Unlocking Success Through OKRs: A Strategic Guide for High-Performing Companies
As we are approaching towards the end of the year, we held a fireside chat with my team, facilitated by Donald H. Taylor, the chair of the Learning Technologies Conference to uncover real stories from high-performing companies and their path to success. As we hosted the event, we wanted to see how much human-centered growth becomes a trend to manage sustainable and meaningful goals. We were amazed and relieved by all the insights we got on this topic.
What Unites High-Performing Companies? The Power of Clarity, Team Alignment and Personal Growth
What links successful companies like Google, Adobe and BetterUp? They all use OKRs - a system that creates clarity and alignment around measurable goals. But while it’s easy to describe Objectives and Key Results, using them well takes skill. They cannot drive team growth and maintain healthy well-being on their own. Used badly, they can be seen as another management initiative to be ignored.
In the dynamic landscape of 2024, successful companies prioritize clarity and team alignment as the cornerstone of their success. The strategic adoption of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) acts as a catalyst for connecting long-term visions with immediate actions. The secret lies not just in setting OKRs but in leveraging them to empower teams to self-organize, fostering autonomy in designating responsibilities and driving towards commonly defined goals.
Fostering personal accountability is a significant driver of success. Understanding individual impact and contributions to company growth not only benefits the organization but also provides a framework for individuals to concentrate on personal growth.
OKRs in Times of Adaptivity
In times of rapid adaptivity, OKRs emerge as a reliable tool. When the market is in flux, clear OKRs provide the compass for navigating uncertainties, guiding teams toward success.
You can follow the insights from our fireside chat in this video company-by-company
Mastering Growth: The Power of OKRs for Team and Company Success - by Google, Adobe, BetterUp
Establishing Psychological Safety through 1:1s at Google, by Max Cromarty
The key to high-performance at Google lies in carefully establishing and maintaining psychological safety. Due to feeling safe and supported, teams dare to set highly ambitious stretch goals and learn from the results. The way to establish psychological safety is through regular 1:1 sessions where the manager pays attention to driving a two-way communication stream, listening to each employee to find out if their team members can sustainably manage their work, if they enjoy it, and if they feel that they are growing. This way, senior managers understand people’s drivers and motivations one by one, their context, and where they are coming from. The managers’ empathy plays a major role in defining a clear message for everyone in the team that they all can align with. So, OKRs at Google are initially set at the VP level, which comes down all the way to the team and individual levels to align with the team's expectations.
Dedicated OKR Week for Goal Alignment at BetterUp, by Tatyana Gruver
At BetterUp, a remote-first company, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) play a major role in bringing clarity and alignment to a cross-functional working group. Therefore, they are implemented at different levels of the company, including top-level company objectives, objectives by functions, and by teams. This ensures that each individual is aligned not only with the big, ambitious goal, for example, 'winning the hearts and minds of the customers,' but also understands exactly how to measure it, which will drive them in the same direction. OKRs play a major role, not just in knowing what to do, but also in understanding how to do it as a group. To achieve this, BetterUp dedicates a full week to setting the right OKRs and ensuring they are aligned – a significant investment, equivalent to 8% of everyone’s time. However, evidence of growing productivity shows that it is indeed worth the effort.
Bottom-Up Success Lies in Evidence at Adobe, by Renae Fisher
In order to have a successful growth strategy, we need to drive unanimous outcomes. Therefore, it becomes crucial to facilitate conversations that uncover misaligned priorities and identify gaps between the Objectives and Key Results that don't point in the same direction. At Adobe, the adaptation of OKRs is a grassroots, bottom-up effort for several years before it becomes a strategic focus in 2024, owing to its repeated success. "The key has been to involve those leaders and team leads who are passionate, curious, and believe in what we are doing, instead of trying to win everyone at the same time. This way, we could use this strategy to show evidence to our executive team that it is working. Ultimately, evidence is what will persuade people," says Renae Fisher. Now, ensuring that teams are aligned and contribute to their own OKRs during collaboration is the next level to achieve growth.
At Adobe, in 2024, the focus is not on productivity but on being effective with your time. This means prioritization is the most important aspect – knowing that we are working on the right things, on the most crucial tasks that contribute to the majority of our desired outcomes, rather than aiming for speed or quantity.
Practical tips from the organization design perspective - from Elvira Kalmár, CODP
Negotiating OKRs: A Collaborative Approach
Introducing OKRs doesn't always have to be a top-down process. Team leaders can negotiate objectives and key results with senior management, important stakeholders, and customers. It's not that a leader needs to set and cascade down; it could result from a negotiation process. It is always a team-level effort that any team can introduce to agree on the work we are going to do now and how we are going to do it.
Clarity Breeds Personal Growth
Renae Fisher highlights that achieving clarity with OKRs not only directs organizational efforts but also creates bandwidth for personal growth. By understanding priorities and direction, individuals can reserve time for personal development.
Moving Beyond Job Descriptions with OKRs
OKRs offer a shift from traditional job descriptions, encouraging teams to focus on achievable, meaningful goals. This shift enables teams to self-organize, allowing individuals to sign up for an objective or deliverable based on their expertise, possessing the right skills to achieve the goals, or being highly motivated to learn through the process. This is how you create space for individual growth within the team, and team members can support each other in that process. Personal accountability and understanding how you create impact and contribute to the growth of the company are significant drivers of success. It is also a catalyst for individuals to focus on their own personal growth.
Superflow's High-performing Teams Flow
We are excited to show you how we embedded all the insights and learnings into Superflow's High-performing Teams Flow, created and carefully designed by Elvira Kalmar, based on her more than 20 years of experience globally as an organization designer and OKR expert. With Elvira's asynchronous guidance, you'll journey from connecting your team to purpose, envisioning success, to implementing outstanding results. We are so excited to offer for you as an end-of-the-year gift 🎁🎄 Just answer 1-2 simple questions and we send you the direct link:
Receive our End-of-Year-Gift
This High-Performing Teams Flow is designed to help you lead and facilitate a team either as an experienced professional or if you are new in your role. You can go through templates with your team to: Connect your team to a purpose, Envision success, align on the outcomes, Create objectives and key results, Implement the most outstanding results, Learn and adapt instantly and Tap into your potential together.
Elvira Kalmar, CODP, Solution Focused Org. Dev. and Design Practitioner
Together with the guidance and applying it with your team, you will master the art of setting the right Objectives and Key Results, step by step, culminating in more effective sprint planning.
Superflow: Nurturing Human-centered Growth
At Superflow, our driving force is to accelerate human-centered growth. By empowering your team leads with our High-Performing Teams Flow, you'll witness enhanced skills in strategic thinking, analytical thinking, collaborative goal alignment, prioritization, change management and execution.
Through insightful tracking, your team will experience heightened focus on purpose and top priorities, streamlined workflows, and a motivated, engaged team driving towards meaningful goals.
Our platform speeds up learning by 10x, and removes your administrative burden. It simplifies the process with guided activities, enabling you to fill out the OKR canvas and export your work seamlessly. Track your team's performance and activity over time, gaining vital insights for continued growth.
Your team will experience heightened focus on purpose and top priorities, streamlined workflows, and reflect on their learning and growth through insight tracking.
Take the Leap with Superflow
We're thrilled to have you onboard and give you our end-of-year present to have the High-performing Teams Flow. We invite you to experience the transformative power of active learning. Sign up now for early access and share your thoughts with us. We can't wait to embark on this journey with you.
