5 Reasons You Should Use OKR For Your Business

OKR is more often spoken about in the business environment. It is a framework for goals achievement popularized by Google. But one thing is to speak about it and the other is to implement it. In this article, we are going to highlight 5 key reasons why your company should begin using OKR.

OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a methodology on business goals achievement. It is based on a synchronization of professional goals of each employee and big company ones. It stands by its flexibility (as a rule, planning is made for 3 months with weekly reports and prioritization).And also by high level of ambitiousness and involvement (one set daring objectives and is interested to achieve them). In this article you can read more detailed information about an introduction to OKR.

So let’s puzzle out when do you need to dig into the depth of OKR and to begin using it in the favor of your company’s development (or the company you are working for).

1. In case you need flexibility in planning

If you’ve ever worked with annual planning then you are likely at least once (or more) faced the situation when most of the company goals are no longer actual. This can happen in the 3rd or 4th months of the current year. Especially this problem is widespread among young companies as there are a lot of possibilities which lead to the abrupt change in the direction and it’s absolutely ok.

As a result when it comes to reports you and your team of C-level come to an idea that a part of your goals are not up to date and there is no clear vision on how to deal with it. Then we set new goals and it’s running around in circles — objectives become out-of-date because of so many changes.

And what if implementing quarterly planning? Or to make a weekly report on objectives? To add some new ones, which are important now?

Is it possible? Absolutely!

The OKR methodology will come to your help. In the OKR planning is executed on a quarterly basis (although if you’d like to it can be done even for a year). And a possibility to add new opportunities and to freeze unimportant ones is the basis of OKR.

2. If you want to involve as more people as possible in goals achievement

C-level usually falls into confusion with the low involvement of the employees in achieving big company goals.

Somebody puts up with the fact that people don’t want to do something aside from their current responsibilities. But if there are several people who are willing to jump higher than their heads, then they are usually encouraged and promoted.

Not so many people are aware that the reason for low personnel’s involvement is that they don’t take part in the annual planning. They are just notified and sometimes people even don’t know about big company objectives.

In the OKR all the employees are involved in the development of the objectives and key results.

Usually, it looks like this: a department manager gets a row of grand objectives and holds a so-called brainstorming with the team. As a result of this brainstorming, they have to ask the question: “What can we do to lead the company to these results? What is the role of each person?”.

3. When you’d like to add some drive and ambitiousness to the corporate culture

One of the key principles of OKR is the ambitiousness of objectives (namely Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) principle which means a goal with a high expectation, which can even scare with its difficulty).

That’s why if you want to add some ambitions and drive to the corporate culture — the OKR is what the doctor ordered.

How to get to know whether the employees will not lose motivation to suchlike objectives? Practice shows that interest-only go up. For example, companies that already use OKR are Amazon, Google, Intel, Adobe, Linkedin. And this is the small list of leaders.

4. When you realize that traditional ways of goals achievement don’t work anymore

Something goes wrong and you are upset that all your efforts to make the company achieve set goals turn out to be inefficient. You’ve tried lots of methodologies but nothing helps. Maybe OKR will become the way out and results will go up.

Why it can happen?

First of all, as I mentioned above OKR involves all of the staff in goal achievement. Secondly, the flexibility delivered by OKR can be the reason for using a big quantity of possibilities and also a bigger openness to changes. Thirdly, ambitiousness and drive that give OKR to a team can’t but leave its mark.

5. When you want to achieve results twice higher than usual

A team works at capacity and even higher owing to the overstated objectives presupposed by OKR. There are no restrictions we got used to the setting ( it’s impossible, it’s out of my power). Pay attention to the list of the companies transferred to OKR -these are giants, that have grown up from small startups. If they didn’t think so dare they would be in the garages till now😂

So, try, dream and implement.

OKR is much more simple it may seem. If you have any questions you are welcome to contact me😉