OKRs have become a buzzword in the business world in recent years. Today, companies such as LinkedIn, Netflix, Spotify, Samsung and Daimler use OKRs to focus their resources on the most important tasks and align all employees to a common vision.
In my many years of working with companies such as Thyssenkrupp, Deutsche Bahn or ProSiebenSat.1 Media, I have been able to support teams in implementing and utilizing their OKR strategies by thinking beyond the classic OKRs methodology – I call this Thinking Beyond OKRs – within the Enterprise Progress Management methodology.
“The OKR method with its consistent focus on objectives has helped us to advance our growth topics across departments.“
Heike Niehues, CEO, Customized Solutions Webasto Group
There are companies that are on a wonderful and successful path with the OKR method. Many others experience the exact opposite when introducing OKRs, throwing in the towel with the statement: “OKRs don’t suit us”. This is, of course, nonsense and requires a clearer view of the real background.
As a rule, it should be noted at this point that these organizations, whether through bad consultants, lack of expertise or whatever, introduce a method and/or tool, but have not or not sufficiently penetrated the necessary changes in the way of thinking, the type of discussion and the subsequent actions.
True to the motto: “If the farmer can’t swim, it’s the swimsuit’s fault”.
1 OKRs Best Practices: What is the secret of successful OKRs?
1. short answer: clear objectives, motivated teams and continuous progress.
OKRs, like the counterpart of classic projects, are applied at various levels in the company. In the philosophy of Enterprise Progress Management, taking into account the so-called “three core principles for implementation strength”, all activities in the organization are geared towards achieving the strategic goals and increasing the company’s success.
It all starts with a clear vision story that goes far beyond a goal definition. Only this is able to generate the motivation, pride and passion needed to achieve exceptional implementation performance.
When you have a clear vision and motivated teams, you have the perfect foundation for continuous and sustainable growth. relevant progress.
The crux of the matter: while pursuing the OKRs, the focus should be on the impact and outcome to ensure that the objectives deliver the desired benefits. You can read more about this in one of the articles in my current OKR series.
2 What are the typical challenges when introducing OKRs?
Challenge 1:
Finding the right entry point
Go “all-in” if you want to quickly reap the benefits in terms of implementation performance and bring your organization into a networked and topic-centric collaboration (“silo-breaking”). The flip side of the coin: you need a sufficiently large and experienced support organization.
Challenge 2:
Mastering the mindset change
OKRs require a mindset change, particularly in terms of the OKR results maxim. Both the definition of OKRs, the work in the OKR teams and the management of the OKR teams are different from traditional project management.
Challenge 3:
Well thought-out goals
The hype surrounding agility & co. is often used to justify a lack of focus on results. Our OKR How-To shows you that OKRs and planning are not only not a contradiction in terms, but actually have to go hand in hand. Find the right balance between OKRs and classic planning. Planning needs two levels for good OKR management: Result KPIs and target states.
Challenge 4:
OKR consequence and the existing project landscape
Depending on how you enter the world of OKR, questions will arise sooner or later:
- What do we do with the ongoing projects?
- Especially with those that have been running for longer?
If you want to get off to a successful start with OKRs, every employee, every cog in the system must be clear: as long as nothing new applies, the old applies!
In my OKR playbook “How (Not) to OKR” you will learn all about typical pitfalls, best practices and proven results principles when introducing and using OKRs.
Why CEOs are increasingly relying on OKRs
With thanks to my interlocutors, I have asked my new contacts (“welcome again”) over the past few weeks whether, why and to what extent the organizations use the OKR method – these are the answers:
“We have been using OKR for control purposes for several years. This allows us to run both “run-the-bank” and “change-the-bank” at the same time. This has also improved cooperation between the different departments. Especially through the alignment workshops.”
Head of Department Service Center Customers and Accounts Volksbank Mittelhessen
Dr. Philipp Stein, General Representative at Volksbank Mittelhessen, adds:
“With the help of OKR, we have managed to break down the famous divisional silos and align our actions much better with our strategy. Ultimately, it is important to me that there is no such thing as THE one OKR, but that every management tool must be aligned with the specifics of the respective organization. This is also the case with us. Pure doctrine would not work for us. It seems particularly important to integrate the day-to-day business and to take into account that every organizational unit is culturally different and therefore has to proceed very individually at this level.”
“We introduced OKRs at diconium around two years ago. For me, it is a helpful tool for regularly adjusting the compass and conducting a review as well as achieving alignment in the organization with priorities.”
Marcus Worbs, Managing Director, diconium strategy
As you can see, the answers are united at the core of the same drive: team alignment. And the goal can basically be reduced to one aspect:
Forge high-performance teams and achieve exceptional implementation strength.
My key takeaways and best practices from decades of working with OKRs
As far as learnings are concerned, these depend primarily on the respective organization, but there are significant overlaps and similar experiences across companies.
I have summarized typical challenges and stumbling blocks, as well as best practices of leading companies, in my OKR Playbook.
But in essence:
Companies must take the time to understand the OKR method and request support from those who have actually understood the OKR method. The keyword is: think beyond OKRs.
OKRs are not simply introduced, OKRs require an underlying inclusive philosophy to create a high-performance culture where everyone pulls together to achieve exceptional execution.
A high-performance culture is created on the basis of three core principles:
1. target states: With the importance of outcome-oriented thinking and action for exceptional implementation strength. It is about achieving results step by step instead of focusing on the work done.
2. pull instead of push management: Implementation strength arises when teams approach a target state with passion instead of falling into push mode, which leads to moving ahead of the task.
3. discipline: In conjunction with core principles 1 (target states) and 2 (pull), the two “golden rules of progress” ensure a culture of implementation excellence.
Progress
