OKRs help set a specific strategy and goals for a team or organization over a specified duration. At the end of the time period, you evaluate how well you succeeded in meeting those goals. Spending time in defining team goals and organizational strategy in a specific measurable manner can help align everyone’s efforts.
Let’s break up the words:
An Objective is setting a goal to be achieved in the future. It provides a clear direction of where you want to go. It could be referred to as an inspirational vision that is time-bound and specific.
A Key Result is a quantifiable target value that measures the progress towards an objective. It expresses measurable milestones that describe the progress towards an objective.
See also Objectives and Key Results (OKR) Samples - snippset
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a framework for setting goals and determining how you can achieve them.
Used by individuals, teams and companies, OKRs are split into two parts:
An objective defines what you want to achieve. It should be qualitative, ambitious, actionable and time-bound.
A key result defines how you’ll measure your progress towards your objective. It should be quantitative (measurable) and achievable. Ideally, under each objective, you should have three to five key results.
In a nutshell, you achieve a set of key results to complete your objective.
OKRs are a way to align the Mission all the way to Strategy, Objectives, and Key Results. It's a way to move quickly towards focused impact.
Aspirational OKRs are moonshot goals while Committed OKRs are more realistic.
An ambitious goal with no clear path to get there. It might roll over year over year and sometimes change ownership.
Aspirational OKR is like your crazy, ambitious sibling.
These OKRs are moonshot goals that may be hard to tackle and achieve. However, they could help your company discover new, innovative routes to boost its growth.
A goal that will be achieved. Resources and schedules should be adjusted to make sure it gets done.
If aspirational OKR is the ambitious sibling, committed OKR is the more realistic one. So realistic that they’re supposed to be achieved completely – all the time.
Often called roofshot goals, these OKRs are far easier to attain than aspirational OKRs. And since they’re realistic, you’ll also have a clear-cut idea how to achieve them.
To write good OKRs, you only need to use a simple formula.
Here’s the OKR process:
I will: (your objective)
As measured by: (your key results)
But before we use this formula, here are some OKR best practices to keep in mind when writing OKRs: