Guide: What are OKRs?
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a powerful goal-setting tool that can help align your team, increase focus, and drive growth in your organization. But what exactly are OKRs and how can you use them effectively? In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the concept of OKRs, their benefits, and step-by-step instructions on how to set and track OKRs in Acclaim Ideas. We'll also provide helpful tips and best practices for success.
Described by author John Doerr as 'the simple idea that drives 10x growth', OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are the core of a management framework used by a number of high profile companies such as Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter. They were devised by leading management thinker Andy Grove, who honed his skills at Intel in the 1950s.
In a similar way to other Management by Results approaches such as the Balanced Scorecard or KPIs, OKRs are designed to ensure that everyone in a team or organization is focused on the same objectives, know how to go about achieving them, and that it is easy to assess whether they have been successful.
By outlining each objective and its component parts in a succinct, clear manner, and then setting a (ideally numerical) verifiable measure of what success would look like, there can be no doubt about what needs to be done.
The beauty of OKRs is that they are simple and incredibly flexible, and can be used by commercial, not-for-profit, and public organizations of all shapes and sizes to focus their efforts on any kind of outcome.
Writing great OKRs
It can be helpful to think of the Objectives element of OKRs as the What - What do you want to achieve? Objectives can be highly aspirational moon-shots, or more achievable strategic aims, but they must be clearly expressed, and ideally short. They provide the direction of travel for your people's efforts, so should be focused on the outcome, not how you're going to achieve it.
Key Results, on the other hand, are the How - How will you achieve the Objective? Each Objective can (and should) have multiple Key Results, although if you find you're writing more than five then it might be worth rethinking your approach. The overriding principle of OKRs is simplicity, so on a similar note if you find yourself creating more than seven Objectives for your team or organization then pause to consider whether you are risking splitting your people's focus too much.
One critique of OKRs is that it's easy to misuse the Key Results by expressing them as outputs rather than outcomes - for example, if your Objective is to increase the number of sales on a specific product, you might be tempted to enter a KR of 'run marketing campaign to a new audience segment'. But this KR is an output, not an outcome, because if you achieve it, it might still have no effect on the delivery of the Objective. A better Key Result here would be 'increase sales by xx by targeting new market segments'.
Tips and Best Practices for Successful OKRs
Alignment: Your OKRs should align with your organization's overall mission and strategic objectives. They should move you closer to where you want to be as a company.
Simplicity: Keep your OKRs simple and concise. A good rule of thumb is to limit your objectives to no more than five and your key results to no more than three per objective.
Measurability: Your key results should be measurable and quantifiable. Avoid vague or subjective key results.
Transparency: Share your OKRs with your team and the rest of the organization. This promotes alignment and collaboration.
Review Regularly: Regularly review your OKRs to track your progress and make adjustments as needed.
Balance Ambition and Feasibility: Your OKRs should be ambitious but also realistic. Setting OKRs that are too easy won't drive growth, but setting OKRs that are unachievable can demotivate your team.
In Acclaim Ideas, you can use the analytics dashboard to monitor your progress regularly and visualize your progress with charts and graphs.
With this comprehensive understanding of OKRs and how to implement them in Acclaim Ideas, you're well on your way to driving alignment, focus, and strategic execution in your organization.
Using OKRs on Acclaim Ideas
We use OKRs in the Strategy module, where you can use the OKR format. So if OKRs are your organization's chosen approach - or you'd like it to be! - it is supported on our platform.