3 COMMON CHALLENGES WHEN IMPLEMENTING OKR | GOALIFY

From the first time when hearing about OKR, I was immediately impressed by the concept, just simple objective and key results. My team and I only need to focus on the goal which is the most primary thing to the organization. OKR keeps every one of us delivering work focusing on team success.

However, like everyone for the first time knows about this concept, some questions flashes through my mind and I definitely have some challenges when introducing it into my team, my circle partnership, and clients.

I summarize here the challenges that is the most matter when implementing OKR into an organization.

1. What is the best way to implement OKR to your organization?

2. How is organization able to use OKR at various scales?

3. Challenges with discipline & adaptation

First of all, like every process applied to the team, we need realizing that is a journey, not just an event.

Not possessing the usage guidelines is one of the biggest challenges for the team, who wants to implement it.

1. What is the best way to implement OKR to your organization?

To implement OKR into your team, first, you need making each of members understand the principal concept of the OKR and feel comfortable with this method. Especially the top level of your team, department heads, managers, etc.

It is conducted by two main parts:

Structure

OKR is built basing on two different questions:

Objective: Where do I want to go?

Key Result: How will I get there?

An objective is what you or your team member wants to accomplish. An objective must be significant, meaningful as well as aspirational to the company and team members. They should be linked, aligned and well supported by the entire organization. And they should also come with a specific timeframe, typically a quarter.

Key result: Primary results should be measurable, limited in number and implement timeline.

2. Philosophy

OKR is not like other methods, which only uses local top-down assignment. OKRs are visible for everyone, top-down, bottom-up and cross-functional. OKR ensures that everyone is moving forward and achieving the same result.

4 key primary points of OKR philosophy is:

• Ambitious: Objectives are set up just beyond the boundaries of what seems possible like “shooting the moon.”

• Measurable: Key Results that determine the achievement of every objective. It should also come with a particular milestone.

• Transparent: OKRs are visible to the company-wide, from the CEO down to interns.

• Performance-related: OKRs are not tied up with the employee performance evaluations.

OKR was also introduced to Google since 1999 by John Doerr, a model he first learned from Intel. Today, OKR is the standard methodology for aligning company and individual goals. I was also very amazed when finding out that OKR is used to define the cornerstones for not only startups, small enterprises, but also for large-scale companies like Google, LinkedIn, eBay, Booking.com, Zynga.

Google Ventures’ Rick Klau puts it, “Google wasn’t Google” until they adopted the OKR practice.

When your top members understand the concept and how to set OKRs, get them to start practicing on this to build up themselves to the level of confidence, then let them back to the team and ask the team to start on this.

3. How do organization can use OKRs at various scales?

For start-ups, SMEs or Corporates, the roadmap to apply OKR into business is not a big gap. In other words, that is the roadmap to use OKR for the organization which is new to OKR as well as the big teams.

The team should start to plan the OKR roughly six weeks before the beginning of a quarter of a new year.

Each meeting shouldn’t last longer than 60 minutes.

0-1 Week: Define the company objectives.

Defining 3-5 core company objectives for upcoming year or quarter. These goals need aligning with company mission and vision. The team also need identifying the measurable results required to complete these objectives.

Week 1 to 2: Identifying system for organizing OKR

The significant advantage of OKR is transparent, keeping everyone aware about the primary objective. But deciding the tool to track OKR is not easy.

Many technical companies like Google, Intel, etc., they built an internal tool. Some others use spreadsheet, (download here) and a growing number of businesses use software dedicated for OKR on the market like Goalify.

However, you need to define the roll out process clearly and communicate well with your team, in order to avoid the messy. For this reason, your business may not recognize that the result comes from correct OKR implementation.

From week 2 to 3: Cooperating with team leaders to outline department objectives.

This part is important after the top goals have been settled down. The middle management needs to understand what and why it matters to the team.

After that, the management team needs negotiating company’s OKRs, explaining them and having open conversations with team leaders on the organization goals. More important, this is a free talk, where team leaders are able to provide the feedback on the company OKRs. This step makes sure that everyone is on the same page of the company objectives and middle management have the draft objective and key results for their team.

From week 3 to 4: Explaining OKRs to the entire team, organization.

Remember, you need to explain, not inform to the company staff! Your team leaders were onboarding; it’s time to roll out OKRs to entire company at an all hand meeting, just like the conversation with the team leaders. Keeping in mind that you need to make sure your team understand the context and the reasons why these OKRs are necessary, manage their expectation properly, also, clarify the interaction within the OKRs system.

From week 4 - 5: Manager and individual contributors craft/define the OKRs together.

1 to 1 meeting between a team leader and individual contributors is to kick off the individual OKR writing process. The same principal of the conversation will be similar to the one between top manager and middle manager.

Week 5: Calibrating and presenting OKRs.

Keeping checking-in the objective and key result, managers monitors individual’s OKRs

After having the conversation with all team members, it’s time for the management team to step back and look at the objectives again, and track if they need changing the company’s top priority OKRs or not. When everything is ready, it’s time to present to the company-wide again.

Monitor

Continually monitor the progression of the individual’s OKRs, make sure that the company is moving in right direction toward business goals.

Tips to set a meeting about OKRs.

Keep the team small - 10 or fewer if possible. It must include the senior executive team. Keeping all the electrical devices, which can create the distraction away from the meeting table, you need to maintain the team focus and move quickly.

Duration of the meeting should be 45 minutes and make it in two sessions. Your goal is to cancel the second part. Be focused.

4. Discipline & adjust OKRs for your team

OKRs help your team to create the discipline and also challenge that you need to obey and maintain this routine. The whole team does not always have the same set of people, there will be new comers or people leaving you for some reasons. New joiners might not use OKR and maybe they will not follow this method, this can affect the others, and can be the broken point. You need to make sure new joiners blended well with your culture and game rules.

Also, we are all unique, each of teams has different core values. At the beginning, you can follow some practices, guidelines or examples to understand and get used to OKRs. However, you cannot expect that you will become another Google, LinkedIn, or Zynga. You are who you are; your OKRs need to be unique and reflect your team culture, it presents how you define your success.