to motivate your team, so you must be clear that it is not an OKR.

 

  1. They are not KPIs or performance indicators. The OKRs pursue objectives with which to go a step further, that is, to get out of the current situation to reach a new, more ambitious terrain. KPIs measure the success and progress of an ongoing activity that you are already running. The two methodologies can complement each other. With the KPIs they can serve as inspiration when defining the social.
  2. They are not a checklist or a list of things to do either. Thus, strategies are proposed to fulfill these must describe results more than activities.
  3. They are not performance evaluations. The idea is that they motivate collaborators to go further, not measure their ability to fulfill some tasks, they can also be self-assessed.

OKRs have been key to the growth and success of many companies, because they allow us to focus on what really matters and not on the daily and low-impact tasks that we sometimes get used to doing.

 

At KVASAR, we believe in the power of OKRs to focus on what really matters and achieve high impact. If you are looking for an effective methodology to align your efforts with your strategic goals, we invite you to explore OKRs and discover how they can revolutionize, empower and transform your organization.

 

 

 

en_USEnglish