OKR stands for Objectives & Key Results and is a simple framework for setting better goals. It describes WHAT you want to achieve (Objective) and HOW you intend to measure that you have achieved it (Key Result). Well-known OKR users are Google and Twitter, but even the artist Bono uses it for his philanthropic focus. OKR is a goal management with a strong focus on aiming high and doing it together with the rest of the company – it is especially useful for people with high ambitions, clear visions but a great need for collaboration.
Each OKR is therefore linked to a Focus Area, in order to create opportunities for several people (perhaps 1000’s) to aim high together towards a common vision. Read more here to learn more about how to create a clear vision for OKRs.
Below are two examples of OKR, we hope it gives you inspiration:
OKR System Engineer, example 1:
Note that in gray text we have written “Focus End User” – this is an example of a Focus area.
It is important then how this OKR becomes a supportive way of working in everyday life. OKR should help you focus on the most important thing, even though there is a lot going on during the work week. Therefore, after setting up your OKR, it is important to start making brief, recurring comments against it. In OKR’s language, these comments are called “Check-ins”.
What opportunities, for example, would this OKR give you for doing insightful Check-Ins, and what kind of feedback would you get from your particular workplace? Here are a few examples to get you started, as it looks in our tool:
OKR for System Engineer, example 2:
As in the previous example, we have added a focus area in the above example – this time “Identify and eliminate double jobs”.
This OKR shows examples where Key Results has been used percentage – “100% of our tickets…” shows a high ambition, but at the same time an easy-to-measure goal. This particular example is about the importance of clear measures to be taken in order to measure whether or not you meet the requirements. In modern OKR tools like Node, you can choose between measuring percentages, with a specific number, or measuring change.
A range can helps to share something about a current situation; in “… from 23% to 5%” and “… from 200 to 400 …” the developer has not only set a concrete key result, but also produced what the situation looks like today (as many as 23% of what you do get a note / we gets through 200 changes per quarter). In this way, OKR is also used to disseminate knowledge about important conditions in the initiatives that each person works with. Let’s take a look at what a series of check-ins might look like for one of these key results:
