Objectives and Key Results: Goal Setting Is About the System

- Setting a common goal for your team can be tough. How can you choose out of all the creative ideas your team has and still work on both your personal and company goals. In today's video, we're going to talk about a goal setting tool that helps you to achieve your goals every three months, called OKRs or objectives and key results.

We will show you a step-by-step workshop you can run with your team to praise your goals or even to create your own personal goals. And the nice thing about setting goals this way is that it helps you to solve a lot of common problems around goals. For me, personally as a goal oriented person this approach or this goal achievement system helped me to enjoy the ride of achieving those goals and not only be focused on the end results.

That's why we created this workshop. So let's go. (upbeat music) There are many problems with setting goals but the fact is that if you don't set goals then the chances are that you are picking up too many things at the same time. Or that you are more in your comfort zone and will not grow over a period of time.

And if you do set goals then there's a risk of abandoning your goals because it's simply too hard to achieve them. Or that you forget about them because it takes too much time to achieve them. Personally in the past, I had a lot of difficulties of enjoying the process of achieving my goals. I couldn't simply enjoy the process.

I could only enjoy the moment I was there when I achieve my goal but then I was already looking forward to the next goal. So there was a lot of time in between where I was not happy until I achieved my goal. Until a few years ago, where I learned about the OKR goal setting tool the objectives and key results and there are a number of benefits with setting goals this way.

It helps you to be creative and focused. It helps your team to work together on their personal goals the team goals and the company goals. And it helps you to enjoy the process of achieving your goals. I created another workshop you can run with your team, it's called setting goals with OKRs or objectives and key results.

And the goal of the workshop is that you set a goal for the commentary months for your team. You can also use this for your personal goals if you like. And the agenda looks like this. We're going to set the objective. So we're going to make a list of possible objectives and then choose one out of that for that objective that we chose and we're going to define key results.

And that's basically the main part of this workshop. And these three steps are about making agreements on how are we going to follow up on the things that we created here. Okay, so let's start with setting your objective. In the beginning of the workshop, it's nice to give some explanation about why we're doing what we're doing.

So this one is a really nice visualization from visualized value. Lack of direction, not lack of time is the problem. We all have 24 hours in a day by Zig Ziglar. And what you can see here if everyone is working towards a different end state they will make less progress if everyone is focused on the same.

And OKR give direction. As you can see here, the company OKR is in the middle the company goal, and then all the team goals and the personal goals, they align with the company goals. And they can also maybe improve the company goals. So in this way, OKRs gave focus and clarity and everyone is moving together.

That was the same important goals and not the small unimportant tasks. And because you make the OKRs and the progress of the OKR transparent, everyone can see each other's goals and see the progress that has been made. And this way you can contribute better to each other's goals. The O in OKR stands for objective.

And usually you have one per team and then you have three to five key results per objective. And the difference between the OKR and the KPI the key performance indicator is that the OKR gives you direction. So it's a leading indicator to inspire and to motivate. So it's forward-looking and a KPI documents the result.

So it's a lagging indicator. It looks back, and it's more for controlling, measuring and indicating. when you are creating your objectives and key results, it's easiest to make a list of all the possible objectives that you want to achieve and then focus on that one and create the key results for that.

So what makes a great objective. An objective helps you to achieve the company goals. It should be inspiring and you should aim for achieving 75%. I will explain later why that is. It helps you to move the company forward. And it's also time bound. As usually you take a quarter for teams and a year for company goals, but it depends, of course, on your team situation and your company's situation.

And it's also important to note that an objective is not the same as a project. It's something different. I will show you an example in a bit, and it's also, it should not be too easy to achieve. So let's have a look at three examples of objectives and how we can improve them. If we have an objective, keep the Workshop Wednesday community alive, then it's a bit vague.

It's also defensive and uninspiring. So a better way to write that is to grow the Workshop Wednesday community because this is more inspirational and forward moving. So the second example, if we want to design, create and launch a new product based of course, on a product but it sounds like a bit much to achieve in a single quarter.

So let's see how we can slice and pick a part of that. So we want to design a new product and also we want to make it more specific in their approach. So in this case, in collaboration with the community. And the third example, more on HR focus. So if you want happy employees, then it's unclear how you will know if people are happy.

And if you want to improve internal employee engagement and job satisfaction then it's more clear what parts of happiness you are focusing on. Okay, but we're still in a workshop. So let's get to work. We have to draft ideas for objectives in your personal workspace then copy and paste them over here.

I have a short discussion. And then choose one objective for your team. And then there are some questions which will help you to make it more concrete. So your personal workspace is over here make sure that everyone has their own workspace set up and give them some time to brainstorm ideas for their objectives.

And when they're done, they can copy and paste them into this box. And then have a discussion on the possible ideas. Maybe you align, maybe they are completely different ideas. Once you have chosen one objective, then move it over to the second box and then do the checkup questions. So does it help to achieve the company goals?

If not then rewrite the objective so that it does. Is it inspiring? And then aim for 75%? And this is to help you get out of your comfort zone. So usually when we set a goal we set a goal that feels comfortable and by setting goals that make them feel uncomfortable. So by aiming for something, you can only achieve 75% it's forces you to have a different look at your way of working.

And it also helps you to come up with new ways of working and maybe with better ideas. And maybe you achieve something in that period of time that you didn't think was possible. And the last check is to see if it's achievable in those three months and this is because it should be inspiring, but also it should not be too big where you are just overwhelmed by the amount of work you need to do to achieve that goal.

Okay, great start. We got our objective and out of all the possible ideas that you had you are focusing now on one objective. And the next step we're going to do is to define three to five key results. So measurable milestones to achieve that objective. And what's important is that you get out of your comfort zone.

Because if you stay in a comfort zone, you will learn nothing new. And here's where the magic happens. You want to grow and you want to achieve new things. And the key results, they help you to make it more measurable how to get out of your comfort zone. So when creating key results we want a measurable milestone.

So there should be a metric in your key result and it should be a metric where you feel a bit uncomfortable about. So it should be a metric where you're aiming for 70 to 75% and everything above that, that's bonus. And what makes a great key results, of course it should be smart, so specific, measurable, achievable and it should also be objective so that you can objectively measure if it's achieved.

And it should be a little bit uncomfortable but not unrealistic. And a key result is not binary. So it's not a yes or no question. It's not a true or false. And it's also not the same as the task. Let's have a look at some examples of great key results. So for the objective, grow the Workshop Wednesday community.

If we write down, make videos for YouTube then it's really hard to see at the end if you achieve that or not. If you want to improve SEO it's the same. More email subscribers it's the same. Only one person could already be and a success if you write it like this. So you want to make it more concrete.

For example, you want to generate 1500 views on the YouTube channel because then it's numeric and it's also measurable. It's objectively quantifiable. And the same for the other two key results. Or another example, if you want to implement a new outbound email campaign this is more a project than it is an objective.

And the bullets below it. These are more tasks than they are key results. So if we change the objective to optimize the marketing funnel for more marketing qualified leads then it's more aspirational and outcome focused, of course, if you know that terminology. And if you rewrite the tasks to key results then it's becomes more measurable and also objectively quantifiable.

And then for your key results you're going to do the same exercise as for your objective. So copy and paste your objective from the previous slide. There's a link to the slide below. So you can go here to slide 23 and then you copy and paste it, and then you're going to do the same. So you'll ask the people of your team to draft ideas for the key results on a personal space then copy and paste them over here, do a discussion and then choose three to five key results for your team.

And it should be measurable, inspiring, achievable in three months, and also make sure that it's not a task or that it's binary. So that's true false. So that's a big achievement already. Out of all the ideas that you had, you have defined an objective and a number of key results for the common period.

So (clapping) applause plus for that, and what's great about OKR is that the two approach doesn't only help you to define your goals but also to make sure that you follow up on your goals. And the first important step to take is to update your OKRs weekly. So if we have to grow the workshop Wednesday community as an objective and here key results we want to have one place where everyone in the organization or in the company can see this objective and also where I can see all the other objectives and key results of the other teams.

And then on a weekly basis make sure that you update the key results. So in this case, we updated it and added the fuse for this period of time, the percentage over here and the number of people that sign up. And if you like to then you can use official realization because then it's easier to see the progress that's been made.

And of course, if you update this one then you also need to update the objective, the overall objective and you could do like this. It's not hard science, but it works. And what's really important about the OKR goal setting tool is that it's about the system. It's not about the goals. And in this case the system is not only the way you write the objective and the key results, but a big part of the system here is the way of working that you implement with OKR.

So every three months you start by drafting and sharing the company, OKRs and they are a draft. So you share it through the company and you get feedback on it and this way you improve it. And then after you are going to create the team OKRs then the individual OKRs. And then at the end of every three months you reflect and score your OKRs.

And in between you have weekly check-ins. So there's a lot of focus on the OKRs and they are constantly on top of mind and in this way you cannot set and forget them. So that's why in step four we're going to plan activities to make sure that the system the OKR system, the goal setting system is in place for your team, for your organization.

And because every team and organization has their own way of working, I created this general slide. And the idea is that you draft ideas, which your team where you're going to use your OKRs. So when are you going to reflect on them? How you going to use them in your planning? And once you have done that on your personal workspace copy and paste again over here and decide again what parts you want to use.

Some examples over here are the sprint planning and sprint review daily stand up or the weekly meetings you have with your team. And the fifth and final step is where you review your OKRs. So at the end of three, every three months then you reflect and score your OKRs. They should be really quick because you have a weekly update to your OKRs.

But it's also nice to do a more elaborate session over here called a retrospective where you're going to look at what worked well and what didn't work. And in this way you can improve your next OKR for the next three months. It's too big to fit in this workshop and also not necessary because you only have to do it in a couple of months.

So already plan a date with your team where are you going to reflect and score your OKRs. And then in between I will release, a new video where you will get a step-by-step approach on how you can refill your OKRs. If you want to be the first to know, then sign up become a member of the Workshop Wednesday community.

You can go over to the website, workshopwednesday. co and then you see here the workshop Wednesday Learner program, become a member and sign up over here. And then you will be the first one to know when the new video's out. And in the meantime, you will receive the weekly updates and you can also download this workshop as a template.

So go over to workshopwednesday. co and you will find everything. That's it for now. Thank you for watching and see you in the next one. Peace. (upbeat music)