Increase your odds of winning by setting smart goals for the new year.
KPIs, MBOs, OKRs. You’ve probably heard of these and several more ways to set your company’s objectives. With so many options to get to the same goal, it is no wonder why by the middle of the year, objectives, as originally set, often go the same way as New Year’s resolutions. The problem often lies on the goal development: sometimes goals are crafted at the leadership level and not effectively shared and refined with the rest of the organization. Also, there’s a tendency to focus on numbers without regards to the operational goals that drive these numbers, for example, growing revenue by x% (a key business goal) may require sales restructuring (an operational goal).
OKR: a framework that may work for you
Although there is no magic formula for setting goals and sticking to them, I’ve found that the framework provided by OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) can set teams on the right track when it comes to goal setting. Before going into details, diving into the Wikipedia definition of OKR can be useful:
“[OKR’s] main goal is to define company and team “objectives” along with the measurable “key results” that define achievement of each objective. One OKR book defines OKR as “a critical thinking framework and ongoing discipline that seeks to ensure employees work together, focusing their efforts to make measurable contributions.”[1]
The key term to focus on is “to ensure employees work together.” The OKR framework is good at steering top management to align their goals with those actually in charge of driving the business towards them throughout the year. This means that as you think of OKRs, you need to make sure you’re delivering on the key initiatives the company needs to get done to get to where it needs to be. I find it useful to think of a “value chain” that will support the OKRs with specific initiatives from your team.
Some guidelines about setting objectives and key results
Setting goals and key results together – which is basically what OKRs are all about – can help you create the discipline to have the right internal conversations initially and throughout the year to ensure the team stays focused.
Here are three easy ways to get you going:
- Get buy-in on your objectives early on. This ensures key team members own the goals, starting with your top management and all the way through to the execution level. Buy-in happens when your team sees a clear connection between objectives and the actions necessary to get there. At the same time, be sure to make your objectives challenging – challenges motivate – along with defining the key results that clearly make the path to this challenge visible.
- Create a culture around goal-setting and goal-measurement. Start with top down company OKRs and expand from there. It works a bit like fractals, where goal-setting and key results filter down and climb up. This analogy works also for timing: set your OKRs annually and quarterly to make sure you have the flexibility to adjust and the visibility to correct when necessary.
- Stay simple: Your goals need to be easy to understand in addition to being simple to measure. This way, people will know right away when they’re deviating from the company’s objectives and will be able to take corrective action sooner. Also, don’t have too many objectives at any level – a maximum of five, each with no more than three or four key results.
The benefits of using a framework like OKRs go beyond just ensuring you develop objectives and meet them. Crafting objectives and key results together disciplines thinking at all levels, communicates the company’s vision accurately, establishes a measurement culture, focuses the effort of your team and enables employee engagement.
Are you ready for OKRs?
Goal setting using OKRs is valuable regardless of your size. As stated before, creating a culture around setting measurable objectives is always a good thing. Think in terms of developing OKRs around functional or product teams in addition to the executive team.
No matter your size, aligning goals with the specific results needed to get there will only result in an organization where everyone – from the CEO to the most recent hire – point their efforts in the same direction.