I wanted to borrow the title of this second post on OKRs from John Doerr's book "Measure What Matters" (published in Turkish as "Önemli Olanı Ölç – 10 Kat Büyümek için Basit Bir Yöntem"), which I loved reading and found very useful.
I have followed this approach in my own life for a long time: instead of focusing on and measuring everything, "choosing what matters most and growing it by focusing on it." I believe it is a useful perspective not only for our working lives but also for our personal development and private lives.
We can't focus on everything, we can't achieve everything and we can't measure everything. And what we don't (or can't) measure, we can't manage well. But if we focus on "the thing that will really move us forward" on our journey, measure it correctly and concentrate on growing it, we can achieve significant gains even in the short term. For that reason alone, I love the OKR model and find it very useful. I hope you benefit from both my posts and John Doerr's book. Enjoy the read.
How Do We Make Effective Use of the OKR Model?
In the first post, we briefly covered what the OKR methodology is and how it should be set up. In this post, we will look for answers to a few more questions we consider important. If you haven't read the first post, I recommend reading it before this one so the flow makes sense.
What Are the Characteristics of Effective Key Results?
By way of a recap, let's start with the basic characteristics of Key Results.
An effective Key Result must be:
- Specific
- Time-bound
- Aggressive
- Realistic
- Measurable and supported by data (If it has no numerical dimension, it is not a key result.)
- Verifiable.
There is a very important point here that needs to be underlined. I am sharing it as a quote from "Measure What Matters."
An objective can be long-lived, but a key result is either achieved or not at the end of a specific period (usually a 3-month period). The objective continues, but the key results change as the work progresses. When all the key results are completed, the objective has been reached. If the objective is not (or cannot be) reached, it means the key results were designed incorrectly.
What Should Sit Beneath Key Results in the OKR Model?
After defining the Objective and Key Results, the tasks and initiatives, which will be planned on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, first need to be identified and then planned.
We said Key Results should be as data-driven, clear and backed by numbers as possible, in short, structured. It is also extremely important that the tasks and responsibilities beneath them are well designed and planned so that they serve the achievement of the related key result, and therefore the objective. Determining who, or which team, will carry out these tasks and responsibilities, and delegating the work appropriately, are among the things to pay attention to for the model to progress and flow correctly.
What "Really Matters" for the Next 3 Months?
A properly designed OKR Model ensures that everyone understands what is "a priority and truly important" for your company, and that the whole organization moves forward focused on it.
Whether you are a newly founded startup, a growing firm or a corporation with many years behind it, this first step does not change. From the very first moment you start operating with an OKR mindset, OKRs enable you to set the most important objectives in your organization clearly and transparently, and ensure that all employees focus on "what matters."
The main benefit of using OKRs is that they help everyone in the company "know what they need to do and why." In other words, OKRs give the work meaning.
In Which Situations Is Using OKRs Effective and, More Importantly, Necessary?
If
- Your team is growing,
- Old approaches and your current methodology no longer serve you or no longer work,
- Your focus on growth and development is more prominent than ever, and;
- You are having problems with reaching goals and productivity,
you should give the OKR model a chance quickly.
The Benefits of OKRs
A properly designed OKR System within a company:
- Keeps teams on the right track and ensures alignment and unity of purpose & action between teams.
- Makes data-driven decision-making easier, since it is a data-based model.
- Brings priority objectives to the surface.
- Enables you to manage your efforts and your planning & coordination activities more effectively.
- Increases synchronization within the company while connecting separate teams and different operations.
- Ensures the whole company is focused on the "same, important" points.
In short, as I said in the first post, I see the OKR model not just as a "goal-setting methodology" but, far beyond that, as a valuable "management methodology," especially for companies in a growth phase. On top of that, if your company has strong inclusive leadership and a collaborative work culture, I believe OKRs can work wonders when combined with them.
The Most Frequently Asked Question: What Is the Difference Between OKRs and KPIs?
Ever since I started working on OKRs, whenever I mention OKRs to anyone, the first thing they ask me is "how is this different from a KPI?"😊
That is why I wanted to cover this difference in this post. The easiest way to explain it, again, is to work through an example.
Sample Objective:
- Accelerate your company's digital growth
Sample Key Result:
- Increase organic traffic to your website by 20% over the next 3 months
In this example, our KPI, or Key Performance Indicator, would be the "20% increase." In other words, when the 20% increase is achieved, we can say "this key result has been achieved."
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are generally indicators used to track outcomes in areas such as revenue, growth, profitability, turnover, financial resources, number of customers, and process and performance expectations, and fundamentally they let us see whether the related key result has been achieved or not. If you fail to achieve your KPI, in this example the "20% increase," your key result will not have been realized.
An OKR, on the other hand, is the structure that holistically covers the objective at the top, all the key results related to that objective and all the KPIs that show us whether those key results have been achieved. In short, an OKR covers and contains all the KPIs.
We can say KPIs are more the numerical / data dimension of OKRs, but always moving forward by focusing only on numbers may not get us to the result. What you need to improve in your company, in which areas you need to create change and which processes you need to focus on renewing in order to achieve your KPIs should be your main starting point when designing both your objectives and your key results. Otherwise, it will not be possible to design the right objective.
Until we meet in the next post,
Stay healthy.
