Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a goal-setting framework used by organizations to align employees with the company’s most important business objectives.
OKRs help create focus, engagement, and improved performance across an organization.
This guide will provide an overview of OKRs and outline the steps to implement them effectively in your workplace.
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What are OKRs?
OKRs stand for Objectives and Key Results.
Objectives are qualitative goals that are ambitious, action-oriented, and inspirational. Objectives should be significant yet achievable within a specific timeframe.
Key Results are quantitative metrics used to measure progress toward an objective. Effective key results are specific, time-bound, aggressive yet realistic, and easy to grade as complete or not.
Objectives and key results create a goal framework connecting big-picture thinking with measurable outputs. OKRs drive alignment, engagement, and performance improvement in organizations.
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Background on OKRs
The OKR methodology was pioneered by Andy Grove at Intel and later adopted by John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins.
Since then, OKRs have become a popular goal-setting approach in Silicon Valley and beyond.
Today, companies like Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Uber use OKRs to drive focus and accountability.
OKRs offer several benefits compared to traditional goal-setting approaches:
- Alignment – OKRs connect company, team, and individual efforts to top priorities.
- Focus – OKRs zero in on the vital goals that matter most right now.
- Tracking – OKRs enable progress monitoring through quantitative key results.
- Stretch – OKRs encourage teams to set ambitious goals beyond their comfort zone.
- Engagement – OKRs give employees autonomy and purpose in their work.
- Agility – Regular OKR cycles foster rapid iteration and adaptation.
Compared to key performance indicators (KPIs), OKRs have some distinct differences:
- OKRs are aspirational, whereas KPIs focus on hitting preset targets.
- OKRs drive change, while KPIs measure current performance.
- OKRs connect to company goals, while KPIs often stand alone.
- OKRs are flexible, but KPIs are fixed metrics.
8 Steps to Implement OKRs
Follow these steps to roll out OKRs effectively in your organization:
1. Set company OKRs. The executive team defines 3-5 objectives critical for overall company success.
2. Cascade OKRs down. Teams align their OKRs to the company OKRs and determine their key results.
3. Write qualitative objectives. Craft objectives that are significant, concrete, actionable, and inspirational.
4. Define quantitative key results. Pick critical results that will indicate objective achievement.
5. Align individual OKRs. Employees create OKRs that ladder up to their team’s goals.
6. Track progress transparently. Share OKR progress across the organization.
7. Grade OKR completion. Evaluate critical result completion at the end of each cycle.
8. Review and realign. Analyze results, adjust OKRs, and set new goals.
10 Examples of OKRs
Here are 10 example OKRs from various departments:
Marketing Objective: Launch a highly successful social media campaign for our new product.
Key Results: Reach 1 million impressions, achieve 5% engagement rate, gain 10k new followers.
Sales Objective: Increase new customer acquisition by 20%.
Key Results: Acquire 40 new enterprise clients, achieve $2M in new sales pipeline.
Engineering Objective: Improve application performance and stability.
Key Results: Reduce latency by 40%, achieve 99.95% uptime, and decrease crashes by 50%.
Product Objective: Deliver key features for our summer product release.
Key Results: Complete profile redesign, launch real-time chat, and enable dark mode.
Customer Support Objective: Improve customer satisfaction survey scores.
Key Results: Achieve 90% CSAT rating, reduce response times to <1 hour, decrease ticket backlog by 50%.
Finance Objective: Reduce operational expenses by 10%.
Key Results: Renegotiate vendor contracts, implement expense approval workflow, and analyze spending to identify savings.
HR Objective: Strengthen our employer brand and recruiting funnel.
Key Results: Reduced cost per hire by 20%, increased applicant volume by 30%, and improved Glassdoor rating to 4.2.
Legal Objective: Minimize corporate risks and maintain contractual compliance.
Key Results: Review all contracts, resolve outstanding lawsuits, and conduct IP audits.
Executive Objective: Establish our company as an industry leader in AI technology.
Key Results: Release 2 new AI-powered products and get featured in 3 major publications.
Conclusion
OKRs are a robust framework to align organizations around measurable goals.
Following the steps outlined here, you can implement OKRs successfully and realize the many benefits.
Regularly setting, tracking, and revising OKRs will keep your company focused on the most important objectives.
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With 30+ years of experience, Catherine Fitzgerald, B.A., M.A., PGDip, founded Oak Innovation in 1995. Catherine received her Bachelor’s degree and Master’s from University College Cork. She holds qualifications in Professional Development And Training from University College Galway. She is completing a second Master’s from University College Cork. Since 1995, clients include Apple, Time Warner, and Harvard University.