A Simple but Effective Approach for Planning OKRs & Making Them Stick

If you clicked to read this, you probably already know that ‘OKRs’ is an acronym for Objectives and Key Results, a common goal-setting framework in business (you can read a brief history of OKRs on Wikipedia).

If you’ve read this far, you’ve likely experienced situations in which your company starts to implement OKRs but has major challenges in getting enough buy-in across teams to make them stick (people have ever-shorter attention spans, something that I consider a symptom of ‘Future Shock’ — don’t click that now, keep reading and come back to it later).

There can of course be many legitimate reasons for your OKRs not working well — from Objectives that are too ambitious to Key Results that don’t reflect the objectives closely enough — but let’s focus on a simple approach that worked well for us at [major German antivirus company, now part of a larger cybersecurity conglomerate (with an entirely new name after having just rebranded)].

No matter the reasons why your OKRs may not have worked until now, commit to the following steps, enforce them — especially the group feedback along the way and retrospectives at the end — and you will see a major difference.

Planning OKRs and Making Them Stick

Building Quarterly OKRs

This part should be done with a good Management and Leadership mix (i.e. forget job titles and include the right people for doing the following). Aim to spend no more than a combined couple of hours on the following (and feel free to brainstorm with ChatGPT to speed things up!):

1. Draft and refine 2–4 Objectives for the Company
2. Draft and refine 2–3 Key Results (for each Objective) which would indicate that the corresponding Objective was met (Note: these can be 1 KR per Team, e.g. 1 KR for R&D, 1 for Sales, 1 for Marketing etc.)
3. Revise the Objectives and Key Results until they are both clear and realistically achievable (i.e. consider the potential impact of holidays, unplanned sick leave, etc.)

Communicating Quarterly OKRs

Nothing works without adequate communication. Establish (within existing meeting series if possible) a quarterly communications framework for:

1. Company OKRs setting and communication (let everyone know and ask if anything might be unclear)
2. Team OKRs setting and communication (in all directions — up, down, and sideways)
3. Incorporate OKRs into all planning (e.g. Sprint grooming — if anything has to be done but does not seem to fit into OKRs, then it’s possible the OKRs are not broad enough, which is great feedback to share in…)
4. Monthly (or bi-weekly) status updates and adjustments (feel free to change things as you learn, aiming always toward realistic outcomes)
5. Retrospective ‘gripe and moan session’ (nobody likes these, but people should know they are coming and be expected to provide feedback on what can be improved)

Turn OKRs into actual outcomes

Enabling Quick and Easy OKR Reviews

To help enable all of the above, if you use e.g. Confluence and Jira, it can be extremely helpful to:

1. Create a Jira Epic for each Objective
2. Create a Story (or Task) for each Key Result
3. Set up a Confluence page dedicated to that quarter’s OKRs (e.g. “2023Q2 OKRs”) and build a 2-column grid
4. Add your Objectives and corresponding Jira Epic links on the left
5. Add your Key Results’ corresponding Jira Stories/Tasks to the right of their corresponding Objective/Epic

Due to the symbiotic relationship of Confluence/Jira, the Confluence page will show a nice preview of the status of each Jira ticket, for quick review when needed for Sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives.

Conclusion That is Also a Disclaimer

I’ve experienced successful Company and Team OKRs execution over several years when it was done with variations of the above. However, if you have a company culture in which people aren’t motivated, then OKRs are probably not the problem.

For highly motivated teams, OKRs will be as natural and trivial as replying to an email. For teams lacking motivation, OKRs can provide 100s of new ways to make excuses — e.g. my all-time favorite, in response to why something important hadn’t gotten done in over six months: “It wasn’t part of our OKRs.”

If you have any questions on this topic, feel free to ask anything here or connect with me on LinkedIn and ask me there. Best of luck!