Benefits of Using OKRs
Objective and key results (OKRs) boost efficacy and engagement by telling managers which team members are engaged. This information is easily accessible through a weekly OKR goals check-in process, which gives managers visibility into who’s achieving their OKRs. OKRs help managers build high-performing teams by empowering and engaging individuals so that they’ll be better at their work. Learn more about the benefits of using OKRs below.
Why companies use OKRs
Traditionally, companies set high-level organizational goals at the beginning of the year, and then everyone forgets about them within a month. This leads to passive management. It becomes difficult for leaders to measure and track their employees’ progress and goal-achievement. Executives and managers have a hard time understanding which teams or individuals are achieving, overachieving, or underachieving. It becomes difficult to align different teams and individuals and cascade goals to the company-level goals, so people feel disconnected from the bottom up. There is little clarity among workers about how their actions connect to what matters to the organization. It’s also hard to build a measurable, predictable, and repeatable business model when working this way.
To combat the issue, companies attempt to set goals in Microsoft PowerPoint or Excel, or Google Docs, and then communicate these goals via email. This is a very static process, and many companies can’t manage or track goal progress with this approach. With static approaches like these, goals aren’t available or visible to everyone in real-time, People can’t connect their work to invisible goals. To combat this, many companies have adopted the OKR goal setting methodology, OKR tracking techniques, and keep their goals aligned using tools like Workfront Goals.
Top 15 benefits of using OKRs:
- Align and connect your employees to your corporate goals
- Give clear direction to every team and individual
- Increase productivity through focus on goals
- Track regular progress towards goals
- Make more effective and informed decisions
- Achieve measurement, accountability, and transparency
- Use regular weekly updates to gain vision and insights
- See how goal progress aligns with the company’s vision, strategy, and top priorities
- Be effective in setting clear and specific goals
- Manage achievement and execution with greater accountability and transparency
- Boost individuals’ engagement and empowerment through your goal-setting process
- Increase insight and transparency across the organization for top-level executives
- Analyze root causes of why objectives are not achieved
- Improve resource allocation and management
- Capture cross-functional dependencies across teams
Companies that use OKRs
Many reputable companies use OKRs:
- Intel
- Oracle
Did you know that prior to its implementation of OKRs in the 1990s, Google was only in its startup phase? Having a cohesive strategy for setting and measuring qualitative ambitions at company, team, and individual levels helped Google achieve the level of success it experiences today.