What is OKR and How to Use It?

OKR stands for “Key Objectives and Outcomes”, a collaborative goal-setting methodology used by teams and individuals to set ambitious and challenging goals with measurable results. It is a simple tool for creating alignment and engagement around measurable goals, providing a transparent and objective performance evaluation mechanism. OKRs are quarterly, not annual, and separate from compensation. The acronym OKR stands for Key Objectives and Outcomes, consisting of a goal and several key outcomes that are the results needed to achieve the goal.

Regularly reviewing your key results will help you decide if your initiatives have delivered the desired results or not. Organizations should be careful when designing their OKRs in a way that does not represent business as usual, since those goals, by definition, are not action-oriented or inspirational. We recommend starting with an OKR workshop where all key stakeholders responsible for company strategy first ask and then gather employee input on what they think should be top priorities. We have seen words like “out of this world “, pathetic “, wicked”, wonderful “, sweet”, fabulous and “super dumb” used to describe the objectives.

Decoupling OKRs in this way can make goals more attainable and reduce stress levels for employees who find certain metric objectives difficult to achieve. Not only does this help you quickly identify what is working and what isn't, but it also allows you to change course in a new cycle if your group's objectives don't contribute to your company's OKRs. The goal is your destination, the Key Results show if you're going in the right direction and the Initiatives are what you'll do to get your car going. From my point of view (CPB), the OKR system serves to analyze the key results of an individual performing, but there is no definite path to achieve this.