Company OKRs: How to Gradually Achieve Your Goals?

Why Do Company OKRs Matter?

Often companies' efforts are focused in too many directions. A common reason for this is the lack of well-defined organizational goals to guide departments and teams. Usually, this results in decisions that have less or nothing to do with the company's objectives. To avoid ending up in such a situation, company OKRs come into play. They represent the company's top priorities through strategic, aspirational, and measurable annual or quarterly goals. Once defined and transparent for everyone, company OKRs become the guiding star across the organization.

Alternatively said, company OKRs’ primary purpose is to help teams cooperate and work together toward the same goals while keeping everyone accountable for completing their team/department’s specific OKRs supporting the strategic objectives. This increases individual productivity and engagement while improving cross-functional and cross-departmental collaboration.

A company that fails to set proper top priorities and lacks team alignment is more likely to take too many directions and fail to reach its goals. As a result, departments and teams experience focus shifts, often delivering work that is not directly related to the ongoing priorities.

Where to Start with Setting Company OKRs?

To set objectives and key results on a company level, two essential prerequisites must be met.

First, everyone in your organization needs to understand that the OKRs concept is a goal-setting framework but also, it is a cultural shift that reaches every level of the organizational hierarchy. Second, OKRs do not determine а company’s business goals or overall business strategy. Rather, it is presumed that these elements are already set and agreed upon. Setting OKRs can help support the strategy through specific and ambitious objectives measured by actionable key results.

In more practical terms, the OKRs framework's purpose is to support the organization’s efforts in reaching its strategic goals. Good company-level OKRs should be measurable too. Furthermore, they should be long-term and "broader" goals that allow teams to support them with their "shorter-term" OKRs.

Aligning top-level and team-level OKRs to the company vision

Collaborate to Define Company OKRs

When starting a new initiative of adopting the OKRs framework, many organizations tend to implement the top-down approach of defining and applying company OKRs throughout the organization. It is a common scenario because it is straightforward to roll out. This process involves determining OKRs on a management level and pushing top-level key results as team objectives. However, it creates an environment typical for Waterfall project management where decisions and any further actions are taken by managers, and teams are left with little flexibility over their own decisions.

Instead, adopting OKRs successfully in your Agile organization requires significant collaboration. This is the best way to ensure that teams are aware of and aligned with the company’s ideas, goals, priorities, and vision. To prevent the unwanted effect of surprises when there is a priority shift due to market changes, try to focus this communication in a top-down and bottom-up direction. Let teams determine specific team goals that they think would contribute to the company objectives and strategic vision.

While each approach has its pros and cons, we recommend aiming at aligning OKRs rather than cascading. Doing this allows you to achieve an OKR implementation at scale and be more agile when business priorities change.

Review OKRs Regularly

It is essential to review your OKRs regularly to keep track of their status and identify areas for improvement. A good way to check in on your company OKRs is by investing in appropriate OKR software. It will help you determine if you’ve set the right goals, if you need to adjust your key results, what is your progress toward your goals, and what challenges you face. It is vital that your OKRs are updated regularly so that your organization can take appropriate actions to support the achievement of its goals.

A feedback loop gives you a clear picture of the issues you are trying to address in regard to your outcomes. Note that the timeline for these feedback meetings may not be the same for each organizational level. While you may set your strategic objectives once a year and have check-in meetings every quarter, it is different on the team level. A good practice is to inspect your teams’ progress monthly or even weekly. This way, you can continuously improve problematic areas, which could ultimately have an effect on the outcomes at a company and strategic level.

Feedback opportunity meetings as applied in Kanban

Company OKRs Examples

Now let’s have a look at some specific examples illustrating what OKRs at a company level might look like in practice.

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Related Articles:

• Team OKRs
• OKR Templates
• OKR Best Practices
• What Is an OKR in Agile?
• Agile Organization