Benefits of OKR.

Successful transformation starts with a focus on outcomes, not output.

Benefits of OKRs

The benefits of implementing the OKR framework can be recognized almost instantly. This is the alure to business executives who are looking to quickly transform their organization. There is no other framework which is equal parts simple and powerful.

Focus

Every organization has the same 24 hours in a day. The power of an entire organization focusing on key metrics that matter the most cannot by understated.

Benefits of Driving Focus

Employee engagement, productivity, and performance are all increased when they are given specific directions from their leaders on where to focus their time, and more importantly, where not to spend their time.

Roadblocks

Organizations try to prioritize too many things at the same time without understanding their impact on the organization. This creates distractions in the team and turns the focus away from what matters most.

How OKRs Help

The OKR framework relies on 2-3 key objectives which are tied to measurable, time-bound, and transparent key results. This provides executives and employees a clear focus to what they will be working on and why they are working on it.

Align

As organizations are adopting to the new ways of working, alignment is becoming the most important variable in the success of an organization and the happiness of employees.

Benefits of Alignment

Alignment is the “tide that raises all boats” when it comes to the performance of an organization. Well-aligned organizations make faster decisions, engage employees deeper, and leverage their resources to the fullest.

Roadblocks

Visibility plays a crucial role in creating alignment. Most organizations do not have a structure in place for creating a shared set of objectives across departments and even fewer know how to measure their results.

How OKRs Help

Alignment is achieved by creating a well-defined set of standards (Objectives and Key Results) which are used across every department and employee in the organization. In addition, every objective and key result is visible to every employee in the organization, creating visibility and trust for all.

Rhythm

Transforming an organization for good requires consistent focus and attention or it quickly becomes the flavor-of-the-month. Whether we are talking adoption of OKRs, CRMs, or any other acronym, creating a rhythm for the organization is paramount to maximizing return on investment.

Benefits of Rhythm

Creating a routine for transformation helps employees to gradually overcome their natural-born resistance to change and creates a sense of community in the organization around a common goal.

Roadblocks

Organizations rarely fail to create a strategy for rhythm, but once that rhythm is met with the uncertainties of the real-world, it is common for the rhythm to break down. This prevents frustration in executives and employees alike, who all feel they are at various stages in the journey, pulling more weight than their counterparts.

How OKRs Help

Embedded into the OKR Framework is rhythm. It is not only designed around the realities of business, but it can be further adopted to fit the uniqueness of an organization. OKRs are also incredibly transparent, making the failure to adopt to its rhythm visible to everyone in the organization.

Agility

Whether your organization has 100 employees or 100,000, the ability to pivot on-demand is a competitive advantage that is hard to imitate.

Benefits of Agility

As recent history has shown us, organizations who can leverage this strength have a tremendous opportunity to capitalize when the market is at its peak to pull away from the competition.

Roadblocks

Many executives show agility in strategy, but breakdowns in communication downstream to managers and front-line workers on how to execute the strategy results in significant slowdowns.

How OKRs Help

Key initiatives are mapped across the entire organization, providing details instructions for every employee in the organization on what they need to do to pivot on demand.

Outcomes of Successful OKR Transformations

Results

Two decades before Andy Grove would introduce OKRs, Peter Drucker said “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. Sixty years later, executives are still striving to gain better insight into the results of their organization as they strive for perfection.

  • Shifting the focus of an organization to value outcomes over outputs gives executives the insight they need to make better decisions and empowers employees who strive to know they are making a difference with their dedication.
  • OKRs simplify the burden of measuring results for executives and employees through a set of key results which must be quantitative.  These results are also connected from Executive to front-line employee, giving executives visibility to the performance of their entire organization, from department, to team, to employee.

Execution

Connecting strategy to execution has been at the top of executives list for decades, which is why the OKR Framework is uniquely qualified to achieve the unobtainable. Created by the king of execution, Andy Grove used the OKR framework at Intel to focus the organization on execution, and 40 years later, it is still being used by the world’s largest organizations, such as Microsoft, Netflix, and Apple.

  • Companies who know how to properly execute have unlimited potential. They have the ability to turn moonshots into roof shots by providing a roadmap to the organization of how they are going to achieve their lofty goals.
  • The OKR framework relies on an entire group of resources sharing a common set of Objectives (goals) and measurable Key Results (outcomes). When an organization shares the same objectives and every employee in the organization has a measurable result for helping to achieve that outcome, it not only increases the likelihood of turning strategy to execution, but it can help you identify where you failed.