OKR - adaptive target management system

Episode 1: The Objectives

The times are over when decisions are only made by top management. And that's a good thing, because they often lack the experience, expertise and proximity to the market, which is what the market actually wants right now. And what would be important right now in order to remain competitive in the future.

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. This agile and adaptive framework causes the entire company or important parts of it to be aligned with the strategic business goals. By involving all teams, OKR integrates a top-down and bottom-up perspective.

Planning cycles are 3 to a maximum of 4 months and start with the planning of the objectives. Where do we want to be in 3 months?

The teams think about how they can best contribute to the company's goals from their work context. A well formulated objective is like a small vision and therefore never quantitative. In other words, we do not use key figures in any case. It is ambitious, inspiring, but achievable. It must be clear and understandable and is usually formulated qualitatively. 

These three building blocks make an objective a good objective:

1. an active VERB

2. an ambitious WHAT

3. a rational WHY

Example:

We dramatically reduce (1) 2nd level support response times (2) so that our users' customer delight increases significantly (3).

And one more thing: 

Keep it simple. One good objective is worth more than 3 bad ones! Focus on the essentials means to decide against important and good topics, so that the really good and important topics have a chance at all.