Are OKRs the real drivers of productivity in the Digital world?
OKRs have received their fair share of mention in the success story of companies like Google, Intel, Facebook, etc. In fact, the Founders and CEOs of these companies have openly proclaimed that OKRs are the reason they were able to scale, manage a big ship and continue to be agile.
OKRs are Objectives and Key Results and they are usually coupled with CFR ( Conversations, Feedback, and Recognition). Let's take a look at what are the key features of OKRs that help digital organizations thrive.
Focus and Commit to Priorities — Objectives define where you want to go; what you want to achieve. Key Results capture the pathway to get there. You are able to measure them and they have a defined achievement timeline.
OKRs force you to ask “What is important for the next 3,6,12 months and align your actions to those tasks that help achieve the defined objectives. Objectives are the stuff for inspiration, goal setting for horizons. Key results are the path to execution, these are the levers you pull, the marks you achieve to reach your goals.
OKRs force you to prioritize and marshall your resources towards those things that are key to delivering results, they make you do fewer things that drive greater results. In fact, OKRs push you constantly towards an 80:20 mindset. Once you commit to priorities, you automatically put more wood behind fewer arrows that are aimed at driving the results you want.
Because you are always consistently measuring performance, ORKs help you identify which actions are not delivering the desired results and enable you to take timely decisions to either shelve them or correct them.
Align and Connect for Teamwork — OKRs create a deep-linked chain amongst the entire team members, the manager, and the organization. Team OKRs need to roll up into the manager's OKRs which roll up into the organization's OKRs and therefore complete alignment is achieved.
Due to the way OKRs are set up and the frequent review cycle, it is possible to change OKRs if they are not aligned and not delivering the goals. Sometimes goalposts also change because it is a very dynamic market and therefore it is possible to re-orient the OKRs.
Let's say you and your team have been working on a project that is no longer going to give you a strategic advantage in the market, because of a change in regulation. OKRs will immediately help you drop those actions and realign and move to new goals and therefore new actionables.
Another example could be a feature added to a health care app. You will ask yourself if the feature will really help users achieve their fitness goals, if it does then you will go ahead and build it, else you will shelve it.
ORKs help the entire team to align and act in unison. This makes things faster and more agile and ensures that every decision you make squares up with your vision and lines up actions to your North Star !!
Track for Accountability — “In God we trust, everyone else must bring data”. These are the ethos that the OKRs force the organization to adopt. OKRs are the guardrails that keep you on track without becoming blinders.
OKRs get you faster to your goal, get you to see faster if things are working or not and if the ladder is against the wrong wall, help you to shift the ladder.
Since OKRs force you to be data-driven and time-bound, they drive higher levels of accountability. This further keeps the team on track and agile and on the edge. This also helps in making reviews more objective with a focus on the actions and not the person.
Stretch for Amazing — “The biggest risk of all is not taking one.” OKRs help in taking calculated and calibrated risks. In Google everyone sets two kinds of goals — a) Normal Goal b) Stretch Goal
Everyone aims for a moonshot or a longshot and if you look at the archives of google you will find numerous examples of these stretch goals or moonshots. Youtube and Android both were moonshot ideas that have become billion-dollar products used by billions of people.
“In our business, we have to set ourselves uncomfortable goals every time and after 10 milliseconds of celebration, we have to set ourselves up for the next uncomfortable goal. That's what keeps us going, that's what makes us phenomenal”. This is what OKRs do to you and your organization
OKRs also push you to stretch for amazing. Once you set yourself up for a difficult goal, you will know that simple transactions will only drive incremental results — to achieve amazing results you have to innovate and that's what ORKs force you to do.
Stand-out performance is dependent on the following
Structure and Clarity — Are goals, roles, execution plans, clear?
Physiological safety — Can we take risks without being afraid?
Meaning of work — Are we working on something that is personally important to us?
Dependability — Can we count on each other?
Impact of work — Do we believe that the work we do matters?
So hop on to the OKR bandwagon, get on to your journey of achieving phenomenal results !!
