Name: The New OKR Crash Course: An introduction to Objectives & Key Results
Uploaded: 2021-12-12T07:53:51.000Z
Duration: 11 min 42 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm Henrik founder and CEO of Perdoo. A while  ago we launched an OKR crash course video  

and it was exciting to see how other  organizations getting started with OKR.

Adverbs of manner

Since then we've implemented OKR in a lot more organizations  ourselves and obviously we've learned a lot, so we  

decided to update this video and share our latest learnings with you. So if you're new to OKR or just getting started this video will cover everything you need to know  

Let's first have a look at what OKR actually is.

OKRs is two different things, on the one hand it's a way to structure your goals,  

and on the other hand it's a framework that  contains a bunch of rules and best practices to  

help you manage these OKRs in your organization.

Let's first have a look at how you're used to manage goals:

imagine you want to accelerate revenue growth in your organization, you would then set yourself another goal

to generate, for instance, 1 million in revenue from new businesses.

And then, you would go on to set yourself even more  goals such as to attend 10 conferences and have 50 sales calls per week.

So now you end up with this list of goals that all feels equally important, but the only thing that truly matters is to accelerate revenue growth.

Now if you would structure these goals as an OKR, you would have much more clarity about what really is important to you.

Your Objective will be to accelerate revenue growth,  your Key Result will be to generate 1 million in new biz revenue.

Together, they form the outcome  that you want to achieve.

Your initiatives are the things that you'll be doing and that will be to attend 10 conferences and to have 50 sales calls per week.

Now you will probably find that  it takes more effort to structure goals as OKRs,

however, this is time well spent since you'll have  a lot more clarity about what really is important.  

And, that clarity is key if you are collaborating  with dozens if not hundreds of people throughout your organization.

Now that we've seen that OKR is  essentially just a way to structure your goals and  

why it's so important to structure your goals as  OKRs, let's have a look at the framework and where it's coming from.

It all started with Management  By Objectives (MBO), a concept first introduced by Peter  

Drucker in his book the practice of management,  which was first published in the early 1950s.

Ever since then, Objectives became a critical part of  running a business.

Now that organizations started using Objectives more and more, they learn a lot about what makes a good Objective.

This was neatly summarized by George Doran's S.M.A.R.T. criteria. Based on his S.M.A.R.T. criteria every Objective had  

to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant  and time-bound.

Kaplan and Norton developed a framework called the Balanced Scorecard in 1992. The Balanced Scorecard is a great methodology to  

set the strategic agenda for the organization but  it's limitations are that is not really driving the execution.  

Now all these three concepts come  together in the framework: OKR, which really  

became popular ever since Google implemented it in  1999.

It contains all the learnings of Management By Objectives, it has criteria for how best to structure your Objectives and it bridges the  

gap between strategy and execution. So, OKR really is a strategy execution tool.

The true father of OKR is Andy Grove, who co-founded Intel  together with Gordon Moore. He published a book in  

1983 called High Output Management in which he first  coined the term Objectives and Key Results.

He took Peter Drucker's Management By Objectives and  further developed it bad and key results to it.  

John Doerr, who worked at Intel, learned about OKR  directly from Andy Grove.

Later on he left Intel to join KPCB, a well-known investment firm. When KPCB invested in Google John Doerr presented  

the concept of OKR to Larry Page and Sergey Brin.  They were really excited about it and decided to  

start using OKR when they were only 40 people.  They still use it today when they are 60,000 people. 

From Google, it spread through a lot of other  organizations also outside of Silicon Valley and  

outside of the technology industry. And, this is  why today companies like Perdoo are on the rise  

that help organizations become successful through  OKR.

Now why should this all matter to you? Time and time again studies find how difficult strategy execution really is.

For instance Kaplan and Norton found in 2005 that 9 out of 10 organizations  failed to execute the strategy.

The Donald Sull's research of 2015 that 45 percent of  middle managers could not name even one of  

their organization's top priorities and these  middle managers are essentially responsible for  

executing that strategy but apparently they have  no clue what that strategy is.

Also, 95 percent of employees doesn't know or doesn't understand their organization's strategy.

How can they make sure that whatever they are doing is actually helping to realize that strategy?

Now, what OKR does for your organization — it helps you become a great place to work, have a clear path to success and  

it helps teams consistently hit their goals.

Now, it helps you become a great place to work by granting more autonomy to teams.

You make them responsible for Objectives without dictating to them how they need to realize those Objectives.

Furthermore, you let everybody in the organization see where the organization wants to go and how their work is contributing to them.

It will help you have a clear path to success by having more clarity in what your strategic priorities are and by making  

them transparent to the entire organization, that  will help everybody focus on what truly matters.  

Teams will be able to consistently hit their  goals by following a simple structure that is  

informed by real data, so that they can ensure  they are actually pushing the company forward.  

Now that we've seen what the OKR framework  is coming from and the value it'll bring to  

your organization let's have a closer look at  the anatomy of an OKR.

The Objective tells you where to go. Objectives are statements that inspire and set direction.

Now Key Results answer the question: how do I know I'm getting there? They help you specify what you mean by the Objective  

and they help you measure progress towards it.

Now initiatives answer the question: what will I do to get there?

Initiatives are all the work that you put in in order to drive progress on your Key Results.

OKRs and initiatives help you differentiate between outcomes and outputs.

Organizations usually buzz with activity, but which outcomes is all that activity intended to achieve.

Imagine you're a surgeon and you perform a technically flawless surgery. That will be an output.

If the outcome still was the patient died, would you consider yourself successful?

Your OKRs are your outcomes and your initiatives are your  outputs.

Now let's have a look at a few examples of good OKRs and initiatives. A good Objective could be to conquer the US market or to become an awesome place to work.

Another good Objective could be to make our customers love our support team.

If we zoom in on that latter example, examples  of Key Results could be:

A customer satisfaction score of 97%, an average first response time of 1 hour, and an average solution time of 12 hours.  

Now Initiatives that you could have to realize  that OKR could be to interview 10 support rep  

candidates to help you bring down your average  response time for instance, to publish an FAQ to  

make sure that you get in fewer tickets and  people can find answers to their most popular  

crushes themselves. As well as, to launch an in-app live chat which will make it a lot easier for  

people to connect with you're support team.

A bad Objective would be to triple our valuation price. An objective should not be measurable.

You often read that an Objective should not contain a number and then people try to hide a number

in the word "triple", which obviously means nothing else than times three.

Better than focusing on not adding a number to your Objective will be to make sure that your Objective is simply not measurable.

A bad Key Result will be to close tons of new accounts because Key Results have to be measurable and "tons of" isn't.

People will have different definitions of what "tons of" really means, which means that you have no clarity of expectations.

Capture 100 percent market share is also a bad Key Result.

Key Results can be ambitious but they should not be impossible, and 100 percent market share for most organizations is definitely impossible

A good Objective would be to make so much revenue that we wildly increase our valuation.

Now the Objective isn't measurable but it is inspiring.

A good Key Result will be to close 85 new accounts because now you can actually measure progress towards it.

And capture 30% market share would also be a good  Key Result because this is probably ambitious but hopefully not impossible.

Now that you know how to structure an OKR and what a good OKR looks like, let's have a look at how OKR works when you  roll it out  in your organization.

We recommend you to always start with your Ultimate Objective. That Ultimate Objective will serve as the North  

You can look at your mission and vision to construct your Ultimate Objective. For instance, Walmart's vision is to become the worldwide leader in retailing.  

Their mission is to help people save money so that  they can live better. Together they would form the  

Ultimate Objective to become the worldwide leader  in retailing by saving people money so they can live better.

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The New OKR Crash Course: An introduction to Objectives & Key Results

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