Looking for good OKR examples? Want to find out how to actually set them for your team? You are not alone. Figuring out how to set and track OKRs is a common concern for managers and company leaders.
OKRs are more than just a popular buzzword. Setting objectives and key results can play a vital role in your team’s success. They act as a framework for defining your goals and how to achieve them.
Where did the concept of OKRs come from? Andy Grove, then CEO of Intel, created the idea in the late 1960s. John Doerr, then his employee, helped introduce it to the broader world. When he joined Google in 1999, he brought this revolutionary goal-setting framework with him. By focusing on Objectives and Key Results, Doerr helped foster creativity and growth in teams of all sizes, helping them reach their goals and achieve more.
The human resources professionals at Primalogik explain how and why you should implement OKRs using a professional goal tracking software.
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2. OKR Examples: Write Great OKRs
3. Common Misconceptions and FAQs About OKRs
6. Track your OKRs easily and accurately with Primalogik!
1. What Are OKRs?
OKRs, short for Objectives and Key Results, combine quantifiable objectives (what you want to accomplish), and the steps toward achieving them.
The objectives are ambitious, qualitative goals. They can apply to an individual, team, or entire organization.
The key results are measurable, quantitative metrics that define and track progress towards achieving an objective. They are the measurable steps you can use to track progress toward your main goal.
OKRS can help improve corporate governance, initiate change or transformation, and improve transparency. They play a key role in prioritising tasks and improving overall team performance.
What OKRs Are Not:
Key results (KRs) are not just actions you plan to take. They measure the effect your work has had, not the amount of work you’ve put in.
“For key results to be effective, they need to measure a change in the behavior of the target audience of your work,” explains Jeff Gothelf in Harvard Business Review. “This is what makes them an objective measure of success, and not simply a documentation that energy has been spent.”
OKRs are not the same as KPIs, and they are not a list of tasks. They are a way to track the measurable impact of a plan and specific actions as they lead toward a goal.
Why Use OKRs?
OKRs give you a concrete way to measure progress. At the same time, they allow for flexibility in how you achieve your objectives. They help you focus on impact rather than on micromanaging how tasks get done.
Other key benefits of OKRs include the following:
- Aligning individual efforts around common team goals to enhance teamwork.
- Increasing individual focus and engagement.
- Allowing managers to give effective performance reviews and feedback.
Setting and tracking OKRs gives leaders a better sense of how their teams are performing. At the same time, OKRs also improve performance. They motivate employees to aspire toward achieving increasingly higher goals, or ‘stretch goals’. They can also be used to track managers’ goals to verify that the whole team is accountable and focused.
OKRs can also help your team decide if it should take on potential projects. You can evaluate whether a new idea falls within the scope of your OKRs, and then make the call.
2. OKR Examples: Write Great OKRs
To be effective, OKRs should stretch your employees’ capabilities. By creating ambitious, but attainable, objectives, you can guide your team (or individual employees) to strive for more in a practical, attainable way. Let’s look at a few examples.
Niven and Lamorte
The objective itself does not need to include numbers, according to Paul R. Niven and Ben Lamorte, authors of Objectives and Key Results. It states a clear goal, while the key results illustrate how you’ll determine it has been achieved. Niven and Lamorte present the following OKR examples:
Objective: Design an engaging website for Service X.
KRs: 20% of visitors come back to the site within a week.
10% of site visitors ask about our services.
Objective: Make our website more user-friendly for our target audience.
KR: Improve the audience’s satisfaction rating for website usability to an average of 9.
Google openly publishes their sustainability OKRs. Here is an example::
Objective: “We aim to reduce 50% of our combined Scope 1, 2 (market-based), and 3 absolute emissions by 2030. ”
KR: “Design new office buildings and spaces to internationally-recognized and industry- leading green building standards.”
Syracuse, New York
And here are some OKR examples from the city of Syracuse, New York, shared by What Matters:
Objective: “Achieve fiscal sustainability.”
KRs: “Reduce the general fund budget variance from 11% to 5%.”
“Spend 95% of authorized capital project dollars by the end of the fiscal year.”
“Spend 95% of grant dollars for grants from prior fiscal years.”
Objective: Expand to X new B2B customer segments.
KRs: Have calls with 50 new leads in each segment.
Gain a 45% response rate from drip email campaign.
Deliver 15 product demos.
Make at least 5 sales to new customers.
Note how each of these KRs includes numbers that illustrate tangible results. With specific numbers to drive toward, you can focus on achieving meaningful goals.
3. Common Misconceptions and FAQs About OKRs
While many organizations find great success with OKRs, there are some common misunderstandings that can trip teams up along the way.
Misconception 1: They’re the same as KPIs
H4 Are OKRs the same as KPIs?
Not exactly—KPIs don’t include objectives. However, KPIs and KRs can overlap, as they are both metrics of success. And it’s perfectly fine to use both OKRs and KPIs. Or, you can use OKRs at the team level and KPIs at the individual level.
Misconception 2: They’re a list of tasks
Are OKRs just a list of tasks?
Actually, they’re results. Make sure you’re not just creating a to-do list. For example, “create a monthly content calendar” is a task. “Increase monthly readership by 50%” is a key result that you could accomplish with that task. People often make the mistake of listing efforts they plan to make rather than results they wish to achieve.
Misconception 3: Your plan is set in stone once you create it
Are OKRs set in stone?
Stay flexible and reevaluate as needed. Look at how quickly you’re moving toward your goals. This will help you evaluate whether your OKRs are ambitious enough (or too ambitious). In our fast-changing world, goals or benchmarks sometimes need to shift for external reasons, too. If you set OKRs on a quarterly basis, you can absolutely add new ones within the quarter if needed.
Misconception 4: Organizational leaders dictate OKRs to employees
Do leaders create and implement OKRs from the top down?
In fact, OKRs should empower employees to take initiative in goal-setting. For this reason, leaders do not always dictate OKRs However, 90% of companies report introducing OKRs through their leadership team. This is usually the case when setting and measuring cascading goals within an OKR framework.
Now let’s take a look at how to write and structure OKRs with employees or your team.
4. How to Set OKRs
Setting OKRs can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but it’s simpler than you might think. Just follow the steps and use our guidelines, and you’ll be setting excellent OKRs with your team in no time.
3 Main Steps to Setting OKRs:
- Define your overarching objectives—what you aim to accomplish.
- Set a time frame for reaching your objectives.
- List key results that will demonstrate that you’ve met each objective. Make them quantifiable, using numbers to make them measurable. That way, you can objectively evaluate your success.
6 Principles for Setting OKRS:
- Remember that OKRs are outcomes, not tasks.
- Make sure OKRs align with your organization’s strategic goals. If setting individual OKRs, ensure they fit into team OKRs.
- Set OKRs collaboratively with teams, or empower them to set some of their own. This “bottom-up” approach will boost motivation, Doerr emphasizes. Everyone will feel more invested in OKRs when they have a voice in setting them. Plus, the people doing the hands-on work have a good idea of what is feasible.
- Keep the number of OKRs manageable. Three to five OKRs work best for most teams. Each objective should correlate to no more than five results.
- Ensure your OKRs are measurable and transparent. You should be able to evaluate success easily.
- Make your OKRs ambitious. They should push employees and teams to reach higher goals. By doing so, they’ll keep your team energized.
After setting OKRs with your team, assign specific responsibilities. Assign each key result to a particular person. That person doesn’t have to accomplish it single-handedly. However, they are responsible for tracking progress toward that KR and steering the team toward that outcome. Define action steps for specific team members that will help accomplish OKRs. You can then help them set individual OKRs that align with this plan.
5. How to Track OKRs
Tracking OKRs is vital. It’s the only way to know whether you are successfully completing each milestone and determining if you are on track to reach your main objective.
A professional goal tracking software is an invaluable tool for implementing OKRs. It centralizes all objectives and key results so everyone can refer to a single source to confirm progress or quickly identify areas that need attention.
With real-time dashboards and automated progress updates, you can save time that would be spent on manual reporting. A tool like the one offered by Primalogik makes it possible to implement a data-driven approach that supports informed decision-making and accountability. Here are a few things you can do using a goal tracking software:
- Adopt a scoring system. Make sure your OKR goal-tracking offers a solid scoring system. For instance, you can use a scale of 1 to 100 to represent progress as a percentage. This makes it easy to see how close each key result is to completion. Visual tools like progress bars can then bring these scores to life, providing an instant, at-a-glance view of your overall progress.
- Share progress with the team on a weekly basis. Talk with individuals one-on-one about their progress toward their personal goals. Discuss any hurdles they are facing.
Many teams conduct a thorough evaluation of progress on a quarterly basis. However, you can have a longer time frame for achieving objectives. Quarterly (or more frequent) evaluations simply give you a way to regularly assess progress.
Track your OKRs easily and accurately with Primalogik!
Now you understand what makes strong OKRs and how to track them effectively. Follow the principles we’ve discussed, and you’ll be off to a great start!
That means setting a manageable number of ambitious OKRs. It also means making sure your key results are measurable and specific. Finally, set them collaboratively with employees rather than only using a top-down approach. By doing so, you’ll lead all employees to feel invested in achieving their OKRs.Ready to help level up your team with these OKR examples and best practices? Request a free demo to see firsthand how the right tools can be a game-changer!