When it comes to implementing complex strategies, Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are one of the most powerful ways of articulating to others what you want to focus on, what areas you will target – and the results that you want to achieve. 

OKRs offer a brilliant framework for any team looking to plan, track and measure the success and impact of the work, focusing teams and stakeholders on what success should look like while helping manage delivery-related uncertainty. They make it easier for everyone in your leadership, project and functional teams to proactively align their efforts with your OKRs.

This intentional alignment of efforts can drive employee engagement, as everyone can see the purpose of their work. By instilling an overarching sense of what really matters and offering a clear sense of direction for contributions, the work becomes more meaningful. With OKR being a lever for creating a sense of purpose and connect team members more closely to the work they do, this can be a powerful source of discretionary effort on client facing and internal team projects. Discretionary efforts are the level of engagement and commitment that can be elicited from employees to go above and beyond the minimum level of effort necessary for them and their teams to succeed. 

OKRs offer a constructive platform for building a team culture that inspires and connects discretionary efforts from diverse teams. Their ability to unleash discretionary effort can lead to greater success as teams are galvanised to go above and beyond to achieve their collective goals.  

A sense of purpose coupled with discretional effort can be a great lever for increasing collaboration, team spirit and trust. OKRs can also enable the behaviours that underpin values and answer the ‘why’ in respect of alignment to corporate values. By doing so, team members can concretise each value into their work and as a vehicle for achieving their objectives. OKRs provide a fertile foundation for teams to be emotionally connected with the activities and the enabling behaviours that will lead them to succeed.  It is in such team culture that individuals can thrive, and high performance can be sustained overtime. 

When people can visualize the progress, they are making against their key objectives, the results can be motivational and a lever for more of the same enabling behaviours, efforts and so on. The recognition that can come from achieving OKRs for both individual and whole teams, can build a strong sense of belonging and connection with other team members. The acknowledgement and celebration of everyone’s contributions to achieving collective goals can help everyone to bring their full and unique self to work.  

According to numerous researchers, having a sense of purpose, belonging and aligning work to values provides the force behind team and corporate success. They are also the cornerstone of employee engagement and drivers in business success and revenue growth.   

It is said that what gets tracked has a better chance of being accomplished. OKRs can also help with tracking and reporting both return on investment (ROI) and return on expectations (ROE). With ROI, clearly aligned OKRs and strategic business goals makes it easy to calculate the impact of specific initiatives, accounts, etc. With ROE, it is about the impact of non-monetary investments, often in the form of employee initiatives and – together with ROI – provides the tangibility that OKRs can allow. For example, more client wins can be due to brand reputation, which is born out of having high performing teams, whose performance in turn stems from working in a conducive culture. 

Below, we highlight the key steps when writing OKRs:

• Review your overall business strategic goals, clients, and employee status. 
  
• Identify higher-level goals into capability, domain, or function actionable objectives.
• Brainstorm with team members, looking for inspirations and buy-in for how the team’s objectives can finessed be attained.
  
• Write down your team’s OKRs statement and create a shared understanding of its underlying implications. 
• Define and develop the key measurable results for each goal, including numeric or percentage-based targets. 
• Meet with each team member to discuss and agree how their individual objectives fit into the bigger picture of the team’s OKRs.
• Break down the OKRs into quarters, regularly bringing the whole team together to keep them continuously engaged with the progress and impact they are making.
• Track and report consistently – and celebrate each milestone. 

While OKRs initially require an investment in time – and can take a few quarters to get right – that investment is worthwhile. Once established, OKRs can be incredibly versatile across many business and managerial activities.  For instance, they are a powerful resource for updating clients against key milestones against critical business and revenue targets. They are also valuable in ensuring leaders can conduct more meaningful 1-2-1s and performance appraisals with their team members, as well as determining robust performance-based rewards and recognition schemes. 

To find out more how Capco help you deliver your goals through the use of OKRs, please contact us via the form below.