Introduction to OKRs
Business Discipline, Alignment & Execution Through Goal Setting
Do any of these statements sound familiar?
“Growth wouldn’t be a problem — if we could just get out of our own way.”
“‘Move fast and break things’ worked great when we were a scrappy startup. Now we’ve got targets to hit — and big consequences if we don’t.”
“Our product is a game-changer, but our people can’t seem to get on the same page for execution.”
“If we worked as hard against the competition as we do against each other, we’d be unbeatable.”
Growth is never a straight-line, up-and-to-the-right proposition. Critical inflection points demand regrouping, re-alignment — and a new approach.
Founders of startups that have survived the effort to get a product to market often struggle to grow their leadership team, delegate command in key areas, and start scaling sales and service.
Later, as outside investor capital flows in and expectations reset at the growth stage, there’s another key transition. Can the organization scale, professionalize, and consistently meet outside expectations?
Finally, as growth plateaus and an enterprise reaches maturity, leadership must avoid resource competition, turf wars, and organizational drift.
Effective organizational goal-setting is essential to maintaining alignment and momentum through all inflection points.
A committed, high-impact goal setting process — whether OKRs or another system — keeps organizational leaders and the people who report to them aligned around a common set of clearly defined and measured objectives.
Establishing a repeatable and scalable goal setting process is all about learning and repeating a three-part rhythm:
Define
Align
Execute
When properly refined and iterated on — with a focus on both the “science” of clearly defined metrics and the “art” of motivating people and drawing them into positive accountability — a strong goals methodology creates:
Executive teams that work together, rather than against one another;
Urgency around execution and discipline around operations;
Alignment that cascades through the entire organization, so that every team member knows how they contribute to the overall effort;
An approach to business operations rooted in proven metrics — not just the usual lip service to being “data driven.”
