*You wanted the OKRs*
*Founders/CXOs buy in*
*Execution starts*
Poof… Jump to today,,,
Now what?
First, Let me congratulate you for taking an initiative toward smooth strategy execution & better team alignment.
Your team members are working on the roadmap of inspirational and aspirational objectives that you all have mutually agreed upon. Everyone is aligned with the company's main objective, and the key results are helping you measure your employees' or customers' behaviour.
But with the execution stage ending, what should you and your team do right now? Indeed, fulfilling the objectives and achieving the key results is a given job, but does it end there?
There are good chances you will notice your team being guided by the Key Results now (outcomes).
They are taking their first step into a more efficient framework and new beginnings where the path is filled with permutations and combinations. Unlike in a traditional roadmap, now is the time your team will need to move aggressively towards the bigger company goals.
So, what shall they do now?
"We already have a roadmap for product. How shall we fit that into our OKRs journey?"
The newly well-written OKR will now be responsible for measuring the success and progress of your team. Your team has to figure out the right set of code, design, and copy that they need to follow to get them reflected on their OKR framework positively.
Some promising ideas may still peak out from the previous product roadmap that they were following. However, there is no surety that these ideas can deliver the Key Results you seek.
So, the best bet is to jump into product delivery right away. It simply means the work your team will do to test their ideas. You can take it as a science project you had in school, and its all about research, experimentation, and proof of concept.
Once the tests reveal positive changes in employee or customer behaviour, you can continue to exploit those ideas. Moreover, you would have distinct market-driven evidence that the ideas are working, too, so kudos to that.
Nevertheless, you should remember that the key results will define your success. The teams in your organisation can further cross-collaborate to propose new ideas, validate or kill them, test them, and carry them out in the best possible way you can.
But does your work stop here? NO, you still have a long way to go.
Once you and your team have your way around product discovery, it's time to keep track of the OKRs. And here are the best practices to follow.
6 Best Practices for Keeping OKRs on Track
Regular tracking helps teams make more data-driven decisions and provides insight into the what and how of measuring success within the stipulated time.
1. Decide the main measuring component of the key results (WHAT)
Leave no room for obscurity when drafting your team's key results. You need to clearly and concisely understand exactly what you are measuring.
For example, you can measure:
The number of calls the sales team made to lapsed clients.
The growth percentage of your email list.
The number of people attending your event.
In other words, you should not be confused about what data you should collect.
2. Decide how you would like to measure your OKRs (HOW)
You have to go one step at a time. You know what you will measure; now it is time to think about how to do it.
Use a system or tool to monitor and keep track of the progress. This way, you can understand how close you are to achieving your objectives in terms of items, numbers, or percentages. There’s a long debate on use of Google sheets, Notion or tools, but let's not focus on that here.
3. Drive OKRs through initiatives
That one thing that can be the driving force of your OKR goal completion is initiatives (a gotta-take-one-for-the-team attitude).
While you cannot numerically measure initiatives, you can definitely witness the impact on the progress toward the Key Results. Moreover, it also helps your team in achieving its Objectives.
Here are some examples to further simplify it for you:
Upgrading the design of your company's website to improve the checkout experience.
Schedule weekly catch up with clients.
Drafting newsletters.
Hence, anything your team does to get closer to their goals will be termed an initiative.
4. Connect initiatives, objectives, and key results
Alignment and OKRs go hand-in-hand. Hence, for your team to outperform themselves and achieve the best results, you have to keep your initiatives, objectives, and key results aligned.
Connecting every dot and building everything of each other is a crucial aspect that you should follow while writing the OKRs. Otherwise, you will face problems tracking progress and get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
5. Make it crystal clear
Your mantra for the time would be to “treat OKRs like office gossip and spread it like a wildfire.” 😁 Everyone across the organization should have a clear visibility of the objectives and key results that you have selected.
You can also go a step ahead and have your team members draft the OKR. This makes it easier to keep everyone on the same page, track progress, boost motivation and engagement, and inculcate individual accountability.
6. Conduct company-wide quarterly reviews
Conducting company-wide reviews at the end of the quarter is essential as it:
Helps in celebrating progress.
Showcases your team's hard work.
Illustrates how efficient the OKR framework is.
Highlights key performers and their improvements.
Tracking the OKR framework throughout the quarter and conducting a review allows everyone to analyse their strengths and shortcomings that they need to focus on for the next quarter.
Besides minimizing the chances of mess-ups, quarterly OKR reviews established a results-driven culture and attitude in the company.
Okay, That's it
OKRs are the what's expressed in an unambiguous, motivating, and tangible way that makes company-wide achievements clear, inspiring, and actionable. When done right, they are one of the best goal-setting and alignment mechanisms for building continuously learning anf customer-centric teams.
On top of that, keeping your OKR framework on track in a practical and tactical method can encourage an incredible culture of agility and improvement.
You can also check: OKRs Adoption- What could go wrong & How to ensure successful Implementation?
wait.....
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