Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a great way to align your tactics and strategy. It also pushes your organization outside of the comfort zone. However, many organization tie this metric to performance reviews. Here are some other common pitfalls as described by Sachin Rekhi.
- You've been measuring output instead of outcomes. Outcomes are meaningful improvements.
- You've been having them too infrequently. OKRs are meant to be created and evaluated on a rolling quarterly schedule. This allows your company to respond quickly to the market.
- You have too many OKRs. If you don't have three to five, you need to think about the true priorities.
I've found this to be far too simplistic in practice as any ongoing business has at least several initiatives it needs to make progress on in any given quarter. — Sachin Rekhi
- Your time has achieved each OKR. In this situation, you aren't dreaming big enough. The goal is to hit 70%.
- You are too shortsighted. Because OKRs are reviewed quarterly, the team has a tendency to focus on the near term. Make sure to maintain a far horizon in regular communications.
- You've sacrificed your values. OKRs are focused on outcome so you must be careful that the system is gamed by sacrificing core beliefs.
Check out the second article for more details.
A Leader’s Guide to Implementing OKRs
I’m a firm believer that Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), the goal-setting framework invented at Intel and popularized by Google and John Doerr, can be a highly effective leadership tool for a team of
A Leader’s Guide to Implementing OKRs (Part 2)
It has been incredible to see such a positive response to my OKRs post. So many of you reached out telling me how valuable it was to hear about the details of implementing a successful OKR program. Ma