Setting data-driven OKRs

After creating your strategy using data, what comes next is to set goals and plan how to execute them. In this lesson, we’ll be focusing on the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) method of setting goals which is what we use at iMonetize. It helps make your teams more aligned to working on your goals together as a team. Measure What Matters by John Doerr succinctly explains the four main forces of OKRs which are:

Focus and commit to priorities:

the last section of the book talks about how to set company strategy with input from everyone at the company. When they know what the business’s priorities are, they’ll be more focused on them instead of things that are not top priority.

Align and connect for teamwork:

as your business grows, alignment becomes more important. If you don’t encourage teams to work together in order to achieve your main goals, you will have teams that are both working hard on the same in different directions or overlapping things. Have a single source of OKR truths everyone can see and give clear expectations of each team on joint goal setting so they keep adding to each other.

Track for accountability:

before OKRs, there was no place or consistent way that allowed for goals to be reported on but we now have a standardized grading system in addition to a consolidated area where everyone can see performance against grades.

Stretch for amazing: this art is probably the toughest and most important one o get right. You’re encouraged to stretch for amazing in the OKR grading system. 0.7 is seen as a “good job” on your set goals with a grading system of 0.0- 1.0. this shoes that you have to put in a lot of work to achieve “amazing”.

OKR process

This is how the OKR process works, the leadership team comes up with focus areas after research of course and suggest OKRs for the year. They share these OKRs with the teams and receive feedback from every single person who plays a part in the focus areas before drafting the goals. Using the feedback they receive, the leadership team can refine the goals and focus areas of the business. After the annual OKRs have been written down, the teams can set their own sub-OKRs for each group that all contribute to the general OKRs. Each team will have someone who is accountable for and grades goals. There are also frequent check In meetings so performance on OKRs can be discussed and teams can learn from areas where they went wrong and learn from areas that are going well.

Scaling OKRs

As your company gets bigger, you may have to change your processes often so you should implement these processes and forget about them. Although the OKR process may not be ideal for your company, it’s good to choose a process that places priority on moving big metrics, break the down into smaller, easier to understand goals and then make sure teams are held accountable for hitting their goals ensuring that there is transparency and everyone at the company knows what’s happening.