As the new year begins, businesses everywhere have one thing in mind; to reach their business goals and we have the answer; OKRs. To achieve your goals, you’ll need to stay focused and make sure the work of your team prompts high levels of impact. However, this is where the real challenge resides for most organizations.
Staying busy is simple, but frequently organizations confuse working hard and working towards their goals. They are getting things done, but aren’t aligning their work with their goals and as a result, aren’t seeing as much success as they could be seeing. This is where OKRs come into play.
Defining OKRs
OKR (Objective Key Results) is a goal-setting methodology that helps your organization understand how everything you do is moving the needle in the right direction. They’ll outline what needs to be done to reach specific goals within a given time frame – in your case 2022.
OKRs are typically structured with a primary, realistic, goal and 3-5 different ways to track progress. This way, you can invest your efforts in the tasks that generate the most significant, positive impact for your organization.
The nature of OKRs makes them the perfect tool for teams. It’s a way for everyone to have a common goal with an outline of actionable tasks needed to reach the goal.
The main benefit of using OKRs compared to other methodologies is how easily they can be implemented and how they can empower your team to think outside the box to find better solutions.
Setting OKRs
The two components of OKRs are what makes them useful. The first one is the objective. Objectives are what you want to achieve. They need to be measurable and specific. So, for example, having a yearly revenue of $20 million or growing your staff to 100 team members could be achievable objectives.
The other component is the Key Results. A key result is a measure of whether or not you have reached your goal. It has to be completely objective, so going back to our previous example, your revenue dollar amount and headcount can serve as critical results.
You’ll want to keep these things in mind as you begin setting your OKRs.
Identify Areas for Improvement
OKRs are effective for organizations because they can be used across most, if not all, departments. This means team members can stay within their area of focus and still have a clear understanding of how their work affects the organization as a whole.
As areas for improvement are identified, you and your team can begin building OKRs that build those weaker areas.
Good, impactful OKRs should be:
- Aligned with your overall business goals
- Quantifiable
- Accepted by your whole team
Achieving OKRs
Once you’ve set your OKRs, it’s time to get to work. The central aspect of OKRs is not reverting to business as usual. They should empower your team to find better solutions to help you reach your goals faster or more efficiently.
This is why so many billion-dollar technology companies and other high-growth industries use OKRs. These companies know innovation, teamwork, and meaningful results are key to their future and the OKR framework encourages this.
Make Sure Your Team Knows What to Do
OKRs are not about top-down management, or even worse, micromanagement. However, it is still essential your team has a clear understanding of what needs to be done to reach your goals.
Invest your time in making sure every workgroup and individual taking on OKRs have a clearly defined action plan before heading to work. With a well-defined strategy, you can have clear expectations of how they’ll be investing their resources towards reaching goals.
Be There When a Problem Arises
Naturally, when looking for new ways to reach your goals, you may encounter unforeseen problems. So your team needs to know you will be there to support them when they come across a situation that might keep them from reaching their forecasted goal.
Your support is necessary. When a problem arises, being there for your team will also mean solving the problem. You may have to try:
- Adjusting an OKR to be more realistic
- Purchasing a tool that improves a process
- Switching to a better tool
- Cheering your teammates on if they are discouraged
Bottom line: Your support is essential to your teams success and you must do what you can to help them reach company goals.
Measure Progress
A key step to making OKRs useful is measuring progress. If you don’t measure progress, you are just working towards goals with no idea of whether or not you’re actually heading in the right direction.
This also gives your team a good idea of how their work is impacting the business and can be used as an accountability tool to produce results.
Work With a Trusted Accountant
OKRs are transformative in hundreds of organizations across multiple industries. But implementing them has some challenges and will require planning and investing time and energy into making them work.If you need a trusted financial partner that can help you free up your bandwidth or guide you in choosing OKRs that will drive your business, turn to Pasquesi Partners. Schedule a call with us to find more ways to help you reach your 2022 financial goals.