You’re looking to accelerate your business growth. You have a clear strategy and a roadmap to executing the strategy. Still, there seems to be a disparity between what you want to achieve and the operational demands of the company. You continue to face deadlines and squeeze through just in time, or you have to deal with competing priorities that require last-minute changes and find yourself constantly juggling various balls, trying not to drop any. You are not unique in this scenario. It is a common, almost systemic problem that many organizations face when trying to execute their business strategy.  

Studies show that several global CEOs find that executing strategy is their number one challenge, placing it higher than innovation, the uncertain geopolitical climate, and even the aftermath of the pandemic. Implementing strategies can be challenging, especially when there is a lack of clarity in understanding company objectives, inability or inefficiency in setting measurable goals, and fractured focus.  

What do you need to drive your strategic execution? Essentially, you need to pull all the teams together in a single direction, working for and not against the common objective and towards business growth and success. How do you get to a place where your trajectory flows smoothly without going in different directions? These are common questions, too, and the answer is simple – leverage OKRs effectively. 

Perfecting the framework of how to leverage OKR tools

Before the “how” of using OKRs effectively, we need to understand OKRs and their importance to business growth. The OKR framework works like this: 

Suppose you want to double your revenue in the next year. You set this as an overall objective for your business.  

• Once you have doubling revenue as your objective, you put down key results that will help you achieve that objective. For example, they could be “increase website traffic by 40%” or “convert 12% more leads into customers.”  
• You now set SMART goals for each key result. These goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.  
• You track your progress towards each goal and adjust your goals as necessary. Tracking progress is every bit as crucial and needs regularity and frequency.  

Every day, more leaders recognize that company-wide alignment is essential to developing differentiated products, becoming faster to market, and designing and delivering outstanding customer experience. They understand the need for successful and strategic execution and that it requires perfect alignment between strategic business priorities and each employee’s work.  

Furthermore, employees across teams must have the focus and clarity of overarching strategic priorities, so each employee will understand how their contribution can help their company’s success. Therefore, companies across industries recognize the value of implementing OKRs. They see that the OKR methodology refines the distribution of effort and the required tasks while improving company-wide alignment and ensuring company-wide transparency and accountability. 

Now, we come to the part where we understand the “why” of OKRs, instead of other approaches to goal-setting. What do you gain from implementing OKRs? It requires an in-depth look at the numerous benefits of OKRs. 

What are the benefits of OKRs for business growth?

The top-down and bottom-up alignment of strategic business goals cascading down across teams enables managers, their peers, and their direct reports to work together. They create custom OKRs tied directly to the overarching business strategy. The success of OKRs comes through this clearly defined path, where every employee knows their role and place. Thus, the propensity to promote accountability and autonomy across teams becomes enhanced, and the managers seamlessly shift to a more unified cultural environment. This type of cross-functional and collaborative work becomes the lynchpin to business success. You gain visibility, take control, and move into working as one unit without silos causing diluted focus. 

By linking employee goals to organizational objectives, you gain company-wide visibility and are better positioned to get a focused and disciplined team. Employees can see how their goals align with and contribute to the broader company vision. 

Using shared OKRs improves collaboration across business units and functions to work together towards the primary objective. OKRs help remove competing initiatives and encourage unified interdependencies. OKRs also offer a metric-driven progress report to help stay on track. And the enhanced employee engagement is an interesting by-product of this synergized workflow brought in by OKRs. When your employee can see their and others’ performance, they also feel more accountable and, in turn, become more engaged in their efforts to meet their goals.  

In other words, OKRs can help you:  

• Measure and track progress towards your goals,  
• Identify areas of improvement and potential areas of growth, allocate resources efficiently,  
• Enhance communication and collaboration within your team and across teams,  
• Create a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.  

So, how would you develop a growth strategy using OKRs? 

Building an OKR framework to enable business growth

Your growth strategy would depend on your unique business needs. You will need to develop a one-of-a-kind solution within the OKR framework. However, setting and achieving measurable goals is crucial to successful growth strategies. Therefore, using OKRs (objectives and key results) to track progress and ensure accountability is a practical and helpful approach for businesses looking to grow. Additionally, prioritizing and focusing on areas that offer the most significant potential for growth, and ensuring that all employees are aware of and working towards the company’s primary goals, are equally crucial factors to consider. For instance,  

You would envision an objective to increase revenue by 10% over the next year. To achieve this, the company should start with the following key results:  

Objective: Increase sales by 10%  

KR 1: Achieve a 10% increase in sales over the previous year  

KR 2: Increase the number of sales by 10%  

KR 3: Maintain or increase the current gross margin 

Other goals would fall into this overall objective, including marketing strategies, development and productivity goals, team and individual goals, etc.  

To conclude

Is it any wonder why companies like Google, LinkedIn, Uber, etc. place emphasis on OKRs for strategic growth? Fortunately, OKRs can be just as effective for small and medium-sized businesses. OKR software market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 13.68% by 2030. It is a sizable increase based on the increasing demand for OKR software solutions across emerging economies, clearly showing the growing trend to leverage OKRs for holistic growth. Research also shows that in the recent decade, companies had seen an average of 20% growth when they brought in the OKR framework to execute their business strategies. Over 70% have seen a significant improvement in employee engagement levels. 

Hence, companies using OKRs as a strategic planning tool is a proven method to achieve sustainable business growth. First, it’s important to understand your business needs, use a basic OKR template to list your objectives and desired results, and communicate it across the company.  

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OKRs vs KPIs