OKRs: Why Objectives & Key Results Matter and How They Can Help You
By: Yiming Chen
Tags: Development, Software Development, Management, Goals, Okr

Misalignment in a team hurts.

It hurts when a Sprint cycle ends but none of the promised features are finished. It hurts when asking why everyone says, “I have another project or responsibility that’s dragging on my time.” It hurts when a project fails because we are not clear about its purpose or are unable to fight for it as one aligned team.

At Ekohe, we’re always seeking solutions to optimize alignment across our global office base (China, Japan, US, France, Canada). As a developer, I’ve tried different techniques to align the project team: organizing meetings in a goal-driven way, setting tech plans for the team, defining an MVP with objectives, and so on. In retrospect, all of these are practices for setting OKRs. But their scopes are necessarily small and can only cover a tiny portion of the daily workflow. To solve the misalignment issue once and for all, we made a decision to apply the OKR methodology across all business functions.

Fortunately, I just started working as an OKR Ambassador in my team at Ekohe. My main objective is to help everyone get aligned and focused with well-defined OKRs.

We’d like to share the output of this through a quick series of posts — to walk you through a few examples and explain how you can achieve the best results by defining great OKRs. We hope that by sharing our own experiences, you can gain a more efficient understanding and successfully implement OKRs in your own organization.

What is an OKR?

OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a management system focused on creating alignment around measurable goals.

Well-defined OKRs unite all stakeholders in an organization, business unit, and team behind the same goals (objectives). They provide focus so everyone can spend their time on priority items. They continually remind us to assess if we are in the comfort or the stretching zone and nudge us towards challenging ourselves, thus growing as a team.

Objectives and Key Results

Objectives and Key Results, the two elements that represent the core of this system, should always go together.

An Objective is a qualitative and time-bound goal which creates a vision. Objectives can be defined for organizations, business units, products, etc.

An objective needs to be inspirational and agreed-to by every team member so there is alignment with the mission. A good example can be “Launch an awesome MVP before 2020–03–31.”

But it’s not enough to define a qualitative vision. Everyone has a different understanding of “awesome,” “MVP,” and even “launch.” That’s why we need Key Results as a complementary piece.

Key Results are a few quantitative indicators which explain what the objective really means. They need to be as objective as possible so every team member are focused on moving in the same direction. Here are some ways to set measurable definitions in the key results:

“Launch”:

A web application that is used by at least 100 daily active users.

A web application that is used by at least 100 daily active users. “MVP”:

Users generate at least 5000 social interactions (follows, likes, reposts, etc.)

Users generate at least 5000 social interactions (follows, likes, reposts, etc.) “Awesome”:

The loading time of friends’ posts list is less than 100ms.

After the high-level OKR model is defined and agreed-to by every team member, we can then start planning and executing to achieve our goal.

Plans are actionable tasks that may contribute to at least one Key Result when finished. Inspirational Objectives and Key Results cannot be achieved on their own. So we need a roadmap that directly leads to achieving our vision. Some good examples:

Set up a production environment before 2019–12–31.

Design, develop, and deploy the homepage before 2020–01–10.

Purchase ads campaign on Twitter for our new MVP before 2020–01–15.

It’s possible that certain plans ultimately do not contribute to a Key Result — they are ‘testable’ and open to adjustment. The hypothesis behind purchasing a Twitter ads campaign is that it may help attract active users. If we find it not working as expected, we must look for another way.

So Why Use OKRs?

We identified that the main purpose of OKRs is to create a systemic alignment around measurable goals. As you may see, each building block of OKRs contributes to this purpose in a different way.

Objectives and Key Results define clear direction and enable continuous progress-checking.

Missions are inspiring and agreed upon beforehand. Goals are no longer ambiguous because they are represented by measurable key results.

How does this help? Everyone can have the same understanding of our progress to date. If the number of daily active users goes up, we are moving closer to a successful launch. If the number goes down instead, we can review our assumptions, hypothesis, plans, or actions to see if there are other things we can do.

Plans are defined and executed by the same people.

If correctly implemented, OKRs free both managers and managees from micromanagement.

Managers know more about higher-level items like strategies, missions, and visions. They can focus on what results a team needs to achieve by defining better OKRs.

Managees know more about lower-level (but not less important) topics like technologies, implementations, and constraints. They can come up with plans that match reality the most. These plans can potentially even be more effective or creative than what managers can imagine.

Note that doesn’t mean only managers can define Objectives or Key Results and only managees should define Plans. OKRs are defined by the team as a whole. They can be set from top-down (Manager -> Managee, Objective -> Key Results -> Plan), or from bottom up (Managee -> Manager, Plan / Key Results -> Objective).

As more OKRs are defined, priorities are identified more easily and become more focused — gaining as we move in the right direction. How would you compare the goals of “Launch an awesome MVP” to “Build a better work environment?” Some teams may prioritize the prior so people may work overtime a lot before the launch date. Some teams may prioritize the latter so the launch date is postponed by a month. There is no right choice here, but at least these choices can be weighed explicitly based on our OKRs.

Finally, when everyone can see each team’s and individual’s OKRs, transparency is greatly improved. When in conflict, people can check each other’s OKRs, help formulate a plan that can contribute to each other’s Objectives, or compromise on a solution based on OKR priorities (if a plan cannot be found).

Final Words

We’ll be updating this series with insights and experiences from our own implementation of OKRs at Ekohe.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our OKR series where I’ll walk you through a deeper review of Key Results — the best way to define and implement them to achieve your goals.

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At Ekohe, we believe in the positive, transformational power of technology. We harness the best-in-class strategy, design, and technical know-how to create innovative, elegant, and practical AI solutions for a variety of global organizations.

Contact us at info@ekohe.com or visit us at www.ekohe.com to learn more.

Footnotes:

For further information, here is a valuable management resource: Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity: Kim Scott.