Last updated 27 August 2021 ·
The number of companies using OKRs, Objectives and Key Results to accelerate growth worldwide is increasing as more and more people realise the true impact they can have on team focus, alignment, engagement and performance. They’re very popular in the US and certainly gaining popularity here in the UK. For some background on OKRs, visit our blog: What are OKRs?
Many businesses are deploying OKRs and seeing the benefits they bring. Companies like Airbnb, Spotify and Intel used OKRs in the early days to accelerate their growth. Other brands like Facebook, Microsoft, Slack, Trello, Uber, Amazon, Yahoo all use OKRs. These companies realise that deploying the OKR methodology allows them to keep their teams highly focused on the right things to accelerate business results.
Back in the 90s, Google started using OKRs when they had just 40 team members, and they now employ over 100,000 people across the globe.
We work with many extremely ambitious business leaders who use OKRs as a way to cascade their passion and ambition throughout all of their teams whilst engaging and empowering employees to take ownership of their own specialist areas in pursuit of the desired results. To assess whether you are ready to introduce OKRs in your business, check out our blog OK, R you ready to raise your game?
One key characteristic that makes OKRs different from other goal-setting frameworks is the way they cascade throughout an entire organisation, so everyone is working towards the key strategic focus set by the CEO. For more information on how OKRs cascade, visit our blog How do OKRs cascade?
If you’re a UK business leader considering how OKRs could work for you, a great way to get started is to just think about what success would look like for the next 12 months. Clarify your vision for the next 12 months. Once you have that crystal clear vision written down, consider the three mission-critical objectives that would enable you to achieve that vision. Once you have those, take each objective and create five key results or stepping stones that signify progress to achieve that objective. In doing this, you will end up with your own 1-3-5® business plan and perfectly aligned set of OKRs ready to cascade out amongst other teams in the business. Check out our blog offering OKR examples to help you get started.
The main thing is just to get started, don’t worry about being perfect, just think about making progress. You never know, you might get a system working in your business, and it might just allow you to become the next Amazon!
If you would like to find out more about OKRs and how they could work in your business, book a 15-minute discovery call today! Our 1-3-5® OKR software and expertise provides the perfect platform on which to share your vision, engage employees and align your teams for high performance and faster results.
