Translate your strategy into OKRS with these 10 questions

How to get teams to work together towards common and ambitious goals? How to keep all individuals motivated and agile at the same time?

More and more organizations find an answer to these questions thanks to the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) model; because it allows:

– to link the strategic vision to concrete objectives and actions;

– align teams on short and medium-term priorities;

– to accelerate the pace of execution while allowing rapid adjustment of the direction.

From Google to Spotify, Renault to Veepee, the OKR model enables many organizations to harness collective power to achieve big change.

Discover an extract from the OKR Method, Objectives and Key Results: the practical guide . Written by Elie Casamitjana, Henri Sora, and Juuso Hämäläinen, this book gives the practical keys to effectively deploy the OKR method for more dynamism, efficiency, and agility!

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Traditionally, a strategy describes desired changes in direction, numbers, markets, and general conduct of business.

Once the strategy is established in the organization, it is relatively easy to extract key objectives and results from it. The following ten questions will help you to break down long-term vision and long-cycle goals into short-term goals:

Question 1:

What is the expected result at the end of the period?

If the goal is unclear, a good first-trimester goal can help describe it more precisely. Just getting started already pays off. You can't hide behind a drawing board.

Question  2:

Is there already an indicator for the final result?

Does the current dashboard describe the situation of the organization so that when the indicators change in the right direction, it means that progress is being made toward the desired objective? If this is not the case, you can define objectives for developing indicators. But if the indicators describe the situation well, an improvement in the measured figures becomes the right key result.

Question 3:

Do we know what we don't know?

In a strategy, certain points often deserve to be clarified. If so, clarifying them is a good goal.

Question 4:

What could happen to us that is completely unexpected?

Based on this strategy, can we imagine what could happen completely unexpectedly? How to prepare for it? Could this preparation be an objective?

Question 5:

What do stakeholders expect from us?

What do the stakeholders, as described in the strategy, expect from us?

Question 6:

Is the strategy inspiring?

Is the strategy inspiring enough for members of the organization to participate willingly? If not, how to inspire them more?

Question 7:

Is the company culture conducive to change?

If not, what can be done to make changes possible? How to go about it throughout the process? What skills are we lacking and how do we bring them in?

Question 8:

What don't we want to do along the way?

Normally, the OKR model doesn't focus on the things you don't want to do, only on the things you want to do. What we don't want is defined in the strategy. However, if we identify things that we do not want, we must list them.

Question 9:

What could be good or interesting that is not essential at the moment?

If such things appear, they are put on the “don’t do” list.

Question 10:

How do you summarize all these ideas into a maximum of five objectives and key results?

After all this time spent collecting goals, a lot of ideas are floating around. In the end, you should only select fewer than five objectives and a maximum of fifteen key results. Remember: fewer goals are better. Carving into ideas can be difficult, but it's worth it.

Our experts Elie Casamitjana and Henri Sora together with Juusso Hämäläinen share their experience with OKR through the books La Methode OKR. The above is a translation of this content.