12 Reasons why OKRs Work?

Lack of alignment across various levels translates into complete confusion. That’s where OKRs play a role in getting the entire organization aligned.

OKRs connect every department, team, and employee towards the big organizational goal. Top management sets the goal for the organization. This cascades to the departments, teams, and down to the individual employee. What this means is, individual goals should be informed by team goals, team goals should be informed by department goals, and department goals should be informed by company goals.Therefore, knowing what the organizational-level goals are helps employees to write their own goals. Their goals will be aligned to the top-tier priorities of the organization, so that they will be focused on what matters most for the organization.There’s a clear connection across all OKRs at different levels, thus making OKRs a great tool for creating organizational alignment. It helps every employee understand why their work matters and how it relates to the whole, larger picture.This ensures that every employee’s effort contributes to the larger company goals, gives everyone a sense of accomplishment and meaning, and strengthens engagement and creativity.If you would like to maintain company-wide transparency on an intuitive OKR software, you can get started on Profit.co completely free!

Ambitious OKR goals help motivate employees. It pushes them to give it their all. This can lead to innovation, and encourages employees to be creative and think outside the box. Everyday work isn’t just day-to-day work. With OKRs, it focuses on change, it leads employees to contemplate — what are they doing now, how are they doing it, what should they do differently?

Prioritization is the name of the game. Too many goals without adequate prioritization is a recipe for disaster. Having multiple priorities means it would be hard to achieve some, or all of them.With OKRs, each OKR level, department, or team is limited to between three and five objectives and three and five key results per objective.OKRs help simplify and reduce the number of goals that employees are chasing so that they can focus on what matters most for their organization. This helps close the gap between a company’s strategy and execution and keeps employees’s sights set on what will help drive the organization forward.

If a company does not have an adequate way to track their goals, they won’t have timely reviews and feedback. With OKRs, measurable goals can be tracked, allowing for weekly check-ins and routine reviews that help leaders keep their finger on the pulse of the organization.

Not knowing what the organizational and departmental priorities are can lead to complete chaos. Teams and employees would not know what to work on, or what they’re working on has any meaning or significance. This can be quite a dampener for everyone involved as it might come across as their work doesn’t matter to the organization or to the others.OKRs help guide everyone in the company, and help with knowing what is really priority and what just seems like priority.Goals (mostly) set on a quarterly or monthly basis, gives teams and individuals things to be accountable for. All work done by all employees, from the CEO to the individual employee, are visible to everyone in the organization.

OKRs can be defined as short-term or long-term goals; what that means is they can be defined quarterly or annually. Most OKRs are set for shorter goal cycles. This allows for teams and individuals to adjust and adapt to change, should there be any changes. Strategic OKRs are set annually, and tactical ones are set quarterly. The annual strategic OKRs act as the blueprint for short-term OKRs.

Poor visibility leads to low accountability. And low accountability leads to low employee engagement.But if they’re transparent for everyone to see, then everyone knows what everyone is working on. They must be transparent for everyone to see. It keeps everyone on the same page, and everyone knows what everyone is working on. Transparency, alignment, and accountability gives employees a sense of purpose and contributes to the larger organizational goal, which increases engagement and motivation of the employees. Therefore, when you set OKRs, make all OKRs visible to the entire organization. This will help eliminate silos and keep employees motivated by demonstrating how their goals connect to the top company priorities.

The goals set must be ambitious, but not impossible to reach. Google’s OKR philosophy is to set goals that can’t be reached because that’s when they push themselves beyond their limit and maximize their creative and ambitious potential to go further than they would have before. They aim to achieve 70% of their goals, for they believe that if they achieve 100% of the goals, they might not be ambitious enough.Ambitious goals help motivate employees to do more than what they thought was possible. The ambitious goals that come with OKRs goal setting, help employees push the barriers that stretch them to their full potential.

OKRs are set quarterly; and are flexible so that employees can adapt and adjust to change should the need arise. It’s always ‘active’, therefore every employee is aware of innovations, disruptions, and changes.Companies that follow an OKR framework have an edge over other companies that do not follow it as they can react and adapt faster if changes happen unexpectedly. For example, when the pandemic occurred, many company’s priorities changed incredibly quickly. Luckily, OKRs are reset each quarter, allowing for agility and flexibility.

OKRs foster a culture of meaningful contributions to the company which, in turn, encourages engagement. When employees’ work and opinions have an impact on the company goals, it’s one of the biggest drivers of motivation.

OKRs must be kept simple and easy to understand throughout the company. It must be clear, not ambiguous and understandable by every employee of the organization. OKRs need to help provide more clarity on goals and strategy so that everyone knows what is expected of them and what needs to be done in order to achieve the organization goal. This is possible when the objective is aligned with the company’s objective and it helps the organization achieve its vision. When this ‘alignment’ is set in motion, OKRs create a positive change that changes the company for the better.