OKR End User Guide

Planning

Planning is the first thing that you have to do before creating and executing successful OKRs. Your objectives and key results are conceptualized during this stage, whether you’re developing new OKRs or improving existing ones.

Execution

Following the completion of planning, you must proceed to the execution stage. Once OKRs have been created, you can start checking in your key results. Profit.co has a check-in feature that sends you a notification to progress your OKRs and update the status of your key results.

Engagement

Profit.co supports employee engagement by rewarding them for their performance and the success of their OKR progress. You can reward managers, peers, and subordinates. These awards, which are set by superusers, are a points-based rewarding system.

Learning

In Profit.co, you can use hashtags, tags, and @ mentions to note and communicate issues or successes that you’ve had during your OKR experience. Keeping a record of problems can really be beneficial in figuring out a solution and helping in learning your OKR management better. It’s important to remember that this PEEL approach of Profit.co isn’t a finite process; instead, it’s a cycle that requires engagement and practice in order to truly learn from experience

1. Plan

The use of OKRs as a system for setting goals has proven to be extremely successful for businesses like Google, LinkedIn, and Netflix. They keep pushing themselves and rising to every challenge by working tirelessly to succeed. Even though they had to start somewhere, planning for OKRs from scratch can seem like a daunting task.

In this section, we will discuss creating objectives, creating key results, aligning/assigning OKRs, and creating dependencies.

Note: You can use the Customize option to personalize your left menu and pin frequently used menus.

Objectives

Creating an Objective

Using Form

The Form option provides you with another quick way to create an objective in a single window to select KPI, change visibility, select target dates, and create alignments.

OKR Visibility

OKR visibility ensures everyone in the organization can track progress, align efforts, and stay focused on shared goals. It fosters transparency, accountability, and collaboration across teams. While creating an objective at the department, team, or individual level, you need to select Visibility.

Adding Weightage to Objectives

Adding weights to the Objective helps the Team, Department or Individual prioritize and focus on the OKRs. Consequently aids the users in tracking the progress of their OKRs based on the weightage calculation.

Key Results

Creating Key Results

Key Result types in Profit.co are categorized into two main groups: KPIs and Initiatives.

KPIs

KPIs focus on measurable values that track improvements or reductions in a specific metric. The three KPI types are:

1. Increase KPI – Used when you aim to increase the value of a specific KPI, such as revenue, retail outlets, or any measurable metric. You can track changes in the number, percentage, amount, or time of the KPI.
2. Decrease KPI – This type is used when the goal is to reduce a specific metric, such as employee attrition rate, customer churn rate, or product issues. You can track decreases in the numeric value, percentage, currency, or time.
3. Control KPI – Control KPIs are used when the goal is to keep a specific metric within a defined range. You can use three types of control ranges:
   • At least: Ensures the metric meets a minimum threshold (e.g., website visits must be at least 10,000 per week).
   • At most: Ensures the metric does not exceed a maximum value (e.g., API response time should be at most 400 milliseconds).
   • In between: Ensures the metric remains within a specific range (e.g., employee training hours should be between 20 and 40 hours per month)

Initiatives

Initiatives focus on the activities or tasks that need to be completed to achieve a specific outcome. The four initiative types are:

1. Percentage Tracked – This option allows you to track progress based on percentages. For example, “Publish 10 Blog Posts” can be tracked as a percentage of completion. If five blog posts are published, the progress is 50%.
2. Milestone Tracked – Milestone Tracked is ideal for key results that are completed in steps. This type is used when the progress can’t be quantified numerically. Key results are tracked by achieving specific milestones or steps.
3. Task Tracked – With Task Tracked key results, you can directly link tasks with key results. This allows you to track the progress of tasks that contribute to the achievement of key results, providing a clear connection between tasks and outcomes.
4. Project Tracked – Project Tracked key results are used for tracking the progress of a specific project within an OKR. This type allows you to monitor the completion of a project based on project milestones, tasks, and overall project progress. You can set measurable project milestones that align with the overall objective, making it ideal for projects that have multiple deliverables or phases.

Child Objectives

A Child Objective is a new way to cascade an Objective from a higher-level OKR. To the “Assign as Objective” option, you can now use the Child Objective method to ensure clarity, alignment, and accurate progress tracking. This feature is part of the new alignment approach that separates Key Results into three clear categories:

• KPIs – For measurable KRs (metrics).
• Initiatives – For non-measurable KRs (tasks/projects).
• Child Objectives – For cascading Objectives (strategic alignment across levels).

Use the Child Objective option when:

• You want a team, department, or individual to define their own OKRs aligned to a parent objective.
• You want to cascade an Objective down, but let the receiver own and track progress independently.
• The Child Objective will appear as aligned under the parent, and its progress will be independently tracked.

Create KPIs

KPIs are quantifiable metrics that track progress toward specific outcomes. It can be associated with key results to track and measure the achievement of your objectives. You can define and maintain a library of KPIs that are unique to your business, and allow users to reuse KPIs for better tracking and reporting.

By default, Profit.co has 400+ inbuilt KPIs with 10+ KPI categories, which will help users easily create OKRs with KPIs.

Note: You simply need to enter the KPI name, along with the From and To values. The KPI will be created automatically and categorized under the appropriate department based on the context.

Distribute weightage for key results

Weighted Key Results allows you to set weights and define importance for every key result. The sum of weights should be equal to 1. The weighted average of each key result will be used to calculate the overall objective progress. It can be updated in the Objective overview page.

Creating Subkey Results

In Profit.co, sub-key results can be created just below the parent key result, and users can assign them to their subordinates. Users can also create subkey results by distributing a key result and assigning it to multiple assignees using the distribute option.

Distribute weightage for sub-key results

Profit.co provides an option to distribute weights among the subkey results. By doing so, you can create subkey results, assign multiple assignees, and distribute weightage to each key result.

Weight Roll-Up Approach

A roll-up approach named KPI Based will set the progress calculation based on the KPI value. While choosing this option, we can sync the subkey result progress changes when the subkey result type and KPI are matched with the parent key result.

Convert KPI to Initiative – and Vice Versa

The Convert KPI to Initiative and Convert Initiative to KPI option allows users to instantly switch between a KPI and an Initiative. By choosing this option from the More menu, a KPI can be converted into an Initiative or an Initiative can be converted into a KPI with a single click. This ensures flexibility during planning, supports strategy shifts without recreating items, saves time during setup, and keeps the data organized and relevant.

Alignments

What are OKR Alignments?

Alignment is one of the most powerful features of objectives and key results (OKRs). By aligning your objectives at an individual, team, and organization level, strategically aligned OKRs rapidly get everyone on the same page, working toward results that matter. First, higher-level management or the CEO of your company outlines the company’s OKRs for the quarter. From there, department managers would come up with their own department objectives based on how they plan to contribute to the company’s objectives. You can also cascade down the OKRs at the individual level, and if you want to use those, you can align them. The purpose of alignment is to unify the goals of your company. Profit.co allows you to align your OKRs in two different approaches,

• Top-Down Alignment
• Bottom-Up Alignment

Top Down Alignment

Strategic alignment is important for business outcomes. Profit.co’s OKR platform allows C-level executives to assign critical goals as objectives, key results, or sub-key results to specific departments, teams, or individuals. For example, if a top executive plans to improve reputation management through social media, this can be cascaded down as a primary objective for the Marketing team. This method, called the Cascading Approach or Top-down alignment, ensures that every level’s goals support and derive from the overarching company objective. Such a top-down alignment or Cascade Approach facilitates a harmonized organizational path with 360-degree alignment.

Additionally, Profit.co emphasizes the importance of managing interdependencies and navigating intricate objectives. The platform promotes structured, comprehensive alignment by allowing users to either assign a Key Result as a standalone Objective or within another Key Result as a Sub-key Result. This not only helps in prioritizing but also ensures that focus remains undeterred on achieving the desired outcomes.

Bottom-Up Alignment in Profit.co

While top-down cascading ensures strategic objectives are aligned with the top management, bottom-up alignment is critical in promoting organic growth and connectivity within the organization. This feature permits individuals or teams to align their key results, either as another key result or a sub-key result, to a broader OKR. In doing so, they contribute directly to the progression of overarching goals. It’s about transitioning from the granular, ground-up initiatives and ensuring they align with the larger organizational vision. This boosts employee engagement and fosters ownership, and everyone is clear about how their contributions fit into the bigger picture. In Profit.co, when you assign a KR to an individual/ department/team or when you assign a higher-level organization sub-KR as KR to an individual/ department/team, it is called a Bottom-up Alignment.

2. EXECUTE

In the Execute phase, the focus shifts to action. Once your OKRs are set, it’s time to make progress towards achieving them. One of the key aspects of execution is check-ins. Check-ins are regular updates that allow teams to track their progress, identify blockers, and stay aligned. These updates help ensure everyone is on the same page and enable leaders to provide support where needed. By maintaining continuous communication and tracking, teams can course-correct as necessary and stay on track towards achieving their objectives.

3. ENGAGE

The Engage phase is about active participation and communication throughout the OKR cycle. During this phase, three important elements play a key role:

• PPP Review
• Dashboard
• Presentations
• Hashtagged Conversations

4. LEARN

The Learn phase is focused on reflection and resetting. After completing an OKR cycle, teams need to reflect on their journey, what they have learned, and where they can improve moving forward. The Reflect/Reset option is a critical tool in this phase. It allows teams to assess their performance, identify areas for improvement, and reset their goals for the next cycle. This phase is not just about reviewing outcomes, but also about learning from the process, adjusting strategies, and setting new challenges to keep growing.