OKRs are an effective way for businesses to set goals, direct their energy, hold team members accountable, and improve team morale by creating attainable and exciting objectives for the company. There are many positives and strengths to using OKRs when trying to reach your company’s goals, such as boosting team connectivity, increasing flexibility, and directing focus.
With a plethora of OKR success stories in the world today, let’s focus on the top strengths of OKRs. Recognizing the positives of this business method can help show management staff and business owners why Objectives and Key Results is a time-tested method.
Strengths of Using OKRs & OKR Examples
Team Alignment
One of the main benefits of using OKRs in terms of business is team alignment and inclusivity. OKRs help connect the upper-level management with every other tier in a corporation, binding together the individual, team, and company’s goals into one overarching objective.
The management staff helps set company-wide OKRs by collaborating with the different teams that comprise an organization. Based on the discussion and the objectives set forth by each sector, the management creates the goal OKR. In addition, each team sets its own OKR to help the business achieve the company-wide objectives.
Some OKR examples that help with team alignment include:
- Communication between team members every day
- Weekly Zoom meetings
- Conference calls between the different teams once every 2 weeks
Flexibility
OKRs favor flexibility over strict goal-setting measures. By using shorter goal cycles, the business can continuously evolve, grow, and adapt to any changes within the organization. The flexibility prevents waste and resources from going towards the wrong end goal.
Some OKR examples for strategic goal setting involve objectives set for 1 year, while tactical goals are set for one quarter. At the end of each cycle, every team member analyzes the results and changes their strategic OKRs to best adapt to the new environment.
OKR examples include:
- Achieving 100% year-to-year sales growth
- Increase the average deal size by 25%
- Reduce waste to less than 5% annually
Accountability
Bottom-up goal setting also allows for autonomy when creating objectives, while still holding members accountable for their specific tasks.
Setting goals from the bottom up allows companies to use their most experienced leaders to improve when necessary. Since the top-tier of management staff knows less than 4% of the problems of the company, setting goals from a lower-tier provides personal accountability and increased motivation.
Some OKR examples set from the bottom up include:
- Hit company global sales target of $100 million in sales
- Interview 20 customers and receive feedback
- Increase customer retention to 97%
- Create 20 customer case studies
- Improve the marketing automation process
- Build a bottom-up Excel model to analyze the return on investment
Focus Team
A fewer number of OKRs allows each team member to solely focus on their specific sector matters. The recommended number of OKRs for each team is between 2-4 so the resources can be properly allocated to each objective, increasing the chances of meeting the goal in a time-conscious manner.
Some OKR examples for online marketing include:
- Grow website visitors by 8% every month
- Improve landing page conversions to 13%
- Ensure a cost per lead of $3 or less
- Get 12 new inbound links from relevant websites
- Improve the on-page optimization
Conclusion
The OKR strengths, like increased focus, better team connectivity, enhanced accountability, and dynamic flexibility, have led to numerous success stories from modern companies. By analyzing the different OKR examples, companies can gain inspiration about their OKRs for their unique business.