Teams are lead by their objectives

What are OKRs and what is their mission in the business?

The success of a business is measured by the team’s ability to reach certain goals, by time or by project. It represents the skills each team member has and applies to improve constantly, which results in the improvement of the entire company. A business that manages to reach their goals is certain to have a wider capacity of growing in the market and ever reaching a strong position among the competitors within their sector.

To give goals a measurable technique, companies and entrepreneurs use the term OKR, also known as Objective and Key Results. All that involves OKRs are terms and processes that represent these goals and give them a more organized approach, in a way that is easier to track them within the company leaders, since goals are always evolving and changing. Even if simple, these are important elements in a business’s growth and cannot be overlooked.

How to reach goals for entrepreneurs

Here in Team Coaches, we understand how vital these achievements are to the expectations an entrepreneur has on a business.

Our leader, Diego Alvarado, made sure to learn step by step how OKRs work, not only for his own career but also to follow his passion in mentoring other teams in how they can improve their processes and reach every goal they set for themselves.

Metrics are king

There is a very important role that many professionals rely on when developing their companies: metrics. Most of the time, when a process cannot be measured and analyzed, it is suggested that they modify or drop them. Measuring every action and result is the only and most effective way of verifying if it has actually been a benefit for the business or if it needs to be cut off.

This is one of the reasons OKRs are so reliable, because they are built to fit into a metric or list of tasks so the team can find support in it and know exactly where the process is going at all times. Every stage of the goals set are monitored, as the before, during and after must meet certain numbers or characteristics to be able to pass through and become an achievement.

Good and bad OKRs

Even if businesses begin to apply OKRs in their daily schedules, it does not guarantee that they are doing it correctly.

According to our founder, Diego, there are certain qualities that OKRs must meet in order to be helpful to their respective teams, as well as the common errors that occur while creating these objectives for the company:

Quantifiable

Following the metrics statement, it is important that the OKRs are represented or seek to be represented by a number or percentage, that way can be clear for the whole team when that goal is set and the OKR is accomplished. If that is not the case, then the OKRs would not be specific enough and the goal would not reach an end.

As Diego shares, “you can always improve something”, so objectives like “increase revenue” and “increase revenue by 5%” have completely different endings just because one is a vague statement and the other is quantifiable enough to be reachable.

Constant monitoring

Objectives can be set as each company’s team sees fit: weekly, monthly, yearly and more. There can even be several types of OKRs in just one project, be it short or long term. This helps each person in the company to separate small tasks that need to be completed fast and the bigger, more general goals that take longer to reach. However, this means that the business must keep track of every single one, so not only the workers hold the incentive but the specialized teams can make sure to update the tasks as they are being fulfilled.

Hierarchy

The objectives are defined in a hierarchical way.

Diego suggests that the goals are set in three different groups: company goals, team goals and individual goals.

The company goals are the more general achievements that the business leaders want to reach and they involve the entire workforce. The team goals belong to the certain projects that are handled within one team and that each team member shares. Individual goals are personal to every single worker in the business, not mattering the status they hold in it. Having each division makes sure every side of the achievements set are correctly managed.

OKRs platform must-haves

The main thing Diego implies is that every entrepreneurship maintains a platform to create, update and achieve OKRs.

As this is one of Team Coaches modules, it is important to note how a OKR platform can be the most powerful tool a team can have to manage their objectives. There are many things available in a platform like this:

Creating objectives

The creation of each OKR is the first step to be followed, so the team must get involved in brainstorming and idea sharing to identify which goals are the most vital to the development of the business. As these are set, the platform assists them to register said objectives while the team adds the respective metrics and specific number they wish to obtain. Objectives can include increase revenue, long term value, customer acquisition and net promoter score.

Following the objectives

The monitoring stated before is done through platforms like this, so it is more organized and easy to manage for the team responsible for updating them. Grouping all OKRs into one place also aids in the alignment of the objectives between teams, because even if each of them maintain different goals, these can overlap in a way that needs all teams to share and align their processes so the entire company is supported.

Evaluating the results

Finally, after updating each goal at the end of the quarter, the business can check if the goals have been reached and are satisfactory. If that is not the case, then the respective teams must evaluate what changes need to be made and adapt the OKRs so they can be tried again.

Diego refers to this process as a cycle that repeats until the objective has been properly achieved.

Entrepreneurs have the responsibility of building and maintaining their businesses in an organized and effective setting. This is why OKRs are so popular and widely used through big and small companies. In Team Coaches, we support all business leaders who wish to learn even more about how to reach goals using OKRs, as we create and manage platform and information that helps these teams to go wherever they put their minds to.