Choosing The Right OKRs In Business:
A 7-Point Checklist

As a business leader, you can either set company-wide goals based on gut feeling and slide decks or use the proven goal-setting framework Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) – to inspire your team to achieve far-reaching goals.

The Objectives and Key Results framework is a powerful way to express the goals of your company. OKRs in business allow you to set rigorous goals that align big-picture priorities with day-to-day goals. Used by the likes of Adobe, Google, Netflix, LinkedIn and Dropbox, the OKR business model pairs inspiring ambitions with concrete actions.

Read More: OKR Framework: Why do we Need More Alignment and Transparency Now?

Here’s how you can set company OKRs for your business and make them work in any context.

#1. Identify areas of growth – At the onset, know what your team most needs to improve upon. An excellent starting point is setting OKRs that tackle these areas of growth.

Let’s suppose only 75% of your sales reps met their quota last quarter. If you are setting an objective to increase that number by 10% by the end of next quarter, the key results can include:

• KR 1: Every sales rep books two more meetings each week than they did in the past.
• KR 2: Every sales rep spends one more hour each day to find more qualified leads.

#2. Align OKRs with business-wide goals – Each OKR must be aligned with business-wide goals. Whether you want to reduce customer churn by a certain percentage or increase net profits by a specific amount, each goal must feed into the set objective.

#3. Establish quantifiable OKRs – Remember to set quantifiable OKRs – as there is no space for vague goals like “increase revenue” or “sell more products.” To each of the OKR, starting with the objective to the key results, assign percentages.

When you don’t attach a quantifiable measurement to your OKRs in business, you risk setting a goal that is too ambitious or unattainable.

Read More: Using Objectives and Key Results to Attain Organizational Goals

#4. Get feedback from the entire team – Instead of having all the goals come from the top and trickle their way down, it is important to gather inputs from the entire team while defining the objectives and key results.

Even high-level, a smart-goal setting framework should be arrived at through a collaborative and inclusive process. Your team members should have a say – and the truth is, your employees have a better understanding of the goals they can achieve.

#5. Remove roadblocks – When your team has demanding goals, it can be too easy for employees to get discouraged – more so if they run into roadblocks frequently or aren’t receiving enough support. Be sure to remove roadblocks, or equip your team with the right tools or processes so that they can effectively achieve their goals.

#6. Use an OKR software to track progress – When business leaders develop top-level OKRs to guide the organization over a specific period, goals need to be cascaded to all employees and different teams to turn objectives into reality. Cascading goals with manual tracking methods is difficult. Employees need to individually track and manage their goals. This leads to lack of transparency – a vital requirement for the overall success of OKRs.

Unlock:OKR, an OKR software is designed to improve the adoption of OKRs across the organization. The OKR implementation software allows your employees to track the progress of their goals. It serves as a central location for creating and tracking objectives, thereby minimizing repetitive tasks and errors in the workflow.

#7. Celebrate wins: both small and big – Lastly, celebrate the wins. Whether your team achieved a key result or came close – that’s worth celebrating.

Adding to that, study the losses to know the opportunities for growth. Take your team’s feedback on the areas they found challenging versus what they found engaging. Then on, the next time you set your monthly, quarterly, or yearly goals, use the OKR framework to set better and effective OKRs and lay out a concrete, measurable path to get there.

OKRs for business make your teams more successful and accountable for their contributions to the overall success.

As you can see, setting OKRs in business will empower you to exceed your organizational goals. If you are looking for an OKR template or just starting with OKRs, it is never too late to implement an OKR software such as Unlock:OKR. Book a demo today and get started.