OKRs or Objectives & Key Results is a goal setting and management methodology for businesses and organizations.
Who uses OKRs?
OKRs were invented at Intel and later made popular at Google.
Today, numerous organizations use OKRs: Accenture, Amazon, Box, Deloitte, Dropbox, Facebook, Gap, GE, Juniper Networks, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, Oracle, Siemens, Slack, etc.
Why use OKR’s?
There are four main benefits of OKRs:
– Alignment – everyone pushing in the same direction
– Focus – do the most important work
– Transparency – know what others are working on
– Engagement – own your results
When to use OKRs?
Two main occasions: businesses experiencing high-growth or undergoing a lot of changes.
OKR examples:
Objective: Improve sales process:
– Key result 1: Win deals on average in 40 days
– Key result 2: Lost deals on average in 60 days
– Key result 3: Win 30 new deals
– Key result 4: Give on average less thatn 30% discount
What is an objective?
A qualitative statement of what one wants to achieve.
Example: Speed up product development
What is a key result?
A quantitative definition of what success looks like.
Example: Increase sprint velocity to 20
Why OKRs fail?
Because people stop using them. Managing OKRs at scale is notoriously hard
OKR alternatives?
MBO, Balanced Scorecards, EOS, etc.
What not to confuse ORKs with?
KPI, tasks management, project management, performance appraisals, ….
OKR software (free)
– Google Sheet, Trello
