Learning to Love OKRs
By: Adrian Coffey
Tags: Google, Goals, Startup, Breakfast, Okr

So You Want to Write an OKR….

Throughout our careers (our lives, really), we’ve all spent time thinking about and setting goals. Whether it’s something small — today I will go to the gym, today I will clear out my email inbox — or something big and long term — next year I will learn how to code — goals are a valuable tool to keep our days, weeks, months on track and stay motivated when we start to feel sluggish.

Here at Upside Business Travel, we thrive on feedback, progress, and lofty goals. But how do we figure out what those goals are? How do we know if we are on track? Like anything else these days…we Google it.

In its very first year, Google debuted a goal setting and tracking methodology dubbed Objectives and Key Results (OKR’s). OKRs are a very structured and, it turns out, successful approach to goal setting that we have since adopted at Upside, as well. There are a few major differences between OKRs and other goal setting structures that really stood out to me as I began to think about my writing my own OKRs for the quarter:

These are meant to be stretch goals: Your overarching objective should not be easily achieved and should be a reach beyond your normal day-to-day responsibilities.

The Key Results for each objective should be written very specifically: Be sure to lay out very specific, very measurable results — timelines included!

Think big but be strategic: Be sure to challenge yourself, but also keep in mind the ultimate goals for your business and be sure your OKR fits with those.

Each quarter, Upsiders develop OKRs for our company, for our teams, and for ourselves, but when I came to Upside, I’d never even heard of an OKR. So what was it like to think in this way and actually apply these to my own work? Spoiler alert: it wasn’t easy.

I sat down to write my third quarter OKRs no less than 10 times before I so much as typed “Objective 1”. I thought about what to write during my commute, during spin class, making dinner. But, I just couldn’t put pen to paper. Nothing seemed “lofty” enough. Nothing seemed measurable enough. My colleagues all began to send out beautifully crafted, very specific goals coupled with measurable metrics that actually made sense. Meanwhile, I stayed silent on our Slack channel (not even so much as a thumbs up reaction which I normally throw around like candy) in the hopes that my boss might forget about me. Of course, she hadn’t, and eventually, it was past time to get something on paper. I blocked off some time on my calendar, booked a conference room and started to type. I added a few numbers, crossed my fingers, and sent it off.

What happened next was the turning point.

They weren’t good. I really hadn’t gotten the concept at all. My head was in the right place — my objectives made sense — but I really hadn’t set measurable timelines and goals for myself. But here’s where things were different at Upside. My manager didn’t simply return a redlined document to me or an email saying “try again” — she asked me to have breakfast. We sat down over eggs and coffee (ok, we also ordered pancakes as an appetizer) and talked through every line of each OKR. When would I amass a robust pipeline of great candidates? And, further, how many candidates does “robust” even mean? And why would I do it? Eventually, something really began to take shape. I had a plan of attack and I knew when and how I needed to measure my results.

This quarter, writing OKRs came much more easily. I still spent a lot of time talking through wording, dates, and numbers with my manager, but I had ideas and they made sense. I’ve learned to love and value OKRs all thanks to an early Thursday morning breakfast.

Think you’ve got what it takes to crush your goals and write some killer OKRs? We’re hiring! Check out our careers page to take a look at our open positions.