Steps to build strong OKRs and stay on top of the necessary work to achieving your goals
With the popularity of the OKR methodology increasing, many organizations are looking to this goal-setting framework to help them achieve alignment and focus. While OKRs provide great structure to help teams navigate the goal-setting process, they can be tricky if you’re adopting them for the first time.
If you’re preparing for an OKR planning cycle or need some guidance on setting OKRs for your team, we’ve put together a free OKR template to help make this process easier. This Google Sheet provides an easy-to-clone template to help you write your OKRs, and offers hundreds of OKR examples for different teams and departments.
Ready to start writing your organization’s OKRs? To use this template, let’s start by walking through each of the template fields:
The most important thing to remember is that OKRs cannot be filled out by one person – they rely on collaboration, dialogue, and revision. Here are some pro tips to help encourage a collaborative OKR creation experience and ultimately a successful OKR process:
If you need some guidance while drafting OKRs, consider downloading this team workshop guide, intended to provide you and your team with writing OKR best practices and step-by-step direction on how to develop impactful OKRs.
Congratulations! You’ve drafted your OKRs which is a huge step, but there’s still a long way to go to achieve your goals. Figuring out the best way to track your goals can seem like an OKR in itself. Many organizations use Google Docs or Google Sheets to track goals, which can be a great tool for getting started. But when it comes to getting people engaged in your goals - which is a paramount component to executing OKRs successfully - that’s where OKRs can get lost in the spreadsheet shuffle.
Managing OKRs through a dedicated software platform improves collaboration across the board. Tools like Koan provide an intuitive UI for managing goals, visualizing goal hierarchy, collecting insights from dedicated dashboards, and ultimately encouraging transparency and engagement.
Once goals are established in a centralized, collaborative place, here are some tips for helping a team stay on track, enthusiastic, and successful in the process of achieving the Key Results.
Deploying and managing the OKR process can be challenging, especially if you’re using shared documents and an ad-hoc process that doesn’t reinforce positive habits. The real work in the OKR journey lies in organization and communication. The more streamlined those elements are, the easier time your team will have on the path to meeting their ambitious goals.
Explore how to make the entire OKR process easier and more productive for your team. Get started today.
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