Setting goals with Objectives and Key Results
How to start with Objectives and Key Results?
Moving to live in another country and start a new life journey can be full of surprises and risks, yet it can also bring new cultural experiences, new skills, and a new mindset.
So far, I have joined the group that has made such a life-changing move more than once. But there was something quite clear with each experience: from the start, there were clear big goals to achieve.
Nonetheless, internalizing your own ambitious goals in life and teaching others how to set and monitor goals for themselves is a process that requires time, patience, and above all, persistence.
In 2017 while searching for a new methodology to set the smart goals we wanted to achieve in a well-funded startup, I came across the book Measure What Matters by John Doerr.
I decided to embrace and promote the OKR process at the company of Ripley´s team, Believe It or Not! Amsterdam. I devoured all the information I could find about Andy Grove´s OKRs.
There was a lot of trial and error with OKRs with that Ripleys Amsterdam team (which we called Bioneers) and several other groups through the years.
Nowadays, with the Spirals (The team members of Inspiral Growth), we bring the OKRs into our daily lives and our relentless pursuit of High Performance. OKRs are what we use in phase 3 of the Inspiral Plan.
What is an OKR?
Taking back some of our notes from the inspiring Audiobook from John Doerr, he shares some of the first insights from Andy Grove, the one John calls the father of the OKRs.
In the words of Andy Grove: ¨Now, the two key phrases are Objectives and the Key Results. And they match the two purposes. The objective is the direction that´s where we are going to go key result is a milestone…¨
Some great companies from the last 50 years adopted the OKRs, from Intel with Andy Grove to John Doerr bringing the OKRs to Google or the Gates Foundation. And how other companies around the globe like Netflix, Twitter, Samsung, Facebook, and Amazon use them.
OKRs would be about the company’s what and how.
The OKRs should be public and transparent; they should be aggressive and aspirational,
Moreover, the OKRs should affirm the company’s vision and assist everyone in your community or your environment with decision-making.
OKRs should constantly remind each team on what they should focus their energy on. We can start dozens of tasks daily, yet knowing the direction to the North Star in your company can help you identify if you are doing the right job.
Objectives should inspire you in a clear direction. They should be clear to others and should be clear to take action.
Key Results should be measurable and time limited. They should be ambitious yet realistic. You should be able to verify them with precise Data.
How can you apply OKRs in your company?
Tip #1 Less is more. As with any educated person, we tend to fill our day with professional terms and jargon that only people in our field may understand.
But remember that with OKRs, we look for clarity and ease. In the words of Albert Einstein: ¨If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.¨
Tip #2 Time is on your side. Yes, we want to reach our personal goals as fast as possible. But we all should understand that not everyone does hold themselves accountable to objectives in their lives.
Be patient. The expectations of having a methodology that could fix all your problems quickly are, most of the time, if not always, far from reality. Take the time to understand your team’s response to OKRs.
Tip #3 Collective Agreement is essential. There are no dictators on OKRs. If you are thinking about setting goals by yourself for your whole team, then you are planning for failure.
OKRs are a matter of taking responsibility for the objectives, nurtured only by self-participation in defining those objectives and key results. A leader should assist their team in creating their OKRs and not dictate them. Let them learn by doing.
Tip #4 Dare to Fail. If you want high performance, you should allow yourself to stretch your abilities and desires.
OKRs should, by all means, even show the difficulty of reaching a goal and not the continued registration of what your regular daily tasks are.
John Doerr’s website shares many examples in different markets. And here at Inspiral Plan, we would gladly share our feedback if you send us your OKRs Draft.
Contact us at info@inspiralgrowth.com with the subject: Let’s review these OKRs.
About the OKRS of Inspiral Growth
We aim for everyone in Inspiral Growth to get familiarized with long-term OKRs as fast as possible, yet we understand that we need to be patient with our team.
Being a young company, we keep learning how to keep improving our OKRS. So here we are, making them available for everyone as well.
Here is, for example, OKR # 1 of Inspiral Growth:
Objective 1: Build and Nurture the Inspiral Culture around our Core Values
Key Result 1: Assist the Spirals monthly with their OKRS to 100% of the team.
Next Key Result 2: Optimize the visibility of 100% of the team achievements weekly in ClickUp.
THen Key Result 3: Study the monthly team feedback, then apply five proactive and reasonable changes that would 100% benefit the culture.
After redacting and changing the key results of these OKRs, we would certainly even like to add 3 or 5 more key effects around education, finances, and team spirit. And we will tackle if segment in the future. Yet we need to start from a baseline and improve from there.
Why are the OKRs the Third Phase of the Inspiral Plan?
The fastest answer would be to continue Phase two of the Inspiral Plan with the Golden Circle. By setting goals and putting a highly effective methodology into practice, we give a third layer of support to the vision we apply in the Inspiral Plan.
Yet it is much more than that.
- Have you found yourself inside a company where it is easy to lose focus?. Have multiple tasks a day without a clear direction?
- Have you found yourself doing tasks that may be leading to a completely different vision?. Or mission than the ones the company initially informed you of?
- Have you ever found out by mistake at a coffee break that a teammate may have been doing the same job or chasing the goal that you were? I realized only then how much faster you could have tackled that together.
In all these cases, OKRs may have been a way to identify this much earlier. ¨He who fails to plan is planning to fail¨.
It is a custom to share at the end of our article a bit about what we are also doing in Inspiral Growth, and on this occasion, I would like to share about our ¨Buyer Persona Template Growth hack¨.
We created this product to help founders define the right people they serve with their solutions. The reason is that I would invite you to visit this Growth Hack. See how we present our product and give us your feedback.
We would like to know what drives you in your day? Which are the goals you are pursuing? What motivates your team at the moment?
Here is our agenda link if you want to chat about them. We look forward to meeting you.
And let me thank you on behalf of the Spirals for your time and attention.
