The power of OKRs in action

Today, the organizations need self-organized teams to achieve their intended results, however, likely, that they will not achieve what is expected if they do not have clear objectives and a purpose that inspires them.

One of the phrases that help me understand the importance of the use of OKRs in organizations is:

“Too many people work too hard to get too little”. Andy Grove, CEO of Intel Corporation and father of OKRs

OKR comes from the acronym for the words Objectives (“O”) and Key Results (“KR”)

• The objectives are statements that inspire us and provide direction to the entire organization, through the questions: What do we have to achieve? Where do we want to go?
• Key results help us measure results towards the goal, through the questions: How are we going to measure achievement? How will we know if we have arrived?

Some concepts that describe the essence of OKRs:

• It is a collaborative goal-setting tool. It is used by teams and individuals to set ambitious and challenging goals with measurable results.
• It is a GPS navigation system for the organization that allows you to define where you want to go and how long it takes to achieve it.
• It is an objective-based management framework that helps organizations execute their strategy, by providing focus, alignment, and transparency.

The organizations have annual strategic plans where a large number of projects are written that must be executed in the year. The OKRs will help us determine what is PRIORITY for the organization and what is not. This statement is supported by a phrase from John Doerr, responsible for bringing OKRs to Google:

“At any level, you will have only four or five goals followed by three key results. If everything is a priority, nothing is ”.

HOW DO I APPLY THIS PRACTICE?

Our company began to grow in the number of clients and in the number of collaborators. So we needed to mobilize the entire organization towards the same objectives in an agile way. This year we had as a challenge the alignment of all levels of the organization. They were all working hard on various internal or external projects, however, we noticed that not all were focused on the same important issues. I started reading the book “Measure What Matters” by John Doerr on the recommendation of a friend. This book generated my curiosity and I realized that successful technology companies such as Google, Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, etc., had managed to align all their collaborators towards the same goal, and I discovered that they all had a common element: they used OKRs. After this discovery, I took some courses and workshops that allowed me to obtain the necessary elements to propose it to the organization and start our process of adoption, adaptation, and implementation.

At the 2nd committee meeting this year, present the initiative “The Power of OKRs at Next Idea Lab” and the plan on how to implement it. The purpose of this initiative was to start using OKRs in some specific areas and see the results. This OKRs implementation plan contained several activities that we carried out in the 1st quarter of the year, in the following order:

1. We had a session with the management team to question our current way of thinking and doing things in the company.

2. We conducted training sessions with the management and tactical team that would participate in the experiment on OKR theory.

3. We redefine the purpose of our organization focused on the long term.

4. We define that the scope of this experiment would involve only the Marketing and Sales areas.

5. We write our first annual OKRs.

6. We define the processes that would support the OKR cycle in order to ensure the consistent use of OKRs over time. We also define the tools, roles, and responsibilities of each role.

7. The Marketing and Commercial teams wrote their quarterly OKRs, which would help achieve the annual OKRs.

8. We call the entire company to tell them about this experiment.

9. We start with the experiment !!!

A quarter of this experiment of the Marketing and Commercial teams has already passed. They are working on fewer projects but that show greater relevance in the expected results in the company. We hope that by the 1st quarter of 2021, we will incorporate more teams from the company in the use of OKRs.

WHAT DID I LEARN WHEN USING OKR?

Finally, my biggest learnings in the use of this practice are:

• Training on the theory of OKRs is important. Consider that it is not a methodology that tells you to step by step what to do and how. Each company must define its own recipe for how to apply it in the organization, based on the recommendations and key principles for the success of Andy Grove, John Doerr, among others.
• The OKRs will lead us to review the real values ​​of the organization. The OKRs will modify some behaviors that do not contribute to the achievement of the defined objectives. Example: collaboration between teams, transparency in the results, and in showing the tasks we are doing.
• When starting projects that generate organizational change, it is important to start with a short scope. Consider that depending on the culture of the company, resistance to changes may be greater.
• It is key not to define more than 5 objectives to focus all efforts on what is really important. The key is to determine an objective prioritization strategy (look for the top three).
• When we start using OKR, we will not achieve everything that we had defined at the beginning. It is very important to generate retrospective spaces at the end of the quarter to identify what we have learned and what we can improve for the following quarter.
• It is important to define roles and the specific functions of each role. This will help avoid uncertainty in the OKR implementation process.

And what are you waiting to learn more about the power of OKRs in your organization?

Thank you!

For more information: https://management30.com/practice/okrs/

Download the excel template that we are currently using: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kPM2Gg-Mcg8YYdP4Eg4bFR9l4JrGYZTY-7sMkmOksCs/edit?usp=sharing