Simplifying OKRs: A New Manager’s Guide

In this blog, I will provide the benefits of OKRs, how to adopt them as a New Manager, and a few best practices while using OKRs.

Published in

The New Manager

4 min readJul 11, 2024

I had written this blog originally for Substack. I am sharing on the Medium.com platform as well. In case, you want to check out my Substack blogs, here is the link.

Before, I dive into the simple framework to adopt OKR, let me talk about a few benefits and challenges.

The Benefits

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results.

OKR framework was designed to help organizations and teams achieve their most important goals.

Here are the top 5 benefits, that you can see if the OKR framework is adopted correctly.

Benefit#1: Alignment
OKRs make the entire team or organization align to a single goal. This improves collaboration among the team members.

Benefit#2: Focus
A clearly defined OKR helps to bring focus on the items that matter the most. This focus helps in improving productivity among the team members.

Benefit#3: Transparency
OKRs are defined for the whole team or organization, which brings visibility to all the members. This helps in building a culture of trust and openness.

Benefit#4: Motivation
Ambitious objectives push team members beyond their comfort zone. Accomplishing challenging goals improves the morale of the team members.

Benefit#5: Flexibility
OKRs are typically set quarterly. This enables the team to adopt and work on the goals with enough time.

The Challenges

The main idea behind OKRs is to establish clear, measurable goals (Objectives) and the specific outcomes (Key Results) that indicate progress toward achieving these goals.

If OKRs are not adopted correctly then the benefits will not be realized.

Here are the top 5 challenges which you must be aware of.

Challenge#1: Lack of Understanding
Misunderstanding about the framework will lead to poorly defined objectives and key results. This will cause frustration and confusion among the team members.

Challenge#2: Overly Ambitious Goals
Setting overly ambitious goals that are far to reach might demotivate the team members. So it is important to find a balance between challenging and achievable objectives.

Challenge#3: Inconsistent Implementation
The OKR must be adopted by the whole organization consistently. If not, it will lead to misalignment and make it difficult to track progress.

Challenge#4: Lack of Commitment
OKRs require buy-in from all levels of the organization. You may not see the expected results, if team members or leadership are not committed to the process.

Challenger#5: Poor Tracking and Review
Regular tracking and review are essential to the OKR process. Without these, it’s easy to lose sight of progress and miss opportunities for adjustment and improvement.

The Simple Framework

To adopt OKR, use the simple framework D.S.A.T.R.
It stands for Define, Set, Align, Track, and Reflect.

The framework will include the necessary steps to adopt OKR in the right way to gain benefits from it.

Let’s look at each of the steps in the framework in detail.

Step#1: Define
Start by identifying the top 3 objectives that must be achieved.

While selecting the objectives, ensure they are clear, concise, and inspirational.

The objective definition should not be vague, it should clearly state what must be achieved.

Step#2: Set
For each objective defined in step#1, set the top 3 key results that must be achieved.

The key results definition should be specific, quantifiable, and time-bound.

While choosing key results, keep in perspective, what must be achieved and how to measure it.

Step#3: Align
Once the objectives and key results are defined, it is time to align with the team.

The team should understand the objectives and be able to visualize how they will contribute to each of the key results and in turn the objectives.

Have an open discussion about the objectives, so that team members can express their concerns and feedback.

Step#4: Track
Set up a regular cadence to discuss the progress.

The track meetings should address topics like, what’s working, what’s not, and realignment that would be needed.

Use a project management tool like Jira or Asana to track the progress and milestones.

Step#5: Reflect
Performing a retrospection meeting at the end of the quarter to discuss achievements will help in doing better in the upcoming quarter.

The retrospection meeting provides a stage for appreciating the team members and identifying bottlenecks, issues, and concerns.

The retrospection meeting will also help the team to be on a continuous improvement path. This will lead to higher efficiency and quality of the outcomes.

Final Thoughts

To maximize the effectiveness of OKRs, consider the following best practices.

Start with a small number of Objectives and Key Results and then increase as the team adjusts to OKRs.
Engage your team in the goal-setting process, to ensure their buy-in for the objectives.
Focus on the results you want to achieve, rather than the activities needed to get there.
OKRs are dynamic, so be flexible to adjust your objectives and key results based on the changing circumstances.
Recognize and celebrate achievements, no matter how small, as it will help to, boost the morale of the team.