Designing OKRs for impact

- Perfecting strategic goals as a leader in a growing organization can be daunting. OKRs, KPIs, V2MOM and SMART goals. There are so many goal-setting methodologies to choose from. OKRs are the most powerful because they are part critical thinking framework and part ongoing discipline. They encourage collaboration and alignment across functions, helping teams work together, focus their efforts and clarify what's most important. An organization's long-term success relies on every team member's ability to clearly understand what's most important to the organization. And OKRs help you do that. They also help teams and individuals by keeping team members from trying to do everything. When you have OKRs to manage priorities, team members have the opportunity to say no when tasks don't align. They help individual contributors think about the bigger picture. When you identify those individual contributors who can think big picture, your team becomes stronger. OKRs also encourage team members to fail smart and fail fast. Using aspirational OKRs empowers your team to see there's no shame in trying your hardest to achieve a stretch goal and coming up short. So how do you create an OKR? Let's start with the basics. An OKR is made up of a single objective, or the O, and a set of three to five key results, the KRs. The objective is a qualitative aspirational statement meant to inspire action. It's the where you want to go. An objective is intended to quickly move an organization in a specific direction, rally teams together in the face of a new competitor, or enter a new market. A real objective used by Google in the past was "Make the web as fast as flipping "through a magazine as measured by." An objective is always followed by, as measured by, and three to five key results intended to measure progress. While the objective is the where you want to go, the key results are the how you'll know if you got there. Key results are the quantitative targets used to measure the success of the objective. They're always time-bound and specific and include a number. Using Google's objective, an accompanying key result might be: decrease page load time from 1.5 seconds in Q2 to 1.1 seconds in Q4. A personal objective might be: become the healthiest version of myself as measured by. Three key results for this objective might be: attend 10 yoga classes in January; on average, drink nine glasses of water per day in January, and lift weights an average of three to five times per week in January and February. In this example, getting into shape is the where you want to go and how often you do yoga, drink water and lift weights are the how you'll know if you got there. Now that we've broken down the basics of an OKR and examined a specific example, you're ready to design powerful OKRs with your team. Remember, objectives inspire and are qualitative statements while KRs are quantitative, specific, time-bound, and measurable.