Objectives and Key Results or OKRs create a guide of your vision for your business, but these things shouldn’t just be something literally “kept in mind.” To manifest the results, you need to clearly identify your OKRs, write them down, and disclose them to the entire team. That way, everything is transparent, and the stage is set.
Here are a couple of writing tips for inspirational OKR:
A Quick Guide to Writing Effective OKRs
1. Follow the Simple OKR Formula
The OKR Formula is not rocket science. It’s a statement that follows this basic structure:
“I will [Objective] as measured by [Key Results].”
But as simple as it looks, you have to consider the following steps too.
2. Be Specific
The Objective
Everyone wants to “be the best” at something. Every company would like to “achieve growth.” And it is common to want to “minimize risk.” Notice anything similar with these statements? If you have used them for your objectives before, then it’s time you need to get specific.
These statements are open to interpretation and aren’t clear enough to make an impact. You can’t be too vague when coming up with objectives.
In what way do you want to be the best? Do you want to be at the top in your city, state, or country? And in what part of your service do you want the edge in? You can be the best product, the best in customer service, or the best option for the lowest price.
And when you say “achieve growth,” in what way? Do you want to grow in your branding, in sales, or in team performance? These types of growth follow their own metrics.
The Key Results
This is where you put numbers into action. You need to have a rationale behind why you want to achieve a certain percentage within the given timeframe. You also have to make sure that you have enough resources to pull it off by the deadline lest you overwhelm your team.
3. Aim for Something Realistic
It’s alright to be ambitious, but there is a difference between dreams and goals. Dreams can range from achievable to outright outlandish. Goals are almost as high up there, but they’re grounded, realistic, and always achievable. Your OKRs have to be ambitious to make your team work hard for it and achieve amazing results, but, at the same time, they have to be attainable. Otherwise, you’ll end up overworking everyone to the point of burnout for something that wasn’t possible, to begin with.
4. Make It Motivational!
The best way to fulfill your set goals is to motivate the people behind them. OKRs are engaging and clear. When the whole team stays on the same page, the result will be very motivating. So when you’re writing them down, try to think of the positives for the entire team and every individual member. As a leader, you need to ignite inspiration. The rest will follow suit.
Conclusion
When you have inspiring and motivational OKRs for every employee to refer to, things become much clearer. Your business will head towards a more structured path, and you’ll know how to lead them through it. Just do the hard work, and you will get to your goals in no time.
Using Objectives and Key Results is a great way to grow your business and improve your leadership and management skills.
We offer an 8-Week OKR Quick Start Program that will drive serious business outcomes or check out our FREE training to get you started on your OKR journey.
With the proper training from SKILLFIRE, you can unlock the knowledge behind motivating employees to increase productivity and swaying consumers to your business. Get in touch with us today!