Objective Key Results
This is a goal setting methodology from Silicon Valley.
This is a goal setting methodology from Silicon Valley.
Instead of writing up a list of To-dos as goals, we define carefully what success looks like. This simple idea will change the way you think about everything you do.
Objective (O): Description of the change you want to see.
Key Results (KRs): Specific evidence that this change has taken place.
KR: 1200 Instagram followers
KR: 50 sales through Instagram
KR: 3000/mo website traffic
credits OKRs for the 10X growth.
Bring clarity to your goals by taking this step-by-step training on how to write an OKR (Objectives and Key Results).
You can use Heron to bring clarity to any part of your life. Most users rely on OKRs to make progress on their business and use KIWIs to keep an eye on their work-life balance. You may have an Objective where some Key Results relate to your business and other Key Results relate to other personal matters.
This doesn't happen often. Herons put a lot of thought in defining where they want to go when setting their OKRs. The circumstances may change—things happen!—but where we want to go doesn't change as often.
We recommend de-prioritizing (i.e. dropping Key Results) over changing them (i.e. coming up with new ones). We may drop a Key Result because we find that it is not feasible or maybe we realize that it is not a helpful measure after all.
A Key Performance Indicator tells you how our business is doing. They don't change over time. For example, revenue is a common KPI and we are likely to keep track of it, every week. Sometimes KPIs can be used as part of an OKR.
An OKR is a specific goal that we drive to influence our KPIs. The measures within the OKR will change cycle to cycle because they will depend on the specific objective.
The OKRs are the concrete execution steps to help us achieve our strategy.
The company mission is directional, the objective is a concrete execution step. For example, the Gates Foundation has the mission "help all people lead healthy, productive lives." An example of an OKR is "Global Eradication of Malaria by 2040."
Sometimes Key Results relate indirectly to the Objective. For example, a consultant may want to keep some focus on client acquisition even though the Objective relates mostly to another aspect of the work (e.g. offering new services).
Your Key Results should be ambitious enough that you are not sure of what to do to complete them. At the same time, they should not seem impossible. Setting ambitious Key Results comes with time. It is common for Herons to start taking more risks on the second or third quarter using OKRs.
What makes a good OKR does not change from the corporate world to your own business. The value of OKRs does. In big organizations OKRs help with alignment towards results across the organization. Employees understand what is most important and problem-solve in the same direction. In a smaller business, OKRs bring the value of focus. It is less about coordinating folks and it is more about having clarity on what to prioritize out of the many things going on. For this reason, at Heron we have a policy of having just 1 OKR. This follows the lead of Christina Wodtke.
The OKR is scored based on the average scores of your Key Results. Each Key Result is scored as a percentage that takes into account your start value (if other than 0) and your target value.
