Hear what, John Doer, the founder of the OKR methodology, thinks about the benefits of setting the right goals.
OKR: Objectives & Key Results
The OKR methodology is a simple and effective framework for target and result management. The methodology creates common understanding, interaction, and a clear focus on the most important tasks to achieve the company’s overall goals.
What is OKR?
Objectives & Key Results (OKR) is a powerful and highly effective method for goal and business management that helps companies prioritize the most important tasks to achieve their goals.
OKR stands for “Objectives and Key Results” . In Norwegian, we call it ” main objective and partial objective” .
OKR is an effective and widely used method for converting the company’s strategy, vision, mission and values into clear objectives. All the company’s activities are linked to the achievement of these goals.
In this way, OKR helps companies set goals, stay focused, and makes it easier to prioritize activities that will help the company move forward, both in the short and long term with smart goals.
Why use OKR?
OKR is a unique method to get the company to focus on value-creating activities. If you are not careful, it is easy to lose focus! Inquiries must be answered, important deadlines are approaching, and the distractions are queuing up. At Futureworks, we know all about that.
With OKR, the company’s main long-term goals are clarified . These are broken down into short-term sub-goals and value-creating activities.
Not only does this give the employees a greater degree of ownership of the main goals, m the awareness contributes to a better company culture, increased performance and a higher degree of independence and sense of responsibility.
Through a proven focus on the most important tasks, the employees avoid being controlled by their surroundings and “issues that keep coming up”. Futureworks ensures ownership of what matters most and through clear focus the organization achieves increased progress, better leadership and improved business management.
How to use OKR?
Objectives are the major overarching main goals that will define:
- What are we going to achieve?
- And why is this important to us?
It is recommended to set 3-5 Objectives for each area.
The objectives should be:
- Significant
- Inspirational
- Engaging
- Concrete
Objectives set the course for the company. Together with strategy, vision, mission and values, clear main goals are one of the most important tools to ensure good leadership and the right progress.
Key Results must define how the company will achieve the main goals. What are the most important results that must occur. Each main goal should consist of 3-5 sub-goals . These goals should be stretch goals, which are goals that may be difficult to achieve by nature, but still possible.
These sub-goals must specify which activities produce the best results.
How Google set OKRs
How often you should set OKRs?
Objectives (main objectives) and Key Results (sub-objectives) should normally be set for the whole year and the coming quarter. Or for a project period divided into appropriate time periods.
How many Objectives & Key Results?
It is recommended to have no more than 3-5 Objectives for the year and 3-5 Objectives for the next quarter within each area.
Each Objective should normally have 3-5 Key Results which, if fulfilled, will ensure that we reach each of our Objectives.
Note! Objectives for the year do not necessarily have to have Key Results. Objectives for the year are indicative of which Objectives should be set by the organization each quarter. They provide a strategic direction for what the organization should focus on quarter by quarter.
How often should you follow up on the status and progress of the OKRs?
It is recommended to follow up the status of all OKRène every single week . It is recommended that the owner of each Objective gives a short status report on a scale of 1-10 (confident score) on how confident he/she is that the Objective/main goal will be met on time. The module for this is in the system.
Futrureworks’ OKR also has a Risk Analysis for each Objective that provides an assessment of probability and consistency. This is a very good management tool.
Every quarter, companies and departments should revise the year’s OKRs and report and check out the last quarter’s OKRs. Then set next quarter’s OKRs for the company and each department/area.
To make this simple and effective, we have designed a simple template/agenda for weekly, monthly and quarterly OKR meetings.
Here you can hear how Andy Grove explains OKR
- OKR podden – The podcast about OKR and goal management
- Fresh Ted video about OKR
- Google’s guide to OKRs
- Measure What matters (main book on OKR)
- Startuplab video about OKR
- Radical focus (book with more details about OKR)
- Recode/Decode Podcast (interview with John Doerr)
- OKR in Linkedin
- OKR in Uber
- Companies that use OKR
- Interview with John Doerr in Harvard Business Review from May 2018
- 95% of employees are unsure of the company’s strategy (Harvard Business Review, 2005)
- Why did Spotify move away from Individual OKRs? (Spotify Blog)
- OKR and portfolio management (Hotpmo, 2019)
