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How to Get Your Top-Level Objectives and Key Results Right

Updated: March 15, 2022

When creating Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), many companies tend to focus on creating one-stop-shop solutions for their company-level OKRs. Unfortunately, in the world of OKRs, there is no single solution that satisfies all businesses. This is because different companies have different needs and structure, and it is through understanding the basic structure of a particular business that the correct OKRs are made.

Identifying that basic structure isn’t so simple, however. It can be quite a real challenge to know a company’s structure, which is why many businesses struggle to create good OKRs.

Fortunately for you, getting company-level OKRs isn’t impossible. All it takes is to know some great examples of how businesses of different sizes are setting up excellent OKRs for you to do so:

 

Example 1: No OKRs Set

If you haven’t had OKRs set for your business yet, then this example is for you.

Not all companies will have OKRs set, let alone on a top-level. However, goals will still exist, and in many cases, these should be treated as priorities. Such priorities depend on what the company is focusing on. Great examples include delivering an incredible user experience, becoming the best retailer in the local area, or building a technology-oriented team.

Priorities can be far and wide, but they will all relate to the company’s main goal. If you have such priorities already set, then you technically already have simple OKRs made. OKRs act similarly to said priorities, albeit on the more objective side of things. You would still be missing key results, however, and that is what you are going to work on.

Make sure to begin treating your priorities as more of strategic guidance that your employees can follow. From there, your teams and even employees can set up their OKRs to measure their progress while achieving these priorities.

 

Example 2: OKRs Already Set

If you’ve already set OKRs for your company but feel like it isn’t enough, this is the example for you.

For businesses that have already set OKRs, there may be worksheets containing the main company objectives, which allows individual teams to add their objectives as sub-objectives. A person of authority like the CEO ranks these sub-objectives from most important to least important, where the most critical objectives are focused on heavily.

After that, these sub-objectives will contain a list of action items, each with their own priorities, which teams can follow to achieve the sub-objective to get closer to the main objective.

This may look like an effective way to set up OKRs, but really, there are no OKRs to be found here. To fix this, the main company objectives have to be broken into sub-objectives themselves, where teams can create their OKRs that align with these. From there, things like colour coding can be used to align different team-made objectives with company objectives to create a bottoms-up approach.

 

Conclusion

These are just two examples of the many types of companies today that have trouble setting OKRs to maximize their outcomes. If you are still having trouble properly setting up your company-level OKRs, do not be afraid to reach out to the experts for help.

With the pros on your side, the right OKRs can quickly be made to ensure your team’s efforts remain focused on high-impact objectives, ensuring only tremendous results that will drive your company towards success.


SKILLFIRE are experts in Australia helping companies boost their leadership capabilities and align their workers on the right objectives to bring in the biggest results.

If you’re keen to start with your team sooner rather than later, we have some training which will help:

Need help creating the best Objectives and Key Results to improve your business? reach out to us today!