How OKR Framework Acts as a Goal-Setting and Tracking Software

About 4 hours a week are spent on unproductive tasks. Less than 30% of an employee’s time is spent on high-priority or critical tasks. These figures prove that your workforce is losing productivity. One of the key reasons behind that loss is the lack of goal-setting. Besides, it isn’t easy to organize employees with different priorities, thus making everyone work towards the common organizational goals. It is a big undertaking that cannot happen without systems and frameworks purpose-built for goal-setting. In this context, the OKR framework counts among the most popular and proven frameworks for goal-setting and tracking.

Why is Goal-Setting Crucial?

In their book, “The Management of Organizations,” Jay B. Barney and Ricky W. Griffin mention organizational goal-setting to boost planning, provide guidance and direction, inspire and motivate employees, and aid organizations assess and control business performance.

OKRs and Goal-Setting

OKR, a management tool, is a goal-setting framework that enables organizations to define goals and objectives while tracking outcomes. Objectives and key results, or OKRs, aid all team members and leaders work towards a common goal, tying the organization, team, and personal goals to measurable results. You can use the OKR framework for goal-setting for individuals and teams.

OKR Tracking

Due to the very nature of OKRs, they demand a constant progress review toward team objectives and those of the organization. The employees must set short-term goals, report progress on them every week, and then review their accomplishments.

When employees constantly review their goal progress, their organization can track the following:

• Employee capability basis what they deliver consistently.
• How individuals contribute to the team.
• How individuals and teams progress and, thus, the overall organizational achievement for its objectives and long-term goals.
• How something failed, and the challenges employees face at work.
• Solutions for the problems or challenges identified.
• Innovative methods recognized while trying to accomplish a major milestone.
• Ways to execute innovation.

OKR tracking software such as Unlock:OKR enables businesses to track their progress on their goals and find out where they are lacking. Measuring and achieving business success thus becomes easy.

Tracking with OKRs

Set the Right OKRs

Writing and setting the right OKRs is your first step when using an OKR framework. Not only should your individual and team goals align with those of the organization, but also you must take care of how your OKRs look like. Typically, objectives should be 3-5. Each objective should not have more than 3-5 key results (KRs), with KRs having a metric attached. Your objective should answer “what” and KRs “how” to achieve something measurable.

Communication is Key

Effective communication of OKRs between managers and their teams is fundamental to implementing your strategy. Transparency is key here. They need to learn why they are working on a specific task and understand their role in helping the organization reach its desired destination. Use the agile approach to break down your strategy implementation and OKRs into bits and have employees share their progress with their teams.

Updating OKRs Goes a Long Way

Once OKRs are written and set, you cannot forget them. You must update your progress on the key result and, thus, the objective and update OKRs, ideally weekly. Doing so is a great way to check in and see if the individual, team, and company goals are well-aligned. After all, you don’t want to regret working on the unnecessary key result at the end of the quarter.

Conduct Team Meetings

The fourth step is to track the assigned OKRs through weekly check-ins and team meetings. Unlock:OKR tool features weekly check-ins wherein individuals should mention the projects or items completed in a week, learnings and challenges faced, items to be completed next week, and red flags (if any) to accomplish projects in the future. Managers can thus understand where their teams are lagging and guide them to take necessary action. Besides, this ensures uniformity and alignment among different departments of the organization.

Reflect on Your Performance

We increase our agility by learning from the last quarter and constantly adapting to new information and practice. Employees celebrate their achievements, identify where they fell short in the quarter, and reflect on the OKR progress to continue to strive for improvement, growth, and excellence. Leaders hold sessions with their teams to review how they fare on their OKRs and begin to reset for the next cycle.

Benefits of OKRs for Goal-Setting

Hones Performance

Employees set ambitious goals and learn how to achieve them.

Brings Focus

Helps align short-term goals with long-term organizational objectives, leading to sustainable growth.

Gives Clarity of Purpose

Everyone can see who is working on what while being aligned with their organization’s goals. This brings transparency and gives a benchmark for employees to follow.

Clears Direction

OKR goal-setting centers on determining what must be achieved and how that must be achieved. Employees are well-aware of what they should do right from the beginning.

Inspires Action

Motivates employees to set higher goals and, thus, drive better results when there is a new benchmark to achieve.

Are you ready to set and track your goals?

You have learned about the relevance of goal-setting and tracking. You also understand how an OKR framework is critical to set goals and ultimately achieving success by tracking goal progress. Several okr goal-setting and tracking tools are available to make your job easy but Unlock:OKR is among the best okr goal-setting and tracking software. To never miss your targets, find out what our experts say.