What are OKRs? 

Most people will tell you that the OKR framework is used by organizations to set and track their goals. However, it’s more than that. Objective and Key Results are a tool to ensure that important business goals actually get prioritized and worked on by the entire organization. That’s why we call it strategy execution. Great OKRs don’t only articulate your strategy. They make sure it gets executed, too.

The OKR framework involves breaking down your business goals into two parts – the objective and the key results. This makes it easy to understand and manage goals effectively.

What are objectives in OKRs?

The objectives are the overarching business goals that you want to achieve. They provide clarity and direction for your team and help everyone stay focused on and measure what matters. The objectives should be ambitious, yet achievable, and should inspire your team to work towards a common goal. When setting OKRs, it’s recommended to have three to five objectives for each team and quarter. Having too many objectives can lead to a lack of focus, while having too few can make it challenging for teams to relate and make significant progress towards your goals.

What are key results in OKRs?

The key results are the measurable outcomes that you need to achieve to reach your objective. While they don’t have to, these key results can follow the principles of SMART objectives and SMART goals, meaning that they should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This OKR method provides a structured approach where you can evaluate your progress against your SMART objectives. 

Key results should be updated every quarter, as part of the ongoing OKR process, and you should aim to have three to five key results for each objective. By setting SMART objectives and regularly reviewing key results, you can ensure that you are on track to achieve your goals and use SMART objectives examples to guide your progress.

Measure what matters with Objective and Key Results

The OKR method emphasizes the importance of measuring what matters. Using the mountain climbing analogy (see image), the objective represents destination, or the summit, while the key results act as the checkpoints that measure your progress towards the summit. As with the SMART goals approach, the OKR method ensures that the key results are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. By continuously tracking your key results through the OKR process, you can quickly identify areas where you need to make improvements to stay on track and reach your goal. Without the OKR method that ensures that you measure what matters, you risk losing sight of your objective and not making the necessary adjustments to get there.

The beauty of the Objective and Key Result or OKR framework is that it’s flexible and can adapt to the ever-changing landscape of business. It ensures that your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, following the principles of SMART objectives. This OKR method also promotes transparency and accountability, as progress towards the objectives and key results is tracked and communicated regularly.

Flexible goal setting with the OKR Method

While your objective may remain the same for a year, the OKR method recommends that your key results be adapted every quarter. This is because the key results are designed to measure what matters in a specific time period and are tailored to your business’s current situation. Through the OKR process, you can track progress towards your business goals and make necessary adjustments to stay on track.

The main benefit of the OKR framework is that it connects high-level strategy with daily actions. Once you have set your objective and key results, teams start working on their plan of action for each key result . This will help you achieve your objective and key result. The OKR management approach encourages you to break down your plan into step-by-step actions that move you closer to your goal each day. By using the OKR method, you can align your daily actions with your high-level strategy and maximize your chances of success in goal setting.