OKR is a methodology that will help your company to monitor and achieve the proposed objectives.

In this sense, it is worth remembering that setting objectives and goals is something fundamental and crucial, both within companies and in our personal lives.

Have a Vision of where we want to go it is important to create motivations and seek growth and evolution.

However, this process requires attention, both at the time of defining the objectives and throughout the entire process to achieve them.

It is important to have in hand a way to be able to follow the activities, otherwise it becomes easy to stray from the path that allows you to achieve your goals.

In this article, we will explain more about the OKR methodology and how it can help you achieve the company's objectives. Check it out!

What is OKR?

OKR is the acronym for Objective and Key Results — Objectives and Key Results, in literal translation — and corresponds to a methodology that helps companies to implement their strategies and achieve their objectives.

The concept we know today was created by the then CEO and Co-founder of Intel Andy Grove, in 1968 and is still used today by large companies such as Google.

Basically, OKR is the way for a company to improve its productivity in favor of the search for a goal, using metric tools to track the progress of activities.

Thus, the structure of an OKR is comprised of objectives, metrics — Key Results — and initiatives.

Reading Tip: Brainstorming Techniques to Unlock Your Ideas

objectives

An objective is the description - of form qualitative — of a destination that you want to reach.

In this sense, we can say that an objective is the answer to the question: “Where do we want to go?”

Key Results

As Key Results It's the metrics used to measure the progress of the search for the previously established objective.

If the objective is the answer to where you want to go, the Key Results are the answer to the question: “How will we know we're getting there?”

Initiatives

The initiatives are the tasks and actions that must be carried out, that influence the Key Results and, consequently, they help to achieve the objective.

In other words, initiatives are the most operational of the OKR, without which it would be impossible to reach the proposed destination.

Benefits of OKR

Implementing the OKR methodology in companies brings several benefits, both for the organization itself and for the teams and for the employees, individually.

1) Clarity and cohesion for the company

One of the key benefits of OKR is the improvement of communication between the company's strategy and its employees.

To this end, it is important that the objective and the Key Results established are very clear to all employees.

In this way, the teams have an accurate understanding of what destination the company wants to reach and what it is necessary to do to achieve this objective.

Such cohesion within the company provides a unique movement in favor of a purpose and when that happens, there are usually impressive results.

2) Productivity and teams' focus

Once there is a clear objective to be achieved, all efforts and activities are aimed at it.

That way, people are able to prioritizing your tasks, providing more focus on each activity and action.

It's important to always keep one question in mind: “is what I'm doing getting me closer to the goal?”

Reading Tip: How Does UX Design Add Value to the Business?

3) Collaboration and motivation

Another important benefit is the development of collaboration And from motivation of the teams.

In many cases, OKR initiatives have activities that require the engagement of people from different areas. Therefore, collaboration becomes an important part of the process.

In this way, OKR provides a more collaborative and more engaged environment, not only in individual activities, but also in collective activities.

4) More assertive decision-making

As Key Results of an OKR provide dice important for decision-making along the way.

Like metrics, KRs are responsible for Measure the progress of activities through numbers, information, and data.

Therefore, any route deviation or unforeseen event can be circumvented more assertively because of the data created from Key Results.

This benefit is very important because it brings decisions to a level more rational and less emotional. Not always what we think is the most appropriate solution really is.

How to create an OKR?

Despite being a simple concept, it takes some time to master the correct ways of setting objectives and Key Results to obtain good results and to be able to enjoy the benefits of OKR.

There are some tips and guidelines to help you create an OKR that makes sense for your company or team.

Identify an ambassador and establish efficient communication

First of all, to implement OKR, it is important to communicate to employees about this methodology.

For this reason, it is quite appropriate to establish the figure of a Ambassador. In other words, a person responsible for disseminating the concepts and ensure that all employees are trained.

It's important to empower people by teaching the basic principles:

• What is OKR?
• Why use?
• How does it work?
• Clarify doubts.

Thus, with communication, training, and management, the company can more easily and transparently implement OKR in its strategy.

In addition, to use OKR, it is important for the company to be clear What challenge do you want to overcome and what objectives it will pursue.

Without this information—or if it's not clear enough—OKR won't be efficient.

Reading Tip: What Are the Impacts of Product Design on the Business?

OKR review deadlines

The OKR is a living tool, so it is important to constantly review it to verify that the objective has been or is being achieved and to make possible route changes.

Thus, the OKR generally has two revisions: annually and quarterly. This frequency is used because it coincides with the strategic and results disclosure processes of most companies.

However, within teams, this review can and should have a higher frequency.

In a team, it may be important to analyze and revisit the Key Results every month, every 15 days, or even every week. This follow-up is essential to correct errors and make decisions with more agility.

The OKR must be cascaded

As seen so far, OKR should help the company to conquer a challenge and achieve a goal.

Let's think, as an example, of a meal delivery app startup. The company has the following objective and Key Results:

• Objective: become the number 1 food delivery app in Brazil;
• KRs: the most downloaded app on the APP Store and app with the best restaurant and delivery partners.

In this way, the company's objective and KR are very distant from the teams and individuals. For this reason it is important Cascade this objective among boards and management, so that they become more Tangible for the teams.

In the example above, the company's KRs become the objectives of the boards, and the KRs of the boards become the objectives of the management, and so on.

Therefore, cascading the OKR transforms the company's main objective into other objectives for each of the areas of the organization. In this way, the objectives and KRs become more tangible and the teams are able to understand what must be done and what is the contribution of their work to the achievement of the organizational objective.

How to set the objectives

Writing objectives may seem like a simple task, but it's important to take some care when creating them.

In this sense, keep in mind some issues such as:

• The objective is uplifting?
• He brings worthiness for the company? Solve a problem?
• This objective is reachable within the defined deadline?
• The cascading objectives are aligned with the company's main purpose?

In addition, to help establish good goals, it is also important to understand what they are not They are:

• Objectives are not projects with tasks;
• Objectives are not activities;
• And most importantly: Goals are not easy to achieve.

This last issue is perhaps one of the most difficult to manage.

An objective must be challenging, inspiring and that allows people to do their best with innovations, creations and breaking barriers.

Therefore, it is important that the objective is lofty. But don't confuse difficult with impossible. At the same time that a difficult but attainable goal motivates people, an impossible objective will have the opposite effect and teams will become demotivated.

Reading Tip: Business Design and Why Is It Important to Know About Business?

Tips for writing objectives

• Do not set more than 5 objectives, with 3 being a generally ideal number;
• avoid objectives that don't encourage innovation or creation — “keeping revenue” and “continuing with the same app” are some examples;
• Use terms that indicate a superseding, a point of arrival or a destination — “To be the company with the highest market value on the stock market”;
• Write a goal clear, unambiguously.

In addition, writing more specific objectives shows tangibility and helps with teams' productivity and performance.

Examples:

• Generate more revenue than in the previous period;
• Make it possible to explore Jupiter in the next 10 years;
• To be the first company to create autonomous cars.

How to establish Key Results

KRs are responsible for Measure the trajectory to the destination/objective.

They are a very important tool for measuring the performance of the actions of each team or person.

Therefore, when establishing the Key Results keep in mind the following points:

• High impact: KRs must reflect Big changes and major impacts that will be recognized by the company even if they are not 100% achieved;
• Specific: KRs must be specific and Quantitative, to be easy to follow and analyze without false interpretations;
• Influence: KRs should not reflect tasks that you can do, but should contemplate results that you can influencing.

Tips for writing Key Results

• Establish no more than 3 KRs per objective;
• Think about whether KR helps to achieve the objective or to get closer to it;
• KRs are metrics and not activities, therefore, should not describe actions, but their impacts;
• KRs should be easy to assess, measure, and evidence.

Examples:

• Improve the conversion rate from 15% to 30%;
• Achieve 10 thousand views on the site;
• Reach 50,000 downloads in X tempo.

How to establish Initiatives

Initiatives are the highest level elementary of the OKR and can be translated into activities and actions that make up the KRs.

Initiatives need to be:

• Specific: the team and the people need to know exactly what activities need to be done, without room for ambiguity or misinterpretation. Initiatives are actions, so they must indicate work to be done;
• Under Control: unlike KRs, initiatives are totally under the control of individuals and teams.

Example:

• Carry out searches with users;
• Define people;
• Build the X prototype;
• Build the app's style guide.

Reading Tip: What is Lean UX?

Main mistakes when creating an OKR

Creating a solid OKR requires experience, although its creation seems simple at first.

To help create an OKR, in addition to having the tips mentioned above in hand, it is also important to be careful with some common mistakes that can happen along the way:

• Communication failed: failing to communicate an objective may compromise the construction of KRs and initiatives, impacting the performance of the teams and the collaboration between them;
• Business-as-usual KRs: OKRs must establish a destination, an evolution in the company's results and values. We must take care that our OKRs don't just reflect the upkeep Of our Status Quo. The objectives and Key Results they must make people leave their current comfort zone and seek to improve their results and performance;
• Low-value objectives: OKRs must propose high-impact objectives that change the company's level. Setting unambitious goals is a waste of resources and effort;
• Do not establish Key Results Sufficient: KRs must represent everything that must be measured in order for the objective to be achieved. In this sense, the lack of a KR may be crucial to the OKR not working. So think about all the relevant KRs and don't leave important metrics out.

Differences between OKR and KPI

The world of business and management has several concepts that often end up being confused with each other.

It is important to note that Are there differences between OKR and KPI and that the two concepts are not exclusive, but complementary.

KPI is the acronym for Key Performance Indicator and it is a widely used tool to measure the performance of an activity or process.

For example: an activity such as: “testing the interface with 10 different users over a period of one week”. To measure the performance of this activity, we can establish a KPI that indicates the number of tests performed vs. the number of days elapsed.

In this way, it is possible to monitor daily the Activity performance and analyze whether it is late, early, or as expected.

On the other hand, OKR is a methodology which aims at a much more ambitious and aggressive goal, based on the company's strategy.

Therefore, an OKR should not be seen as an indicator of performance. But a KPI can be used to monitor the initiatives that make up the Key Results to guarantee its results and effects.

Using Trello/Notion to create your OKR framework

Now that you know the basic principles of OKR, you can start building your Framework and apply the methodology in your company and on a daily basis.

Some companies are already working with their own Frameworks of OKR, whether they are produced internally or with the help of external solutions, such as I'm sorry.

However, OKR can be managed quite a bit unsophisticated, using tools like Trello or Notion.

Trello

Trello is a tool based on paintings and that helps you organize and plan your routine and projects.

In this sense, you can build OKR on Trello as follows:

• Each list on the board is an objective;
• The cards match a Key Result;
• Within the card you can build lists with the initiatives.

In addition, to improve OKR management, you can create labels that indicate the status of each action.

Working with Trello can be simple and efficient to build OKRs and manage them in a less complicated way.

Reading Tip: What Is Lean Startup?

Notion

Notion is a very complete tool.

In it, it is possible to work with frames, just like in Trello.

Thus, the creation and management of an OKR occurs in a very similar way as in the previous tool.

On a page Board, you can place each objective in a column, within the columns the Key Results, and within the KRs the initiatives.

In the same way as in Trello, Notion allows categorize and identify the status of each of the actions.

It's important to remember that Trello and Notion are only suggestions of tools to get you started using the OKR methodology.

More important than defining a tool is to start putting this concept into practice. At the beginning, it can be a bit difficult to describe good objectives, KRs, and initiatives. But with practice you will get the hang of it and over time these constructions will become easier and better.