OKR Best Practices

What does OKR stand for?

OKRs are Objectives and Key Results, It’s a popular management framework that is used to set goals in an organization.

When you are looking for OKR best practices, you should look here. We have combined a lot of answers to questions about the OKR practices.

Understaning and learning how OKRs actually work is the best way to make sure you can implement the system successfully. But don’t be disencouraged if you make mistakes in the beggining. Implementing OKRs can take 3 or 4 quarters and often the process is even longer.

So, check here to make sure that you have set your OKRs correctly. And that you are really  getting the maximum benefit from using Objectives and Key Results

 

 

 

To successfully implement OKRs there needs to be company-wide agreement and awareness. It is important to implement the best practice process to make sure everyone can pick-up the new goal-setting methodology.

CEO, VPs, and other relevant people start by setting company-level OKRs which will be guidelines for the whole Company. If you will have Annual goals as well, start by setting them 

• At the start of the quarter set the Company level Objectives
• Communicate the Objectives with the rest of the company and discuss why they are important
• Ask the team managers to start crafting their Objectives based on Company Objectives

After you have set goals for your team, it’s important to start actually working on those goals on a weekly basis. For that, you and your team members should add weekly items and update the OKR progress regularly. If your team has weekly meetings then using Weekdone during the meetings creates a good habit and it helps people to adopt it.

Key Results measure how far from reaching your objective you are. It adds metrics to objectives.

Key Results should be numeric and be updated every week. If your Key Result is binary it may be a task or plan and not a Key Result. Which moves us to the next point.

While plans and projects are important in supporting your objectives, Key Results are measurable business outcomes and should be treated as such.

Some good examples of Key Results for the Objective: Increase product reach in Germany, would include:

1. Increase UK Sign-up to MQL conversion rate from 15 to 20%
2. Increase UK MQLs from 300 to 600
3. Increase UK SQLs from  200 to 350

These examples are measurable (quantifiable), objectively graded, and while challenging they should be achievable.

A bad example of a Key Result would be:

1. Launch a new product.

This Key Result is not numerically measurable and it is not objectively clear how it contributes to the Objective. This would be considered as a project, or could be rewritten into a separate Objective.

Remember that Objectives are large aspirational goals and KR’s are a quantifiable measurement of that goal. You can see more examples of Key Results for your given field at okrexamples.co.

The complexity of the OKR system you implement depends entirely on the size of your company and how many levels of OKRs you need.

But in general, you need two levels of OKRs: company OKRs and team OKRs.

OKRs can be set for either a quarter or a year. Any shorter period of time is too short to actually get impactful things done.

Quarterly OKRs (set for 3 months) are considered the optimal solution as it is long enough time to get things done and see the results of your labour.

In general OKRs should be visible to everyone in the company. This gives employees a clear picture of what everyone is doing. That’s how Google does it.

Apps like Weekdone allow you to set annual company Objectives but it is reccomened to keep OKR quarterly for the company level as well.

You should not use annual OKRs on a team level.  

When setting annual OKRs it’s important to remember that KRs should still be updated weekly and Objectives reviewed every month to make sure employees don’t lose track of what they’re doing.

In general, no. OKRs should not be directly tied to employee bonuses and salary schemes to make sure employees are still willing to take risks and work towards moonshot OKRs.

OKRs should reflect team priorities not tasks the employee is responsible for.

For a remote team to work, you must set up an excellent communication system for your team and make sure this system runs smoothly every day. People who start working remotely need time for these work processes to become a habit. Here, we’ll take a look on how to run a new remote team and until people understand what they need to do. 

You need to think about your employees. How do they stay engaged? How do they keep their discipline? A good manager has an answer to both.

OKRs in a Remote Team

OKRs for the remote team work just like they do in an office setting and are a very good methodology to run a remote team. OKRs help to make sure that the members of your remote teams are always up to date with each other’s work and are never out of the loop.

Working remotely comes hard to some teams. Especially if they aren’t used to it. Even working in office, transparency and unity might be difficult from time to time. 

OKRs for remote teams should be set and executed together with the team. First, everybody should understand what the OKR methodology is about and how this helps to organize your teamwork better. It’s important that they see the benefits to feel engaged with the set OKRs.

Learning should go with the OKR process on every step on the way. Weekly Check-ins play a crucial part in it. The lessons learned might be the most valuable part of OKRs! Sometimes we might now achieve any great success in percent wise but if the team gained a lot of new knowledge and has grown because of it I think we can call it a success.

 Implementing an OKR software like Weekdone can make the process even smoother. Especially with their free OKR coaching and onboarding assistance. It is free for up to 3 users. You can start a free 15-day trial if your team is bigger than that. So check it out and make OKRs work for your remote team. 

Managers love to set goals. So do CEOs. For employees, however, goal setting and reporting may seem like a waste of time meant to keep them in the office longer.

It’s important to educate and train employees about OKRs before implementing it. It’s vital that they understand how using OKRs helps to make their life easier.  OKRs work best if everyone in a company uses it.

There is a guide that help employees understand the basics of OKRs.