Tips and Tricks to Set and Manage an OKRs with Templates

The world and the way how people work looks completely different today, no matter the industry and region the time affects everyone. Many organizations who are operating within a virtual environment are anticipating a move to a hybrid workplace model when it’s deemed safe. Many of the new HR leaders and C-suite executives specialize in a way to customize and scale alignment, communication, and engagement. As they always should be trying to find the simplest solution, tools and techniques that drive execution and productivity no matter whether their employees are receptionists, at the office, or both. 

As a result of that, many OKRs templates evolve to succeed in every level of a corporation in any context (hybrid or not). They’re basically used to align employees with an organization’s top priorities and help managers support teams. In this blog we will cover the greatest practices for implementing and writing goals within this context also as OKR templates to make it even easier to urge started. 

Table of Content

• OKR: Definition?
• Benefits of setting and documenting OKRs
• What makes a strong OKR template? 
• 8 Tips and Tricks to Set and Manage OKRs
• What does an OKR template look like?
• Conclusion 

What is an OKR?

Usually, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) have a  goal-setting philosophy foundation. As it helps you establish essential factors and an objective which you want to achieve and the direction you’re heading towards. However, on the other hand, the key result is one of the milestones you’ll pass on the way to reaching your objective: it’s how you’ll achieve your goal.

Additionally as mentioned in the introduction, OKRs are based on collaborative goal-setting tools employed by teams and individual contributors to line challenging, ambitious goals. What makes OKRs unique and different is that it makes goals become more measurable and achievable. Simply, OKRs allow you to trace progress, create alignment, and encourage engagement all while tethered to measurable outcomes. OKRs usually apply to any sort of company and to any role within a corporation . They’re so versatile as they are very likely to  be used at the company-, team-, and individual-level.

To extend understanding of ORKs even further, usually the main objective is what you’d wish to achieve. An objective is concrete and inspirational. A Key result is a benchmark that guides how we accomplish the target . Key results are measurable, verifiable, and are rooted . They don’t offer room to mince words—you either meet a key result otherwise you don’t. OKRs also are time-bound templates (orientated typically to a typical business quarter). They’re all set, on the other hand routinely check-in on with flexibility to pivot or amend as environments change or new problems take priority.

Benefits of setting and documenting OKRs

Usually, the process may start “just fine,” but one of the main benefits of using OKRs is that they can provide and ensure a flexible and iterative process. They can be updated regularly and re-aligned when goals and objectives change.

Also, another one of the foremost substantial benefits within the process of implementation of OKRs into a corporation is that they align employee motivation to overall organisational performance. Because, as the leadership sets high-level goals, managers and teams translate those into workable goals for themselves.

Furthermore, the OKR system is additionally scalable. All organisations large and small can adopt the OKR methodology. As the system is flexible and translates incredibly well to remote or hybrid workforces which is popular nowadays. It is particularly important if the organization is employing a platform that collects, communicates, and measures OKR progress in real-time.

OKRs play a helpful role for managers also. Managers usually have tasks to motivate their teams, understanding their struggles, and responsibilities for managing crucial conversations. On top of performing their core job, they’ve got alignment, development, feedback and recognition to bare in mind. When you are applying strategic OKRs within a team, it usually gives managers a direction and a cadence to deal with concerns that were previously unplanned.

Lastly, in order to manage OKRs at scale, and to gain the full agile benefits, it is usually required to use smarter processes that go beyond standard tracking. Because, if you have a simple and efficient way to manage the company hierarchy, to support team structures, alignment, and multi-alignment—even dependencies become critical.

The manual tracking of OKRs creates an island that disconnects goals from the apps and tools that employees use on a daily basis. When goals live outside teams or individuals, it’s difficult for contributors to hold themselves accountable. Since then, strategic focus may be lost in the day-to-day distraction of competing priorities.

What makes a strong OKR template ?

Now when you simply understand the overall benefits of OKRs, we should move to the process of  writing them.  In order to do that we should understand how clear, actionable, and aspirational goals look like. And, how do OKRs vary by department and roles?

OKR writing could seem daunting. It is always important to remember that not only are OKRs primed to be revisited and adjusted, once you start to use them and understand how they’re measured, the overall process of creation will get easier and easier.

When writing an Objective, believe the foremost valuable focus of the subsequent quarter (or with whatever timeframe you decide). It is important to remember about the rule of the less is more within OKRs, and as we’ve found that no three objectives are the sweet spot for teams to recollect and work on.

As it is known, well-written objectives usually are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Where each objective should be tied to a Key Result. Key Results prove that you’ve either achieved your Objective or not. As they’re a measure of the work, not the particular event.

Key Results are:

• A measure of the work
• Demonstrate a result

8 Tips and Tricks to Set and Manage OKRs

1. Get your OKRs reviewed 

If you are having problems setting up your OKRs or if you just want to have professional support with them, you can always contact and consult with our HR experts. As they always have experience setting up and advising companies of all sizes and are excited to help you and your team set better goals and achieve them. This could help if you are new to OKRs templates and  methodology. Contact us to set up a consulting appointment.

2. The new weekly achievement indicator 

The visualizations and graphs could potentially help you to track your progress compared to expectations. The key to good OKRs is to always know how you and your overall company are doing. The indicators usually help you manage your goals to make sure you stay on track before you fall too far behind through the process of continuously making the same mistakes . 

3. Using comments

Key Result comments are great for not only providing feedback but also for providing updates on the progress of your own Objectives as well as the overall team performance. It is important every time to update the progress of a Key Result to leave a comment about which steps were taken in the process. This could  help to explain what is getting done to achieve said progress and keeps you and your team updated.

4. Linking Weekly Plans to long term goals

It is important to link a weekly plan to your Objectives to create a list of tasks that have gone into accomplishing a given goal. As this is the best practice we strongly recommend, it not only substantiates your progress on your key results, but also helps you stay organized and keep your team up to date. 

5. Objectives detail page view

IF you would get a single-view graph or see what plans and comments you have attached to an objective with the details page view. Usually from it  you can view the information pertaining to a single objective. This view also lets you see all of the weekly tasks you have achieved to meet your objectives.

6. Assigning Key Results as lower level Objectives

Usually, you can individually write in objectives at each level and then link them, or you can assign key results as objectives to lower levels from the company, department, or team viewer.

7. Hierarchy View

After you enter in your objectives it’s important to see if you put everything in correctly and how your goals fit together. The OKR hierarchy view is perfect for that. This view lets you see all of your goals and how they connect in an easy to view format, so you can make sure your OKR flow is correct.

8. Moving OKRs from Quarter to Quarter

If you don’t get an OKR to its desired completion in a quarter, or if you have a repeating OKR you don’t have to worry about remaking an objective, but you can just simply copy an objective from one quarter to the next. Note: unlike the copy and objective option, doing this moves it entirely out of the quarter into the new one.

What does an OKR template look like?

Start with: Objectives of the company 

[Enter organisational objectives here]  as well as Overall progress: X%

Team 1 Objective: [Here should be a main team objective which contributes to the organisational objective] 

Team one progress: X%

Team 2 Objective:  [Here should be a main team objective which contributes to the organisational objective] 

Team two progress: X%

Team 3 Objective:  [Here should be a main team objective which contributes to the organisational objective] 

Team three progress: X%

Product team OKRs

Team 1 Objective 1	Total OKR progress: X%
Measurable key result 1   Measurable key result 2 Measurable key result 3	KR progress: X% KR progress: X% KR progress: X%
Team 2 Objective 2	Total OKR progress: X%
Measurable key result 1  Measurable key result 2	KR progress: X% KR progress: X%

This template can be downloaded on PeoplePro, please follow the link below:

Conclusion

Basically, we have tried to give you all of the basic information for you to get started using OKRs templates. Also, hopefully with our support now you know how to get started so then, you can start implementing them yourself. 

Even though starting with OKRs may seem like a big task, on the other hand  achieving alignment, engagement, and clarity on execution of priorities leads to significantly better business results.