All of us tend to set goals at some point in time. Now, these goals may be personal or business goals. Well, whatever the reason may be, setting goals is proven to be a great way to increase productivity, enhance achievements, induce self-improvement and so on. However, the methods used to set these goals play a huge role in deciding whether the goals set shall be met or not.
Most of us tend to set specific goals, especially at the beginning of the year, and work towards our plans for a few days, but later we eventually lose interest and we are back to square one. This can be extremely detrimental to your personal growth, especially if the goals were set for your business there is a chance that the success rate of your company will come to decline as a result of a poor goal-setting strategy. So, how do we fix this? The best way to avoid this mistake and to make your business goals more manageable is to adopt the OKRs method also known as the objectives and key results method.
The OKRs methodology has proven to be extremely beneficial to boost company efficacy as well as increasing productivity. But what is the OKRs method and how can you implement it in your business?
Objective and key results ( OKRs)
The objective and key results, also known as the OKRs pioneered by John Doerr is a methodology used by many companies to set measurable goals and track the progress of those goals. It is an outstanding strategy that, if implemented correctly can show drastic results.
While setting goals, be it long-term or short-term, we often tend to plan out what we are supposed to do, but we never really tend to measure our progress. This eventually leads to stagnation and forgetting about the goals set altogether. The OKRs methodology however has a well-defined planning strategy which will allow you to set a goal and also measure your progress. This way you get more motivated to complete your company targets since you have a clearer picture of your progress and how much you have contributed to the company.
Components of the OKRs method
So for the implementation of the OKRs method, you need to understand how this methodology works in the first place. The OKRs method has two major components that are the objective and the key results. The objective is the goal that you set and the key result is the component with which you measure the progress of your goals.
Now many companies use the OKRs template to increase engagement between the employer and the employees. While setting company goals it is important to include everybody else in the team and let them know what the goals or the objectives are and how much they have individually contributed to achieving that set objective.
This can be easily done by the OKRs method. It provides the team members with a well-defined personal performance report based on which they can measure their progress and strive more diligently towards their goals.
An example implementation of the OKRs method
To get a clearer idea of how the OKRs method works let’s consider the example here,
Let’s say your business goal for 2023 is to increase online brand value, so your objective will be: “ Increase brand value by the end of 2023”. Now that you’ve set your objective, you need to rule out all your key results, in this case, your key results can be “ Increase your company’s social media following by 10k” or “inducing more traffic on your company website”. These key results will help you measure your progress and see how efficiently your team is working towards the set objective. Thus, from this example, you can see how beneficial the OKRs method is in evaluating your goals hence making you and your team more productive.
Benefits of the OKRs method
Besides the one mentioned earlier, there are many benefits to using this methodology while setting a specific goal. A few of them have been mentioned below:
- Provide clear direction to the team
- Analyze why goals are not being met
- Provides personal performance reviews to the team
- Monitor time management
- Analyze new customer acquisition
- Better decision-making for the company
- Induce transparency throughout the organization
Provide clear direction to the team
The OKRs method is a great way to provide the employees or the team members with a clear roadmap that they have to follow to achieve company goals. Most of the time the major mistake that we make is to set a goal or a target for the company and not provide the team with a clear direction as to how to achieve that target. This issue however can be easily resolved using the OKRs method.
Analyze why goals are not being met
As we have already discussed, most goals are set at the beginning of the year, and by the end of it when it’s finally time to analyze the performance you notice that the goals set were not met as per your expectations. This is a major problem that most companies face and the cause of this is the lack of proper planning. The OKRs method allows you to re-evaluate your goals so that it is more organized and achievable by the entire team.
Provide personal performance reviews to the team
One of the most effective ways to keep your team members motivated is by providing a personal performance report or review to every member. This way they will be able to keep a track of how much they have completed the said task and how much time they can fulfil the required goals. The OKRs templates can be used to implement this strategy.
Monitor time management
Another extremely useful benefit of this methodology is that it allows you to monitor time and help with time management. As you already know by now that the OKRs method provides a well-planned way of setting objectives and analysing progress, this particular feature of the OKRs method helps us not only measure the progress but also manage the time accordingly. Since an individual report is provided to each team member, they can use that information to organize and manage their time in such a way that they can complete tasks efficiently with minimal wastage of time. Knowing your goals and your progress is a great way information to have so that you can prioritize your time accordingly.
Analyze new customer acquisition
The most crucial part of any business is to identify customer satisfaction which can be clearly understood by analyzing new customer acquisition. Based on your customers’ purchases you will understand how many new customers have collaborated with your brand, what is your brand reach, how to increase your brand reach and so on. All of these factors can be easily analysed in a very systematic way using the OKRs method. All you have to do is set one of your company’s objectives as “analyzing new customer acquisition” and identify the related key results to measure progress.
Better decision-making for the company
This boils down to the fact that the OKRs method allows us to measure the company’s progress, and enables the company leaders to make smarter decisions for the betterment of the company. Since everything has been laid down in a proper format, making decisions becomes a lot easier.
Induce transparency throughout the organization
Another major benefit of the OKRs method is that you as a company leader will be able to analyze each of your employees’ performance and draw their attention to areas where they are lacking. This further induces transparency in the organization thus allowing executives at the top to scrutinize the overall performance of the team.
Conclusion
Now that you have got an idea about the OKRs methodology, you sure will get a better idea of what it is and how to implement it in strategizing your business goals. The OKRs method has been adopted by top business giants such as Google, LinkedIn, Intel, Facebook, Twitter and many others, and the success rate of each of these companies is right before you. So, with this, you can understand just how effective the OKRs methodology is. It is not only an excellent business plan for your company but is also extremely cost-effective.
It can be noted that the OKRs method is not limited to only business goal-setting but can be easily incorporated for achieving personal goals. So, what are you waiting for, adopt the OKRs method today and check off all your goals set for 2023!