When it comes to motivating and aligning teams and strategies, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are a powerful tool. OKRs are a goal setting framework that help companies create a shared understanding between employees, management, and executives, while also allowing teams to focus on their core KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). When it comes to hiring, understanding how to use OKRs is becoming increasingly important. In this blog post, we will cover the essential OKR interview questions to ask when interviewing for new team members. These questions will help ensure that any prospective hire is knowledgeable about OKRs and how to use them to drive performance. By asking these questions, employers can ensure that any new staff members are capable of leveraging OKRs to their advantage.
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Bottom Line: To be successful with OKRs, ask three questions:
- What do we want to achieve?
- How are we going to measure success?
- What are we going to do to make progress?
OKR FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS | You’ll be asked these when starting out!
What are the key benefits of OKR?
There are many benefits to OKRs. One key advantage of using OKRs is that they sharpen focus and teach your teams to be goal-oriented. They achieve this by giving the business and teams a clear direction, empowering teams to take charge of advancing the business, and establishing a shared definition of success.
The second main benefit and one of the main reasons companies start considering using the OKR methodology is that OKRs align your whole company and move everyone in the same direction. OKRs do this through transparency and effective communication processes. You won’t have alignment if OKRs aren’t transparent and you don’t have the proper process in place, such as weekly check-ins and quarterly reviews, to move OKRs forward.
Another fantastic advantage of OKRs is that, when properly implemented, they assist teams in fostering innovation, growth, and improvement. They accomplish this by allowing teams to reflect on how they can help the company achieve its goals as well as what they can do to improve.
You can read in more detail the benefits of OKRs here.
Your OKR learning and process can be sped up by using an OKR tool like Weekdone. To guarantee that your business will be successful with launching OKRs, Weekdone offers personalized OKR Coaching & Onboarding to all paid users.
Free 14-day trial. No credit card required.
When should I start using OKRs?
Start using OKRs if your business employs three or more people. This means that your employees, teams, and managers will benefit if you implement the OKR methodology, whether you run a small start-up with three people, a medium-sized business with 200 people, or a large corporation with 5,000 people.
It is simpler to maintain communication and have a unified direction when there are three people working for your company. When that team of three grows to ten, then thirty, then three hundred, it can become much more difficult. Using OKRs, teams can be sure they are cooperating and working toward the same main company objectives for the quarter. Because they scale so well, OKRs are very popular with startups and VCs.
OKRs are also fantastic for larger or more established businesses that are eager to enhance their methods of operation in order to be more successful. It is time to implement OKRs when a company feels that teams are working in different directions, teams appear to only be performing the status quo, growth is stagnant, and the company is ready for a shift in culture to improve business outcomes.
It is recommended to start with OKRs as soon as possible, just because it takes time to get the right process and mindset in place. The secret behind successfully implementing OKRs is to have the right culture, motivation, knowledge and tools in place. Creating this shift with 3 people is of course easier but with the right commitment it’s also possible with 300 people. Better late than never.
Teams typically need three to four quarters to fully grasp the OKR methodology and best practices. Because their culture and understanding of OKRs are easier to change, smaller teams are more likely to recognize and celebrate the success of OKRs.
If I want to get started with OKRs right away, what should I do? (first timers)
If you want to get started with OKRs right away and implement them the best way possible, you should first understand what is needed to successfully implement OKRs. What we see in companies that successfully implement OKRs are 4 things.
First is knowledge. You must have proper OKR knowledge to be able to successfully implement OKRs. And I don’t mean reading one book on OKRs (though if you choose one, we recommend our Step by Step Guide to OKRs, our free ebook written by our OKR coaches). It takes a lot of time to be an OKR expert. At Weekdone, it generally takes our coaches 6 months with daily, hands on training in order to be able to coach companies on OKR best practices.
This is exactly why we offer unlimited OKR consulting with all paid Weekdone users. Our coaches tailor workshops and training to your company’s needs. It’s the fastest way to ensure that everyone is using OKR best practices and that your company will receive all the benefits of OKRs.
Second is motivation. They are driven enough to continue implementing OKRs for three to four quarters. They have the drive necessary to guide and mentor their staff throughout the process.
Third is culture. Companies need to have an open, transparent culture where making mistakes and learning from them is acceptable. OKRs are also data-driven. Without data, it will be impossible to create effective OKRs and determine whether or not you were successful. In order to make better decisions in the future, start gathering data right away!
Last is a good OKR tool. It’s a good idea to create your first OKRs on a spreadsheet, but once you want your teams to actively collaborate and take action around OKRs, you need a tool that enables that. Your teams will lose motivation if you don’t have an OKR tool that promotes transparency, implements the procedures necessary for OKR success, such as weekly check-ins, or is just simple to use. This is why we built Weekdone.
How are OKRs different from the planning and target setting we already do?
Leading businesses strive to create an integrated, dynamic management system that will assist them in achieving their goals. Integrated in that it ties together all the steps from formulating the strategy to identifying the tasks needed to operationalize it, allocating resources to those tasks, and assessing overall progress. dynamic in that resources are regularly adjusted based on reviews of priorities and performance
OKRs help to create such a management system. The top executives of a company establish a limited number of goals that describe the organization’s overall strategic objectives. They distribute funds based on achieving the key results for the upcoming quarter rather than allocating a single lump sum to a corporate function or a sizable project with a fixed scope. Business reviews, whether conducted quarterly or on a different schedule, concentrate on quantitative key results that precisely quantify the business value provided and aid executives in taking the best course of action more quickly. Traditional status reports and work plans, on the other hand, frequently have little to do with overall corporate strategy.
Telia Company, a media and telecommunications company with operations in the Nordics and Baltics, is using OKRs as part of its strategy as it implements an end-to-end integrated management system. For managing large-scale Agile teams, the system expands on the Scaled Agile Framework. The group strategy of Telia is divided into strategic themes, each of which is connected to OKRs. Then, a portfolio of initiatives that have been fully integrated into the financial and operational plans for all markets and functions are used to carry out those OKRs.
FAQ
How do you prepare for an OKR meeting?
- Prepare for the meeting ahead of time.
- Discuss current OKR status with the team.
- Review what you learned the previous week.
- Set new priority plans and action items for next week.
Is OKR better than KPI?
Differences between OKRs and KPIs OKR is a goal-setting framework. Each OKR has a goal that must be accomplished as well as a set of metrics called key results that will be used to gauge the accomplishment of that goal. KPIs determine factors needed to achieve success in an organization.
What are good OKR examples?
Top company goals: OKR examples Achieve $100 million in sales for the company globally. Achieve 100% year-to-year sales growth in the EMEA geography. Upsells can increase the company’s average deal size by 30%. Customer Success can lower churn to less than 5% annually.
What are three things OKR?
Objectives, Key Results, and Initiatives (OKRs) The Objective, or goal you set, the Key Results, which track your progress, and the Initiatives, which outline the steps you’ll take to get there, are the three most crucial components of an OKR. This is all in line with the larger strategy or vision, which is typically developed top-down.
