What is OKR?

OKR (Objective & Key Results) is a popular leadership process for setting, communicating and tracking goals and results in organisations. The concept was invented at the Intel Corporation and spread to other Silicon Valley companies, including Google, Zynga, Spotify, Airbnb, Twitter and LinkedIn.

OKRs are meant to set strategy and goals over a specified amount of time for an organisation and teams. Their purpose is to ensure everyone is going in the same direction, with clear priorities and in a constant pace. OKRs are generally implemented in an special OKR software.

Structure of OKR

As the name implies, OKR has two components, the Objective and the Key Results:

Objectives are what you want to accomplish. Objectives should be short, inspirational and engaging. An Objective should motivate and challenge the team.

Key Results explain how you’ll get there. Are a set of metrics that measure your progress towards the Objective. For each Objective, you should have a set of 3–5 Key Results.

Here’s an example of OKR:

Objective:

Build a Great Corporate Culture

Key Results:

Launch an closed loop feedback process for everyone

Achieve a weekly Employee Performance of 8+

Increase internal Net Promoter Score from 5 to 7

Celebrate “small wins” and any type of progress every single week

Benefits of OKR

OKR help companies and businesses:

Align goals throughout the organisation, teams and employees. Establish a disciplined goal setting process for everyone. Clarify expectations for employees, ensuring they’re working on the right things. Set indicators for track and measuring progress and success. Enable better communication and meaningful conversations through transparency.

How to use OKR?

Adopting OKR is a journey, not an event. As in company cultural transformation, change does not happen overnight. But, with the help of specialised OKR software, it is possible to modify the organisation’s dynamics in a few weeks, aligning and engaging the team.

In addition, there is not a single was to use OKRs, each company or team can adapt and tweak them, creating different versions of them as needed. However there are some best practices: