Why Teams Struggle with OKRs

Many teams approach OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) as a corporate chore, resulting in vague goals and a general sense of futility. This leads to a vicious cycle of unproductive OKR setting.

• Teams often create "OKRs" that are not truly Objectives and Key Results.
• They lack clarity on why their OKRs are not effective and how to improve them.

Defining True OKRs

OKRs are a framework for setting ambitious goals and tracking progress towards achieving them. They help align teams, encourage big thinking, and establish clear metrics for success.

What Makes a Good Objective

Objectives are big, audacious goals that drive the success of the business. They should be inspiring and challenging, even seemingly impossible to achieve, but if successful, lead to a significant win for the company.

• Objectives should be focused on overall business success, not just individual team tasks.
• They should be clear, concise, and easily understood by all teams.
• Examples: "Become the leading provider in our market" or "Achieve profitability within the next year."

What Makes a Good Key Result

Key Results are quantifiable metrics that measure progress against your objectives. They should be specific, metric-driven, ambitious, relevant, and value-based.

• Key Results should be tied directly to the objective and provide a clear path for success.
• They should be measurable, meaning you can track progress and determine if you are on track.
• Examples: "Increase customer satisfaction from 7.5 to 9.5" or "Reduce onboarding time from 2 weeks to 1 week."

Common Mistakes with OKRs:

These are common pitfalls that many teams fall into when setting OKRs.

1. To-do List OKRs

These are simply lists of tasks to be completed, but they don't measure value or progress towards achieving the objective.

• Focus on outputs (tasks) rather than outcomes (impact).
• Example: "Launch features X, Y, and Z" instead of "Increase customer engagement by 20%."

2. Business Metric OKRs

These focus on high-level business metrics, which are important but don't provide actionable guidance for individual teams.

• Too broad and not specific enough for individual team action.
• Example: "Increase revenue by 10%" instead of "Improve conversion rate on website landing pages by 15%."

3. Unmeasurable OKRs

These lack clear metrics, making it impossible to track progress or assess success.

• Vague and subjective, making it difficult to measure impact.
• Example: "Improve customer satisfaction" instead of "Increase customer satisfaction score from 7.5 to 9.5."

4. Impossible OKRs

Setting unrealistic targets can discourage teams and create a sense of futility.

• Overly ambitious without a clear path to success.
• Example: "Achieve 99.9% market share" without outlining specific strategies and actions.

5. Micromanager OKRs

These focus on controlling team activities and don't focus on outcomes or value.

• Involve unrealistic expectations and stifling control.
• Example: "Ensure all employees arrive by 8:30am" instead of "Improve team productivity by 15%."

Examples of Effective OKRs for Different Teams

These examples demonstrate how to create impactful OKRs that are aligned with team goals and business objectives.

1. Product Team

Focus on delivering value to end-users through data accessibility and performance improvements.

• Objective: Make ingested data instantly accessible by end-users.
• Key Results: Achieve sub-second data refresh for live dashboards, achieve 5 9s of data availability, decrease error rate from 1% of page loads to 0.2%.

2. DevOps Engineering Team

Aim for elite-level DevOps performance through metrics like deployment frequency, change failure rate, lead time for changes, and mean time to recovery.

• Objective: Achieve elite-level DevOps performance.
• Key Results: Increase deployment frequency from 1 per week to 1 per day, reduce change failure rate from 15% to 5%, reduce lead time for changes from 2 days to 4 hours, reduce mean time to recovery from 3 hours to 30 minutes.

3. HR Team

Optimize the onboarding process for new hires to accelerate their contribution to the company.

• Objective: Streamline the new hire onboarding process.
• Key Results: Reduce onboarding time from 2 weeks to 1 week, automate 80% of administrative tasks associated with onboarding, implement a digital onboarding checklist with a 100% completion rate.

4. Customer Support Team

Elevate customer support through faster response times, improved satisfaction, and AI-powered solutions.

• Objective: Revolutionize customer support within our industry.
• Key Results: Reduce median response time from 6 business hours to 15 minutes, increase CSAT from 7.5 to 9.5, implement an AI chatbot that successfully resolves 75% of inquiries without human intervention.

5. Marketing Team

Establish the company website as a valuable resource in the industry through content creation, traffic generation, and brand reputation management.

• Objective: Establish our website as the definitive online resource for our specialty.
• Key Results: Increase the number of monthly MQLs from 1000 to 2000, increase average time on site from 30 seconds to 4 minutes, achieve a domain authority score of 80 (up from 65).

Key Takeaways

By understanding the common mistakes teams make and applying the principles of setting SMARV (Specific, Metric-driven, Ambitious, Relevant, Value-based) goals, you can create impactful OKRs that drive results and align your teams with business success.

• Focus on Big Goals for Objectives, and be SMARV with Key Results.
• Remember that OKRs are challenging to do well and require continuous improvement.

Measuring and Tracking OKRs

The article highlights a common flaw in how teams measure OKRs. Often, teams work towards their goals during a quarter, but only start measuring their progress at the end of the quarter. This is problematic, as you can't truly assess success or failure until the next quarter begins.

The article encourages teams to not be complacent and to actively track their progress against their OKRs throughout the quarter. It emphasizes the importance of being "SMARVer" and taking the necessary steps to turn "OKRs" into truly effective OKRs that drive real results.