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

Plan – OKR Planning

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 they had to start somewhere, and 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.

Objectives

Creating an Objective

In Profit, there are four ways to create an objective:

1.Step-by-Step Guide

The Step-by-Step guide, also known as an education wizard, helps you in clearly defining your objective with its functionalities and detailed steps, the Step-by-Step option takes the most time, but it also provides you with a comprehensive guide for creating your objectives.

2.Quick Create

Quick Create is the simplest way of creating an objective. It allows you to create objectives easily without having to go through several steps. By default, the objective created here will be public visibility.

3.Using Form

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

4. From backlog

The objectives backlog can be used as a space for drafting objectives. Click the icon between the action and help centers in the top right corner of your screen to access the backlog.

Once you enter the backlog, you can create an objective by clicking on the Create button at the top left of the screen.

Here you can write your objective. select the OKR Levels and add the key results in the same window. Once written, click on the “Create” button.

OKR Visibility

While creating an objective at the department, team or individual level, you need to select the visibility.

OKR Alignment

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. The purpose of alignment is to unify the goals of your company.

Key Results

Creating Key Results

Key results are the actionable steps needs to be taken to achieve your objective. Key results are basically measured or tracked to determine the progress made towards your objective.

Similar to how objectives are created in Profit.co, key results can also be created in four different ways.

1. Step-by-Step Guide
2. Quick Create
3. Using Form
4. KR Backlog

Default key result type

Depending on your needs, Profit.co lets you set the default key result type. This will allow you to save time whenever you create a new key result since you won’t need to manually set the key result type for each key result you create.

Click here to read more about how to set the default key result type.

Pending Check-ins

You can keep track of employees’ progress toward their key results by viewing their pending check-ins in Profit.co’s My Org Pending Check-ins section.

Creating Subkey Results:

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

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 equalto 1. The weighted average of each key result will be used to calculate the overall objective progress.

Restrict Visibility for OKRs

Profit.co allows users to set visibility for OKRs to manage privacy when you want to create an objective for a particular group of people or for yourself alone. The visibility settings can be modified at any time by the person who created that objective.

Key Result types

There are seven key result types, in which you can show progress by using the following KPI in the key results.

Percentage tracked

Percentage Tracked key results allow you to track and measure key results using percentage. For example, “Publish 10 Blog Posts” can be represented by the percentage of blog posts you’ve published. If you’ve published five posts, your key result would be 50% complete, or if you’ve published nine, it would be 90% complete.

Milestone Tracked

The Milestone Tracked option is ideal for tracking key results that need to be completed through multiple steps. While many key results are quantitative, there are times in which your progress can’t be measured numerically. During such instances, Milestone Tracked key results can be used and you can achieve your key result by completing sequenced steps or milestones.

Task Tracked

You can create key results using Task Tracking in Profit.co. This key result type directly associates your task with the created key result, so that you can track the progress of your selected tasks from the workspace via key results.

Baseline KPI

The third type of key result is Baseline KPI. This can be used when you don’t have a clear idea about the value of a KPI and you want to establish one. For example, this could involve either establishing a customer satisfaction score or an employee score–it’s about creating something you don’t have at the moment and need to establish a baseline for moving forward.

Increase KPI

Next is the Increase KPI. This can be used when you are trying to increase the value of a KPI. For example, you may use this option for increasing the revenue or increasing the number of retail outlets that your organization focuses on. Depending on what you’re looking to increase, you can make your KPI increase the value of a specific number, percentage, amount of money, or time etc.

Decrease KPI

In some instances, it may be best to lower the value of a KPI. For example, an organization may aim to reduce the employee attrition rate, reduce the customer churn rate, or reduce the number of issues in a test or product. With Decrease KPI, you can decrease the numeric value, percentage, currency, or time of the key result.

Control KPI

The control KPI, allows you to keep the value of a KPI within a specific range, mostly above or below a certain amount.

For example, if you want to control the employee training hours between 20-40 hours a month, and maintain the click per cost at $2 to $4, it can be measured using the control KPI measure type “In between” because you’re looking to maintain a range between certain values.

Sometimes, It can be helpful to set goals from time to time. For example, you might aim at least 10,000 visits every week on your website. The “at least” measurement type in the control KPI can be used in this case to measure the visits.

Consider the scenario where you want to enforce an upper limit. The key result of “Maintain APIs response at 400 milliseconds” is a classic example. In this case, you are measuring the API response which shouldn’t go over 400 milliseconds. Here “at most” measurement type in Control KPI is the right choice to measure the value and progress the key result.

From KR Backlog

If you’re looking for a drafting space for these key results, you can use the KR Backlog. You can also create a key result backlog to store your created key results. In Profit.co you can move your key result to the backlog and vice versa. If you want to remove the backlog from the list you can remove it easily.

Move Key results

Using the drag and drop method similar to how you rearrange key results in objective, you can also quickly move key results to any objective in the same department.

You can also move the objectives and key results to another department using the move option in the more button.

Change the default owner of an OKR

When creating or editing an OKR in Profit.co, the default owner can be added.

Note: If the owner is not added by default, the department in which the OKR is created will be considered the owner.

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.

Filter OKRs by Periods

OKRs are based on periods. Profit.co provides an option to filter your OKRs based on periods.

Change the cascade approach of a key result

In Profit.co you can now change the Assignment approach of a key result while creating itself or in the editing page before making any progress. Once the progress is made the cascade approach cannot be changed.

Clone/Copy OKRs

This feature enables the users to create duplicate copies of OKRs. By cloning OKRs you can edit and make changes to cloned OKRs and use them without creating any new OKR.

Note: The progress from the original KR will be reset to the cloned OKRs. You can also clone the associated tasks along with the key result.

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.

To enable objective weightage, navigate to Settings → OKRs → Controls

Add Notes to the Objectives

Mouse hover over the objective name and click the notes symbol to add notes to the objectives.

Copy OKR Link

Users can copy the OKR link and share it with other employees to collaborate and get their comments. Mouse hover the objective and click on the copy link icon.

Copy OKRs name to the clipboard

Users can copy the OKRs name to the clipboard directly from the OKR List page. This enables the users to share OKRs’ names with other employees in the organization.

Top Down Alignment

Assign a key result as an objective

Let’s consider that Simon who is the CEO has created an objective to improve customer success growth function and created key results to it. One of the key results is to delight the customers and Simon wants Max Clark who is the Head of Customer Success to come up with his initiatives to achieve the objective. So Simon has assigned a Key Result “Delight Customers” as an Objective to the Customer Success Department.

Max Clark who is the Head of the Customer Success Department has created key results for progressing the assigned Objective. Assigning a key result as an objective clearly says that it is going to be the top most priority that the assignee needs to work on

Simon can also view and track the progress of the assigned key result as an Objective from the Corporate OKRs list view. Also, he can view and track the created key result who has created by the Customer Success Department.

Assign a key result as an key result / Sub key results

Delegating a key result to a department/individual is the simple word to explain this type of approach. Here, you can make the check-in progress for the key result directly and also you can create sub key results and assign it to reportees.

Let’s take an example of how Rachel Lee who is the Marketing Manager has assigned a Key Result “Increase Organic Visitors from 12000 to 18000” as a key result/ sub key result to the SEO Department.

James Finger and the other members of the SEO department can see the assigned key result in the OKR View.

Rachel can also track the progress of the assigned key result from the Marketing Department OKR view.

Distributing key results

Distributing the key result weightage to multiple assignees at a time using the Distribute button is a part of top-down alignment.

Sam who is the Product Marketing Manager is responsible for Improving the online help resources. He has three Individuals reporting to him.

To improve help resources Sam has created a key result to Create answer posts for how to use the features and product FAQs. He has distributed the key result to all three Individuals who are reporting to him equally and assigned them to work on it. Sam can track the progress of each Individual easily through this.

Sam has assigned and distributed the key results as sub key results by giving equal weight to the three individual users.

The distributed key result can be seen in the OKR list view as shown below.

On the assignee account, the distributed sub-key result will be reflected as below. The user can check-in and start making progress to it.

Bottom-Up Alignment

There are times when individual contributors may have more insight into customers’ thoughts or other ideas that don’t necessarily reach the executive level. Taking into account employees’ ideas and contributions also adds an incentive to be invested and see the OKR through.

Bottom-up alignment gives ownership to those levels of owners for contributing their initiatives or OKR progress to the corporate level or any level above them.

Aligning the Objective as a Key Result to another Objective

C level executives sometimes create their objectives at Corporate level and gives privilege to the department heads to come up with their Initiatives and align them to the corporate level objective and progress them.

Austin who is the CEO wants to scale the marketing team to the next level, to do that he has created an Objective to “Scale key marketing functions & metrics to a new level” and gave the privilege to the Marketing team to come up with their own initiative to bring the change.

After seeing the Objective at the corporate level, The marketing department head Nicole has started creating objectives and key results to contribute to the corporate-level objective.

Align the Key Result as a Key Result to an objective

Following the same approach of aligning an objective as a key result to another objective. A key result can also be aligned with an objective as a key result and contribute to the progress of achieving an objective.

For instance, Corporate level has an objective at the corporate level to grow new accounts and revenue.

Simultaneously the marketing team is working on generating product sign-ups which will directly help that objective to grow new accounts and revenue target. Nicole who is the Marketing head decides to align one of her key results with the corporate level objective to help.

Align a key result as Sub Key Result to a key result

A bottom-up alignment of OKRs can also be done between any levels in the system. When a key result is directly contributing to another key result, It can be aligned as a sub-key result to that and help in achieving the progress of the objective as a whole.

Note: This alignment approach is possible only when the parent key result is created using the key result/sub-key result approach.

Let’s take the example of Customer Success Head OKRs…

Lorrie Barlow, who is the head of customer success is working on increasing the customer base through referrals and he made this OKR visible to all the employees…

Nicole who is the head of marketing saw Lorrie’s objective and she decided to Align one of her key result where she is trying to increase the net promoter score with the key result of Lorrie Barlow.

Dependencies

In Profit.co, you can enable and add dependencies to your key result. This feature allows you to create a dependent key result to manage the dependencies with other departments/teams. With this feature, you can effectively monitor the OKRs progress without any delegations because of the dependency factor.

Tags

Objectives in Profit.co can be organized using a system of tags or labels. Tags can either describe your OKRs using words like “Aspirational” or “Committed”, or you can categorize them based on the department with words like “Sales” and “Finance” so that you can search for the objectives based on tags right away.

Note: You can choose more than one tag for your objective.

End of Quarter Presentation

End of Quarter Presentation helps users quickly and easily create a PowerPoint presentation with Overall OKR progress and KR progress for the current quarter, and plan for the next quarter for any department which is available in all the department tabs.

Navigate to Settings → OKRs → OKR list view to enable the End of quarter presentation

OKR Progress Presentation

Profit.co provides an option to enable and download your OKR Progress just like you do for your End of quarter presentation. The main use of this feature is to Download your progress report for the week or quarter periods with a single click, instead of preparing it manually. This feature helps you to save time and get ready with a presentation within a minute.

Radar Chart

The Radar chart in Profit.co gives the user an illustrative and quantitative representation of data specific to the planned and actual progress of the OKRs. By using this feature the user can track progress and overview the OKRs.

Meetings

You can schedule OKR meetings to discuss the progress of the Team, Weekly and quarterly OKRs in Profit.co. You can schedule following meetings in Profit.co.

• 1:1 meetings
• Team meetings
• Weekly progress meetings
• Quarterly progress meetings

You can also reschedule a meeting that is missed, skipped or postponed for any reasons or create a recurring meeting which will happen every week/month.

You can also assign tasks boards directly from your meetings page while you schedule a meeting.

You can also add attachments to the meetings using the options shown below.

Check-in above the Target Value:

Profit.co allows users to stretch goals or progress the key results beyond 100%. To progress check in beyond 100% the super user must enable check in beyond 100% toggle in Settings → OKRs → Key Result types

Create new KPIs

You can create new KPIs to key results while creating measurable key results using forms. Select the KR type as Baseline, Increase, Decrease or Control KR type and click search for the + icon.

Task Management

Profit.co offers a world-class task management system that enables users to get things done easily and quickly. You can track the project roadmap, communicate and delegate subtasks to team members, and set deadlines.

Create Task

Tasks are created to set various levels of priority based on importance and set deadlines with a time and date to get them done. Tasks can also be further broken up into sub-tasks and the users can track progress.

Task Assignment

The tasks that are assigned to you by your managers or peers will be available in “My Tasks”. You will also have an option to Accept/Reject the tasks which are assigned to you. If accepted the tasks will be added to your My Tasks page, if rejected it will be notified to the assignees.

Setting the priority while assigning a task

All tasks in Profit are labeled with a priority status. The default label is “high” priority. You can set the priority while creating the task and also after creating it. The three default priorities are high, medium, and low. You will also have the option to Add Priority.

‘My Tasks for Others’ View

Profit.co allows you to view all the tasks that you have assigned to others on a single page and track the status.

My Org’s Tasks

This option is used to see and track the status of the tasks that you have assigned to your team.

Create Sub Tasks

Profit.co provides an option to create a sub-task for an already existing task. This feature allows you to create sub-tasks underneath the existing tasks based on your requirements. Just like tasks, sub-tasks can also be assigned to an employee with added target date, priority, and other information.

Associate key results with tasks

Profit.co provides an option to associate tasks with key results in the task card itself. Users can use this feature to track the progress of selected tasks in the workspace using the key results.

Create a recurring task

Profit.co allows an option to set recurring tasks within a scheduled time frame without any interventions, You can schedule the recurring tasks in advance.

Hide the completed Tasks

Profit.co provides an option to hide the completed tasks. You will also have an option to show/hide the associated key result, tags, comments, and parent tasks.

We can also hide the workspaces in Task Management to restrict the visibility of the particular workspace to other users.

Create Workspace and Boards

Profit.co allows users to create a workspace with boards and track the status of the tasks. You can create any number of boards in a single workspace.

You can also add stages to the boards and enable assignees for each stage. You can have multiple assignees in a single stage, and you can add a checklist to it for the tasks moving from one stage to another.

Task checklist

Profit.co allows users to add checklists to tasks individually and track the progress of each task. Profit.co already provides an option to add checklists to the stages of the task board, which will apply to all tasks in the task board. This feature will enable users to add checklists individually to the tasks.

Copy Workspace and Boards

Profit.co allows you to copy the created workspace and boards along with the tasks.

Copy the task name and link to the clipboard

Users can copy the task name and link to the clipboard from the task card.

Segregated Workspaces:

Profit.co provides an option to segregate public and private workspaces.

View task using Tags:

By using the Tags filter at the top of the My Task/Workspace/Board pages, users can select any Tags from the dropdown and view the tasks that are linked with the corresponding tags.

Move Task between Workpsaces:

Users can move a task only from one Board to another. Every task in a workboard will have the task board name in it. by clicking the task board name, you can move the task to another workspace and board.

Enable/Disable boards and Restrict Visibility

Profit.co allows you to enable/disable boards in a workspace and restrict the visibility of the boards through the edit workspace option.

Switch to another board from a board:

Profit.co allows you to switch between boards in a workspace.

Sort Tasks

You can also sort tasks based on the options shown in the below image.

Set time for the due date in Tasks:

Profit.co allows you to set time for task due dates and assign them. You will have the option to set the time in the task overview page after setting the due date.

Export Tasks:

Profit.co provides an option to export tasks in CSV & XLS formats.

Download Reports from the Task dashboard:

We can download the reports directly from the Task Dashboard.

To know more about this, click here.

OKR Execution

OKRs completed before the end of the period – Adjusting my OKRs

You may have created an OKR that you were able to complete before your target date. If you’ve completed most or all of your key results, you can always add more to continue to achieve your objective. To learn how to add a key result, see the “How do I create key results” section under OKR Planning.