5 main benefits of OKRs.

The implementation of OKRs has several benefits. Some might be more relevant than others for your team, based on the strengths and weaknesses you have. When reading this article, it is a great idea to think of the current situation your team is in: which benefit of OKRs suits you best?

The most important benefit of OKRs is to ensure there is a joined language between all the teams and colleagues: when done right, they are very easy to understand and therefor make sure everyone understands the company goals in the same way.

#1: Customer Focus

A well written objective puts the customer first and clearly defines which value you are offering to them. When you force yourself to think about the client in the obtjective, chances are also that there is a stronger strategy behind your objective. For example:

“We want to increase revenue”

—> this objective is about the company.

“We build the fastest and most diverse content platforms such that our customers want to have a subscription”

—> this objective is about the customer, and shows what we want to deliver to the customer.

Both are about increasing revenue, but as you can see the second examples puts the customer and the value we try to deliver to the customer at the centre. A much stronger objective if you ask us!

#2: Team alignment & empowerment

OKRs ensure that teams are both horizontally and vertically alligned. As OKRs are made transparent throughout the organization, it ensures teams are aware of the overall company objective as well as other department objectives. They therefore ensure collaboration on priorities and prevent double work by defining together what the OKRs should be.

#3: Prioritizing tasks

Or as we like to call it: cutting out the busy-ness. In our day to day work, we often get caught up with a lot of “things” we need to do: we work hard, make extra hours, but somehow the results are not there. OKRs can help decide which tasks to cut out: because we have very clear where we want to go from our Objective and Key Result. We prioritize tasks that we will execute based on the effort vs. expected outcome towards our Key Results.  

#4: Data driven decision making

Key Results ensure that teams always have a quantitative tracker that shows if we are getting closer to our goals. They clarify what we mean with the qualitative, inspiring words we use in the Objective. For example, what do we mean when we say “We make the best quality icecream”? What is quality? How do we measure this?

#5: Executional Focus

Once OKRs are set, everyone decided which Initiatives you want to execute in order to improve your key resutls. What are you going to do when you step into the office tomorrow in order to bring progress towards the company goals?

As said before: some of these benefits of OKRs might be more relevant to your organization than others. This will mostly be dependent on existing strengths and weaknesses. Does your organization need a better focus on the customer? Make sure all objectives include the customer. Is your company struggling to make outcomes measurable? Be extra strict on finding good metrics for the Key Results.

Are you looking to see how we can support you with the implementation of OKRs? Have a look at our OKR training & coaching programs and feel free to get in touch!