Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a performance management framework designed to help companies align their strategy with their goals. It is a way of measuring progress against a set of measurable objectives, and encourages employees to set very high goals and document progress toward successful completion of key results with backup data. This is what makes OKRs an objective measure of success, and not simply a documentation that energy has been expended. OKRs are an effective method for planning and measuring success at the team level, as they help establish a specific strategy and goals for a team or organization for a specific period of time.
They are also seen as a way to focus on value creation, drive self-management, and build high-performance teams. When using OKRs, it is important to be transparent about the goals that different teams are working on and their current progress. The acronym OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, and it is a popular management technique or tool to help companies focus and implement the strategy. The objective defines what the employee wants to achieve, while the key results describe how the employee will achieve the goal within a specific time frame.
For key results to be effective, they must measure a change in the behavior of the target audience of their work. This is an opportunity to stretch goals and commit to an even bolder goal with even more aggressive key results. For example, if you want to “Win the World Cup”, you can set up two key result areas, such as “Tournament Average Goal Rate of 2.0” and “75% Ball Possession Rate”. Some think that OKRs are simply a more agile version of Peter Drucker's goal-based management (MBO) process, which requires objectives to be INTELLIGENT (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound).
And those key results could be assigned to different functional teams, where each team would contribute to the company's objective. It's important to ask yourself if you need to adjust the key results you chose if you haven't already done so. This is an opportunity to ensure that your goals are realistic and achievable. OKRs are an effective way for companies to align their strategy with their goals, measure progress against measurable objectives, focus on value creation, drive self-management, and build high-performance teams. They also help establish a specific strategy and goals for a team or organization for a specific period of time.
