How To Write Brilliant OKRs: 7 Best Practices To Follow

Regardless of what type of company you run, you’re certain to have goals in place. After all, they’re designed to help you strive for success and keep your business on top.

While some goals may be internal, like building a positive company culture, others may be external, like delivering a seamless experience for your loyal customers. Achieving said goals takes more than putting your dreams into the universe. Instead, you need a plan which is where OKRs (objectives and key results) come into play.

In a nutshell, OKRs establish where your business is going and how to track your progress throughout to ensure your goals are measurable and actionable. If you’re wondering how to write OKRs, we’re here to help.

Here Are The Seven Best Ideas To Write Brilliant OKRs

Read on to discover the best approaches to take to help you draw up OKRs that benefit your organization.

1. Know Your Business Goals

Before you can even think about writing effective OKRs, you need to begin by understanding your company’s goals. Once you are clear on the vision, this will make it easier to break down higher-level goals into actionable ones.

Remember, OKRs should never be set in isolation. Everything must ladder up into each other. Start off with well-defined goals that inform your team OKRs. This will eventually lead to individual OKRs. When you do this, each member of the team will stay aligned.

2. Pick The Right Tools

Like you would with any task or project, having the right tools at your disposal is essential, especially when writing effective OKRs. Whether you’re working remotely or in the office, there are specific tools you can use to brainstorm ideas.

These include Miro, Google Sheets, and Goal Library. For those who are new to OKRs and need more clarity, check out 1ovmany which provides an OKR canvas. You can read more information on the OKR Canvas on their website, as well as look into OKR examples.

3. Involve The Whole Company

Setting OKRs isn’t just there to benefit you individually, they’re there for the entire team. With that said, each member of your business should have their say. This leads to shared accountability and ownership. Once you’ve established your business goals and have the right tools in place, it’s time to hold a team meeting.

This can be used to begin brainstorming and getting your OKRs ready for the next quarter. Make sure to meet on a one-to-one basis too. There, you can discuss OKRs with each member of the team individually, which will help you see the bigger picture. As the quarter continues, you must keep the entire team in the loop on progress.

4. Curate An OKR Objective Statement

It’s simple – your objectives are the destination you are heading to. For that reason, you need to establish them before your OKRs. In some instances, it can be tempting, to begin with, results. But, it is the objective that guides the key results.

Make sure you use one sentence for your objective and include a brief description. Whatever you do, ensure your objectives are ambitious. Never set the bar too low in business!

5. Develop Key Results

Key results are how progress is calculated toward the objective. Should the objective be the end destination, your key results will be the map that gets you from A to B. Key results help you cement how you are going to monitor your progress.

It must be noted that your key results need to be relevant to your objective and simple to measure with a number, otherwise, problems can quickly occur.

6. Avoid Common Mistakes

You’ll inevitably run into obstacles along your OKR journey. However, there are common mistakes that you can avoid. The most prevalent one is having too many priorities that no one on the team can keep track of.

When writing OKRs, make sure to ask your team if there are too many or too few. Other things to ask include whether the OKRs represent tasks rather than outcomes and if targets are realistic and ambitious enough.

7. Track Them Consistently

One of the main problems with OKRs is that too many businesses start off strong. But, after the brainstorming has passed and they’ve used a great-looking template to house OKRs, some organizations throw them onto a shared drive and forget all about them.

For OKRs to work and be a success, it’s your responsibility to consistently track and review them. Figure out a way to ensure OKR reviews are part and parcel of your process. This can be achieved by reviewing individual OKRs at one-on-one meetings, or at weekly team gatherings.

To round things off, OKRs are one of the easiest tools any business can use. Writing an OKR doesn’t have to be a mind field. With our help above, you should find it easier to craft together OKRs that benefit the entire organization.

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