Transform your business with OKRS
It doesn't matter what job you have or where you work - every person is looking for ways to be more productive in their role. Everywhere you look people are trying to better focus and organise themselves, and find more time in the day. The key is not to cram more work into the same time, but to create a system that allows you to get more done with less effort. Enter OKRs…
You've heard us touch on OKRs before in our previous post ' How to Write Your 2020 Marketing Plan'… so what are OKRs and how can they help? OKRs - objectives & key results - are the simple goal setting system that allowed Google, The Gates Foundation and Bono to exceed all expectations. Created at Intel and made popular by John Doerr, OKRs are one of the most popular approach's for setting and achieving goals.
The main benefit of OKRS are that you and your team all understand how your work matters and how all teams in your company are focused on the same goals. When individuals understand how their own goals and focus are aligned, they tend to work more productively and effectively as a team, increasing engagement, motivation and job satisfaction.
The approach for creating OKRs is quite simple, once you know what direction you want to take your team in. You simply define an objective and three measurable key results that support it. Once these key results have been met, your objective should be completed.
Creating OKRS
Every team has their own process for creating OKRs, you may create them as a team or individually. However you choose to develop yours, there are a few important points to remember when creating your OKRs:
Less is more: Less really is more when it comes to OKRs. Pick 3-5 main OKRs to focus on for the quarter, don't over commit by creating a dozen objectives and even more key results. Define your objectives and connect each with 3-5 key results.
Ambitious: Your objectives shouldn't simply be achievable, they should push you past what you think is possible. It means that if you don't fully achieve your objective, then you've still done something amazing in the process.
Transparency: Everyone's goals - from the CEO down - should be openly shared. By doing this, individuals can start to map their own objectives to the overall company objectives, resulting in a deeper sense of ownership and bottom-up engagement.
Measurable: Objectives must be supported by key results that are concrete and measurable. Specific and hard goals produce a higher level of output than vaguely worded ones. To ensure your key results are air-tight, avoid using fuzzy language. Put aside words like 'help' or 'support' and commit to using 'launch' or 'implement'.
Creating Objectives
Objectives are what you want to achieve. They should be ambitious, motivational and most importantly clear and concrete.
For example, you may want to improve your sales in the UK & Ireland but you know that you're currently struggling on brand awareness, then your objective could be:
O: Increase Brand Awareness in UKI Market
Creating Key Results
Key Results benchmark and monitor how you're going to achieve your objective. Your objective should be supported by key results that are aggressive yet realistic, specific and measurable. You either meet a key result or you do not, there should be no room for anything in between. It is your key results that your team can use to monitor progress and see how far off you are from accomplishing an objective. Once all key results are completed, the objective is achieved.
Example key results look like this:
O: Increase Brand Awareness in UKI Market
KR1: Publish 8 pieces of press content through T1 media by Q2 M1
KR2: Create and share 10 articles for other publishers by Q1 M3
KR3: Publish 3 interviews with industry specific websites by Q2 M1
KR4: Participate in 2 industry podcasts Q1 M2
Managing OKRs
Ideas are easy, execution is everything! The most important part of OKRs is managing them effectively. Your first step should be clearly communicating your new OKRs to your team. Increasing transparency will help your team align and focus on the objectives, allowing them to make faster and more informed decisions. From here, you need to ensure you review your OKRs several times per quarter. Report on the progress of each, present any blockers and update your key results if required. OKRs should be constantly evolving, not created, set-in stone and forgotten. Don't wait for formal reviews to discuss your OKRS, instead have regular and informal discussions around these with your team members and managers.
Experience is everything with OKRs, so it may take a few quarters to get the hang of it and find out what works best for you and your team. Start by challenging yourself, whilst being realistic about what you can accomplish in the time allotted. Constantly review and update your OKRs where needed, and remember that communication is key, so work with your team if you're coming up against any challenges.
If you're wondering about how to better manage your business, run marketing campaigns, increase brand awareness or elevate your sales & marketing, then get started with OKRs. Need some help getting started? Palmer Creative offer a range of strategy packages, where we bring you and your team through the ABCs of OKRs and work together to create an effective system for your organisation. Contact us today and get started!