Ebook
Everything you need to know
about OKRs to help your
organization achieving the
most ambitious goal
Contents
01
Introduction
03
02
What are objective and key results?
06
03
Differences between OKRs and MOB, KPI
10
04
OKR and business sizes
13
05
Implementing with OKRs
18
01
Contents
06
Frequency of OKRs set
22
07
OKR sample
25
08
Common mistake
28
09
Difficutly for applying OKRs into business
30
10
Organization benefit with OKR
33
11
About Goalify
35
02
Google Ventures’ Rick
Klau puts it, “Google
wasn’t Google” until
they adopted the
OKR practice
03
Introduction
Introduction
OKRs is understand as Objective and Key Results, a critical
thinking framework and on going discipline to help the
team focus on the important issue throughout their
organization.
OKRs were also introduced to Google since 1999 by John
Doerr, a model he first learned from Intel. Today, OKR are a
de facto standard for aligning company and individual
goals. I am also very amazed when finding out that OKRs is
used to define the cornerstones for not only startup, small
enterprise, but also for large-scale companies like Google,
Linkedin, eBay, Booking.com, Zynga.
OKRs should incorporate elements from both stretch and
SMART goals, and also developed on the logic of MBO
(Management by Objective). Google has been using OKRs
effectively from the time they just small start-up until now
worth more than 500 Billions of Dollars, and as Google
Ventures’ Rick Klau puts it, “Google wasn’t Google” until
they adopted the OKR practice. In fact, their
implementation of OKRs has driven them into the
incredibly successful company that they are today. When
John Doerr brought OKR from Intel to Google, he
conveyed the importance of specificity and making goals
ambitious. That inspire and push Google out of their
boundaries to reach the most excellent goal.
What are
objective
and key
results
What are objective and key results
Key
Result
2
Tatic 2
Key
Result
1
OKRs
4
Objective 3
3
Objective 2
2
Objective 1
1
Tatic 1
Annual
goal
2
Annual
goal
1
Mission
&
Vission
Tactics & Task
1 day
Action
1 quater
Objective
1 year
5-10 years
Strategic
& Goal
Mission
& Vission
OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results. It is a framework helping team
member moving together in the right direction by defining and tracking
objectives and their outcomes.
Its principal goal is to identify company and team "objectives" along with the
measurable "key results" that determine achievement of each objective. It
should also come with a specific timeframe, and typically, this is a quarter
OKRs goal is often created by team and company to connect with the company's
vision and mission. A team member may create an OKRs for him/herself, but that
might not link with the company goal.
OKRs is not like the other method, which only uses local top-down assignment.
OKRs are visible for everyone, Top-down, bottom-up and cross-functionally.
OKRs ensure everyone is moving toward and achieving the same result.
What is objective?
An objective is what you or your team member
want to accomplish. An objective must be
significant, meaningful as well as aspirational to
the company and team member. They should be
linked, aligned and well supported by the entire
organization. And It should also come with a
specific timeframe, and typically, this is a quarter
Example: Green 5 big cities by the end of March
What are Key Result?
Primary results should be measurable, limited in
number and implement timeframe.
Example: building a green delivery machine that
can plant 100,000 seed a day by December of 2017
Measurable vs Quantifiable
The measurable is not quantifiable. That's two differences criteria.
Example, "Launching a new product feature on June 10", that is 100%
cannot be quantifiable.
It's measurable because you can measure it can be delivered or not.
However, if you set " Launching three new product features on June
10". It will be quantifiable and measurable.
How many OKRs, a company should have?
Keep the objectives at 3 to 5 key objectives of company, team or
individual level. And five or fewer Key Results for each objective.
How Should they be communicated?
OKRs not set by yearly, it should be determined by quarterly and
communicate, agreed and contributed by all-hand of the company
via the meetings.
The company needs a dashboard to display all the OKRs to the
team, individual or corporate level goal with an associated
performance metric.
KPI vs. OKR
Goal?
Differences between OKRs and MOB, KPI
What is the differences?
KPI and OKR, MOB, all these methods are
developed from the S.M.A.R.T goal:
S M A
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
R
T
Relevant
Time-bound
However, the S.M.A.R.T Goal has evolved since the 30 years
ago. Best practices are to create specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant, time-related OKRS, but unlike a KPI, an
OKRs goal will ask for ambitious, aspirational rather than just
a standard Operational goal.
A KPI goal set 100% at complete, but an OKRs goal achieving
70% can be counted successfully done. Companies may not
alway reach their ambitious goal, but it helps to foster the
great innovation by encouraging workers to push their limits.
OKRs also benefit the organization with the
transparency of the objectives; it shows everyone in
the organization the team, individual in charge with
the goals and where is the current process and how
it contributed to the primary goals.
Essentially, objectives are goals, but they are
qualitative, ambitious and motivating. And each
objective has a few key results that step in how to
get there (just like key performance indicators).
S.M.A.R.T
Infographic the differences between the OKR and MBO
MBO
Management by Objective
Vs
OKR
Objective and Key Results
Invented
1954
1970
By
Peter Drucker
Andy Grove
& intel team
Visibility
1-1
Employee & His Manager
By
Public
Public with the Company
Infographic the differences between the OKR and MBO
MBO
OKR
Vs
Management by Objective
Objective and Key Results
Quarterly, in some
case even Monthly
365
Frequency
of
Reviews
Mostly
annually
Increase
Operation
Efficiency
Purpose
Determine the
compensation
Definition of Success
100 %
Completion
Completion
60 - 70%
Can OKRs
apply vairous
business
sizes?
Google is using OKR from the day they start up with the size of 40
employees until now is over than 6,000.
That is the evidence for the proof that OKR is matching with all size
of the team from the start-up, Small and Medium business to big
Corporate. OKR is building on the five fundamental principles.
Goal Alignment
vertical alignment, horizontal alignment, and
company mission
Transparency
working transparently with social reinforcement
and recognition
Performance-based
frequent, measurable feedback and regular wins
Flexibility
to respond market change and adjust the company
goal to react with the need
Acceleration
push your team to reach to limit and get greater
achievement and encourage excellence
Vision without execution
is hallucination.
Thomas Edison
If you are…
Enterprises
It is a great contribution to the organization with many departments and
locations. It is critical for all members of the teams - from top to bottom,
across the functions - to be able to provide the feedback, communication,
and input into the goal-setting process.
By clarity, transparency and making all the Goal Objective visible to
everyone in the organization, the recorded process of the goal operating
and an aspirational goal will help to drive operational excellence. Google
successfully used OKRs to grown from 40 to 60,000 employees.
Small and medium business (SMB)
It's difficult for a small or medium company to define the 12 months goals
in the era of digital. Everything is changing rapidly. SMB needs a helpful
tool to identify, evaluate and adjust very quickly to react to the market as
well as help to determine the market fit or create the competitive
advantage. OKRs is the excellent match with these needs.
Service firm
For the business that use to require an individual switch frequently between
the project base like service or consulting firm. It is critical to provide a way
to allowing the team member to follow up and support work being done by
another member.
Implementing
with OKRs
OKR is a multilayered process. However, the most
important things when getting started with the initial
step is setting the Objectives.
Organization should ask individuals to set their OKRs
Once OKRs are set, during the face-to-face meeting
between managers and employees, OKRs are to be
reviewed. Both parties need to build the time frame
together to achieve the objective. The OKR must
contribute to organizational goals - directly or indirectly.
From individual establishment, organizations bring it up
to larger groups such as teams, departments to collect,
discuss, negotiate and debate about the OKRs and time
frame.
Final, when achieving the negotiated agreement among
all parties, the OKRs will be presented to everyone
during all-hands.
The key success of the OKRs is to keep team focusing
only 4-6 objectives at one time with fewer than six key
results for each objective. The focus will yield the best
result for employee every level.
Implementing OKRs, there are two pools of activity
contributing to the success of the company which is:
Operational Goal
The organization sets Goal at company level such as
product launching, customer acquiring, some employee
retention, etc. Then they need to manage the metrics
and timeframe to transfer it down to department/ team
level goal objectives.
Ambitious Goal
On top of the operational goal, ambitious goal is the
bigger picture of the idea how the company is going to
change the world or leading market. These goals are set
to make employees understand and have the concept
how they will & can contribute to the company success
via the company's ambitious goal objective.
Both standard sets of the goal must be as measurable as
possible and be aligned directly or indirectly with the
business objective, example.
By Achieving this [goal], I need to do this X, Y, Z.
To keep all the Goal Objective visible, including the
Operation Goal as well as an ambitious target in front of
all your team members. When everything is clarified, and
employees know well what’s expected of them, the team
can move together in the right direction.
Company OKRs
Team OKRs
Personal OKRs
Team OKRs
Personal OKRs
OBJECTIVE
Team OKRs
Personal OKRs
Personal OKRs
Clarity
Qualitative, inspiring goal for a quarter
- what you aspire to achieve
KEY RESULT
Velocity
Qualitative outcomes for the objective
- what success looks like
ACTIONS
Alignment
Execution required to achieve key results
- what needs to be done
INSIGHT
Excellence
Results and learning from execution
- what we can do better
Let take a look at some of the Example
Objectives and Key Results (OKR)
Offense
Objective: 200 yd/game passing attack
Head Coach
Key Results: 75% completion
Objective
Defense
Win Super
Objective: 3rd ranked defense in NFL
Bowl
Key Results
1. 200 Yd passing
2. No.3 in defense stats
Football GM
3. AVG 25yd punt return
Key Results: Less than 100 yd passing
per game
Special Teams
Objective: 25 yd punt return average
Key Results: 3 blocked punts
Objective
Make money
for Owners
Key Results
Scouts
Win Super Bowl
Fill Stands to 88%
Head of PR
Objective: Hire 3 colorful players
Key Results: Visit top 25 colleges
Objective
Fill Stands
to 88%
Key Results
News Staff
Objective: get 2 Monday night games
Key Results: 5 ESPN special features
1. Hire 3 colorful players
2. Get 2 Monday night games
3. Highlight key players
Publicity Agent
Objective: Highlight key players
Key Results: Hire 10 new cheerleaders
Frequency
timeframe
for OKRs
Frequency - timeframe for OKRs
Frequency - timeframe for OKRs
The timing for the OKR depends on the organizational state, strategy
& culture. Some companies have set OKRs in monthly or six-week
intervals, and others set the OKR by monthly, quarterly.
For the company at early stage or startup, setting the OKR quarterly
will be relatively long to test and find the market fit. It is also quite
long for the company who operates on the project base that needs
timely delivery.
No matter how you are setting your OKR quarterly, monthly or sixweek time, the organization will see more successful operation when
moving from their yearly performance review to more common goal
setting and evaluation. However, guiding employees on how to set,
show the process, and get feedback on goals daily must be ruled by
the organization.
OKR common
mistakes
OKR is not a very new ideas, but it requires many practices to get
used to the concept and successfully achieve results. Here is the
common mistake when the organization implements OKR.
- Too many OKRs or Key Results
OKRs is not a to-do list of your organization. It helps you present
and define your critical, top priorities. Focusing on less than 5.
- Setting non-measurable Key Results
How can you measure the effect without creating the measurable
Key-Result?
- Top-down approach
OKRs do not waterfall. If you are looking for a top-down method
like MOB, OKR is not for you.
- Set it and just watch it
Don’t treat your OKR like a new year’s resolution. OKRs need to
be a part of the culture, need to be followed on a regular basis
- Team Objectives are not synchronized
The team has to communicate with each other when setting the OKRs,
otherwise achieving alignment will be impossible.
- Including task as a Key Results
A Key Results is not something that you need to do; it’s the successful
outcome of what you did.
- Failure track weekly check-in
Check-in is the top priority MUST DO of OKR. You can not fail on this.
- No-owner
There is must be one individual who own the accountable of the OKR.
Objectives are usually performance based and not within control
10 facts that
OKR will help
your team
achieve way
more than you
can imagine
We all know Google using OKR since they only 40
peoples when they just start-up state. And they
keep the routine until now with more than 6000
employees and value more than 500 Billion USD.
You can be like them, and here is the 10 reason why you should apply
OKR right now into your team when you are small.
- OKR create the inspiration of your top
company goal to the team
The visible of your big goal from the vision, mission into the quarterly goal
helps all the executive and members have the ideas how they should set
the tone and objective for their own OKR to align with the company goal.
It creates the connect of the peer to the team and company.
- Mindset is the foundation for everything
When you are small, and just start. That easy to align the mindset to your
peers with the scale from 1-20, and 40-100. With the size of 2,000, it takes a
lot more effort and time to roll out, many conversations to get your
organization get used to, comfortable and master it.
Small all easy to adjust and flexible to adapt than big.
- Continuous review and changes your
process
With a small team, the most pros are you are very flexible, and thing happen
real-time, a small team allowing use to continuing review and feedback the
work, performance. It’s great chance to adjust and testing, improving your
process and bone that can maximize the productivity. With OKRs, your team
goal & key result alway visible to show are you on track, healthy, or your way
is not work.
- Focus create strength
Since you are a startup, there will be various change your can pickup on
the market, but sometimes these arising opportunities keep you away
from your primary goal and make you fall into the wrong route. That
could harm your business growing line. A small team can’t divide many
workforces to focus differences goal that does not serve the primary
objective.
With OKR, it keeps all members of your team acknowledge and very
crystal clear about what should concentrate and what is not matter and
how to achieve it.
- Show you the way how to get the goal
You will never know are you reaching the goal or not when you don’t
have a key to showing you which way to go and measure the success.
When it clears, all your team need is to keep fighting and achieving it.
- Show the reality
Focus on the goal and how to achieving it critical but knowing exactly
your reality also vital for your business. With early state, you don’t have
much resources and time to waste. Away realize how far we are from the
goal, what is our current process, is it excellent to push further or is it far
away from the goal?
To have this data to analysis and keep adjusting monthly or weekly
indeed will help your team have the best productivity effort to move
in the right direction. For sure that you don’t want to spend 3-6
months and realize that you are not on the right path or team are not
productivity like you are expecting.
- Build discipline
It could take 5-10 mins a week but save your months and year time.
Some team just skip few minute of quick catch-up, check-in or report
each other; they are saying that too much task to do or some
member are not comfortable to open up what they are working. That
is the very bad habit to your business. Without the update, you don’t
know where is the process, how far you are from the team,
orgazniation goal. Are you able to reach it or need to adjust,
changing the way approach? OKRs check-in habit and transparency
help you to highlight all the process. Give you the precise summary
for your next move
- Transparency help to see where is the
effort is duplicate
Supporting team very clear communication and not overlap the work.
OKR help you to kill the gap of the miss-communication. Imagine that
you don’t need your team to pick up the phone every day to ask that
are you working on that same objective? They just need to come to
the OKR board to check the objective of the related member of the
team to avoid the duplicate work.
- Engaging & recognizing
IWith clear & transparent the process, it’ helps you and your team
recognize the effort and cheer up, applause, congratulate each other
when achieving the goal. This such an energy to light up and motivate
the team. Not only that, it helps to recognize yourself you are contributed
to the big team as well. It reflects your work and own personal branding;
you should cheer up yourself too.
- Don’t make you fall into the trap of
perfectionism
On of the big of the failing point of the startup is because they keep
trying the best to enhance the product in the wrong context. Why am I
saying that?
⁃
Remember you are don’t have big resources, and material support.
It’s mean having something delivered to the market will better than
nothing.
⁃
Your setting goal alway can edit. And with the help of OKRs, you
will not afraid that your team are not aware the adjusting and
changing. SO don’t need to care about perfect your goal. Only one
thing you need to do is making your team move in right direction.
Challenging
when applying
OKRs into
bussiness
Like any transformation process in the world. The most
arduous task for the organization is to start adapting,
apply and maintain the OKR process.
1. Mindset
It is all about Mindset and build up the routine as well as make sure
your team understands the concept of OKR is all about your
company goal for operation and ambitious, that's not Key
Performance or a list of action to do.
2. Build the routine
Teams always need the “OKR master” who fully understands the process,
the benefit of the method and can help the team with difficulties when
using it to be motivated and keep it on track. That person is often a chief
executive, business leader, operating officer or human resources
professional.
3. Misunderstand with the project
management tool
Most of the employee will complain about too many tool. And why
they need to update this goal and check the goal dashboard and
also need to update the project management tool as well?
However, put it this way, you also get the complaint by many of
employees that left your company because they don't understand
your big goal too.
Which one is more harmful? Of course, if the result that employee
deliver and not align with company goal, you are not profiting
anything further to reach your ambitious goal.
And just 5-15 mins to update the process a week, is it worth to lost
a whole year goal if everybody does not understand precisely what
is needs and how to reach, measure the objectives?
OKRs Benefit
1. Keep everyone engaged
Goalify allows you to set the OKR at company,
team and personal level, create the dependencies
and link OKRs together. Hence, all the Goal are
clarified and transparent; everyone can get the
idea of how everything is connected to create the
ultimate engagement.
2. Clear direction to every
team and individuals
With transparency and simplicity in companywide, your teams are easy to understand the
expectation and the priorities or the
organization. Furthermore, they also aware
about their contribute to the big wheel success
of the company.
3. Increasing productivity
through goals focus
Without clear goal direction, people use to get
lost in of the daily task, the result not very related
much with company Goal expectation and that
causing the unproductivity & profitable of the
business. Reduced the unrelated number of goal
will create the focus in the organization and effort
will be more effective.
4. Clear communication
The team will never misunderstand the
expectation of the company with a clear and
simplicity of the goal priority dashboard to as
well as how they can contribute.
5. Agility
Shorter goal cycles allow faster adjustments
and better adaptation to change, increasing
innovation and reducing risks and waste.
About
Goalify
Goalify is a pioneer tool to let you increase your team engagement and helping
your team move in right direction, focus on results that matter the most and
reaching the most ambitious goal. Improve the culture and employee
engagement. From HRM, culture engagement to Objective Key Results (OKR)
Save time, Growth the business, United people
www.goalify.plus
Save time,
Growth the business,
United people
Get it now!
www.goalify.plus