Setting effective key results for OKRs is essential for achieving meaningful change, improvement, and growth. These objectives should be bold, inspiring, and time-limited. To ensure success, key results must be measurable, clear, and aggressive yet realistic. Measurability is key.
Each key result must have a quantitative unit value that can be used to track progress. It's important to define the initial value and the target value to measure the progress of the key outcome. Additionally, key results should express milestones that describe “how the goal can be achieved”. Once objectives have been established, it is important to agree with the manager, team, and everyone working on each objective what the appropriate key results would be.
If a new landing page doesn't offer the conversion rate improvements needed to achieve a key result, you can quickly make changes to the page to see if your changes produce better results in the coming days or weeks. Ambitious key results unlock creative thinking and challenge people to try new things to achieve those results. For owners of objectives, key results or initiatives, it's important that the OKR and initiatives are within their circle of influence. If the key result indicates a quarter-on-quarter growth of 50%, one could easily conclude that it is quite ambitious.
It's important to remember that results, not products, are often what really matters. The acronym OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, which gives an idea of how the framework is developed. Your goal tells you where to go, key results are the results you need to achieve to achieve your goal, and initiatives are all the projects and tasks that will help you achieve your key results. If key results are no longer a good measure of success, it's important to re-analyze them and make necessary changes.
Setting effective key results for OKRs requires careful consideration and planning. It's important to ensure that each result is measurable, clear, aggressive yet realistic, and within your circle of influence. By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your team is on track for success.
