After more than a year of struggling, the coronavirus pandemic is still raging across the world, rendering a critical blow to most of our economies. However, during this time of adversity, some organisations are adopting a different approach in doing business through Objectives and Key Results (OKR).
The Importance of OKR
OKR is a goal-setting framework that’s frequently set, tracked, and re-evaluated. It is a simple but agile methodology that has the potential to engage each team’s perspective and creativity. One of the defining traits of OKR that makes it crucial to the success of a business is its ability to create and sustain organisational alignment. It basically ensures everyone is going in the same direction with clear priorities and in a constant rhythm.
Convincing Your Company to Adopt an OKR Approach
OKR is a great way of aligning employees’ goals with enterprise objectives. Without goals, or even with an ineffective one, employees might duplicate efforts, get distracted, and waste time working on projects that don’t bring value to the company. Only through a focused goal-setting approach like OKR can you steer your company towards a more sustainable path. But how can you convince your entire company and your employees to adopt this approach? Let’s find out.
1. Roll Out Among Active Goal Setters
Chances are, your organisation already has leaders and teams who actively set and track goals. It’s best to seek out these teams who actively measure their goals and work outputs as they are more likely to succeed in an OKR environment.
One of the best ways to convince the company is to prove to them that OKR works. Do a pilot program with one of those teams you identified. You should try to measure the difference in results before and after your pilot testing of the OKR approach. Other teams or departments will then witness what you’ve managed to achieve, and hopefully, they’ll try to emulate your success.
2. Educate Your Teams
In any significant change in an organisation, there will always be some resistance at first. Most of the time, this is due to a lack of understanding of what OKR aims to achieve. Your job is to make them see the “why” and its value more than the “how”. Have your managers communicate with their teams about how and why OKR goals work, along with the tools needed for the project.
Most importantly, clearly defined OKR objectives should be communicated to the teams to improve organisational alignment, focus, clarity, and engagement. This gives the team the framework they need to be effective in doing their part to achieve those OKR goals.
3. Designate OKR Advocates
After rolling out OKRs successfully and with your pilot programs in place for multiple departments, it’s time to decide who should adopt the role of OKR advocate in your organisation. These individuals lead by example and encourage others to follow in their success. Preferably, they should come from those first few teams that successfully run your OKR pilot program. That way, they can easily share their experiences and demonstrate the effectiveness of the goal-setting method firsthand.
Conclusion
For a company to facilitate sustainable growth in a volatile market, you need to focus on achieving very specific goals to drive results. OKR is designed to do just that and is exactly what any growing business needs. By following these three crucial steps, you can convince your employees and the entire organisation of the value of OKR.
It’s easier to adapt to change if you know exactly what to do and how to do it right. SKILLFIRE helps bold companies adapt to big changes by creating clear strategies, goals and enabling leadership. Through the power of OKR, we help you transform your organisation into a powerhouse that drives positive results consistently. Help your organisation gain strategic agility through our OKR learning programs.
We offer an 8-Week OKR Quick Start Program that will help connect your teams and drive radical value for your customers and accelerate your business growth. You can check out our FREE training as well to get you started on your OKR journey!