5 Questions You May Ask While Determining Your New OKRs

You have decided to dive into the OKR world. Well, where should you start from? What should you consider or what kind of questions do you need to ask yourself? In this guide, we have included the types of OKRs and questions that will help you to set up the right OKR ground. 

OKR types

Setting an objective with OKRs has three parts in the context of an organizational chart.

Company OKRs

The executive team firstly determines the vision of the company. Later on, they decide on the main priorities associated with the vision. These priorities shed light on what is important for the company in that period, what must be achieved, and how to achieve this success. A company OKR can be something that seems extremely challenging to reach, aiming to be inspiring, and can be spread over a relatively wider period. On the other hand, there must be OKRs, which specify the objectives that must be reached within a particular period. After the determination of Company OKRs, it will be time to divide them into meaningful subsets and parts. 

Team OKRs

Team OKRs are determined in alignment with the Company OKRs according to the competency and job description of each department. These OKRs can be determined by the team leaders and one of the executive team discussing the objectives together. It is recommended to consider for what common purposes different departments can work together while creating Team OKRs. 

Individual OKRs

At this stage, the team leader interviews individual team members one by one, and individual OKRs are determined with the absolute participation of each employee and in a transparent, motivating communication environment. In this process, you can benefit from criteria such as the duties of individuals, deadline ranges of OKRs, the number of employees required to achieve an objective, and performance evaluations. OKRs, which will push the employee out of his or her comfort zone but do not seem impossible to achieve, can be determined by listening to the opinions of employees. You need to ensure that the employee has an idea about the main priorities of the company. Thus, team members can easily see the fruits of their hard work more clearly in the bigger picture.

5 questions you can ask yourself to improve your OKRs 

All OKRs in three groups must be measurable, observable, clear, and aligned. Well, how can you make sure your OKRs are as well-defined as possible before embarking on your journey to success or during an interim evaluation period? We have shared five of these questions you can consider for this purpose.

What kind of action does your objective require?

If achieved, why is the potential outcome of the objective more meaningful than the current situation? To what extent does it make a difference? Is the effort you have to give for this worth the result? If you work on an objective that requires creativity, make sure that you know the ways to boost your team’s creativity. If your objective is something that you have never tried before and provides your insight into the company, you can think of what kind of research you can do for your objective. 

Does your objective express a general purpose?

Uncertainty will prevent you from taking action. Therefore, you need to make sure that you set objectives that are defined as clearly as possible and will not create questions marks in the minds of your employees. Your objective must serve common purposes with others but also it must be easily distinguishable from them. 

Could you be expressing your objective too complexly?

OKRs should not be full of long sentences. Make sure that you express the objective and key outcomes in as few words as possible while determining an OKR. If you cannot shorten your objective, ask yourself, “what do I want to achieve primarily with this objective”, “what elements I cannot remove”. Your objective will be hidden where you put emphasis. Expressing your objective as simply as you can help you to stay focused throughout the process.

If your objective aligns with the company culture? 

Think about the definition of your company culture and words you often use when describing your company. Later on, compare your objectives with these. Is there any mismatch? If so, what do you think the problem could be? You can improve your objectives or abandon them. If you have noticed an element in your company culture that you need to improve, you can also evaluate it. 

Does your objective attract enough attention? 

Your employees will work hard throughout the year to achieve the set objectives. Finding objectives that are interesting, logical, worth the effort, and exciting, may not be an easy task all the time but they guarantee the results. 

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