What are OKRs and How to use them?
Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, a technique to setting goals that has been used at Intel, Google, Twitter, and spread phenomenally fast across Silicon Valley startups. It is a management methodology that is used to focus on a group or individual around a bold goal.
“OKRs have helped lead us to 10x growth, many times over. They’ve kept me and the rest of the company on time and on track when it mattered the most.” Larry Page, Google Co-Founder
The Objective establishes a goal for a period of time, usually a quarter, and the Key Results tell you if the Objective has been met by the end of the time. The key results are used to quantify your objective, to make your success measurable.
As an organization scales, your company should have a “global” OKR aligned with the company mission and each team (Product, HR, Engineering etc…) should have an OKR contributing to the greater business goal. They are an incredible tool to ensure that your team understands how they are contributing to the rest of the company, helping the team to focus on the important things, and avoiding the duplication of work.
Defining your OKRs
The Objective is a single sentence that should be qualitative and inspirational, designed to get your team excited to get to work. An example of an Objective used in my team was “Launch an awesome new channel to communicate with our users”.
When setting your objective, avoid setting rules and parameters on how things should be developed and instead let it take its course. As General George Patton said: “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what you need done and let them surprise you with their results”.
To create a Key Result you should ask "How would we know if we met our objective? ". An objective like "Launch an Awesome new channel to communicate with our users" could have KR’s (key results) like:
- 40% Opt-In Conversion Rate
- 10K Users Opted-In
But remember, do not set easy goals. When setting your objectives and key results, you should aim for hard goals, something with around 50% chance of success.
"I know I’ve got the right Key Results when you are also a little scared you can’t make them." Christina Wodtke
Now that you have your OKRs, how do you make your team to achieve them?
According to Christina Wodtke, one reason why many companies fail when implementing OKRs is that they usually set the goals but don’t make sure they are making progress towards them.
One way of doing this is by building a board divided into four main topics and meeting in front of it every week.
The board should be divided into four main topics:
- OKR Confidence: On the first quadrant, write down your team objective and key results. On the side of each KR, you should add the confidence level that your team have on reaching each key result, like 5 out 10 (50% chance of achieving that result).
- Priorities of the Week: In the second quadrant you and your team should write 3–4 most important things that must get done that week that will move your team towards the objective. It isn't a to do list with all your tasks, but the main things the team need to do to move forward.
- Health Metrics: discuss with your team what are other things you need to keep an eye on, during the quater. Focusing on your goal can make you forget to keep a healthy environment.
- Next 4 Weeks Forecast: In the last quadrant you should add a future forest so the team knows what is going to happen in the future, tasks that will need to get done or another things that can get in the way.
Now that you have your board ready, you should have two weekly commitments, one on Monday, to go through and update the board, and another one on Friday, to check your achievements.
The meeting on Monday should be fast and objective, go through every quadrant, remember your team OKR, ask your team confidence level of getting all the KRs done, select 3–4 main tasks that need to get done on that week, update your forecast with other things that will happen during the week and measure the health metrics.
On Friday, the team should meet again, but the purpose of Friday is to share and celebrate your achievements. Everyone should share. The engineer can show a piece of code, the designer can show a new UI he worked on and the manager can share some metrics on the product... However, the most important is, have some beers and share some cake, you should be celebrating that you're getting things done.
Conclusion
The OKR technique is not about making check marks on a list. It is about learning what your team is capable of and focusing on the right things. Don’t be sad if you don’t hit your goal, most people can’t make it on the first try. Ask yourself what went wrong and fix it. If you hit all of your KRs, set harder goals next time. Focus on learning, getting smarter and having better things to celebrate every Friday.
The secret for great achievements is not getting people to work more, but working on the right things!
