The introduction

In 1954, Drucker explicitly proposed mBO-managed By Objective in the Practice of Management, which should be the earliest source of OKR. Drucker believed: all enterprise mission and task, must be transformed into goals. No goals equals no management.

In 1976, Andy Grove, Intel COO, proposed HOM (High Output Management) and was the first to practice OKRs, and also determined the two core principles of OKR:

• There is more than one
• Openness and transparency for all

In 1999, KPCB partner John Doerr brought the OKR concept to Google, which had just invested in it for less than a year. OKR took root at Google, where it is still used today. In the 2000s, OKR gained popularity in Silicon Valley as companies like Linkedin, Twitter, And Zynga adopted it.

Now, Chinese Internet companies have also started to adopt OKR. Xiaomi, Baidu, Ctrip, Zhihu, Mingdao, Wandoujia and so on have all started to try OKR. So what is the magic of OKR that makes tech companies rush to it?

What is OKR?

OKR stands for Objective and Key Results, which contains two parts of objectives and corresponding Key Results. It is a method for enterprises/organizations to manage objectives. Take a look at the following examples to see OKR in detail:

Intel OKR

Intel’s “Crush Operation” OKR and related engineering OKR launched in the second quarter of 1980.

Through OKR, Intel’s management team’s instructions were simple: “We are going to win in the 16-bit microprocessor market. We are committed to making that happen.” Andy Grove told Intel employees what they had to do, and why. Until they are effectively completed, we should treat them as a priority.

By 1986, when Intel abandoned the memory chip business to concentrate on microprocessors, the 8086 had regained 85 percent of the 16-bit microprocessor market. As you can see, there would be no Intel without OKR.

Baidu OKR

At the beginning of this year, Baidu abandoned KPI and switched to OKR. CEO Robin Li also announced his OKR, which identified three main goals: mobile ecology, AI track and organizational ability.

What are the advantages of OKR?

In OKR’s book This is OKR, OKR’s four “big guns” are focus, collaboration, tracking, and extension.

• Focus: With a focus and commitment to priorities, high performance organizations should focus on what is important while being clear about what is not. OKR is a precise communication tool for departments, teams, and individuals that removes confusion, allows us to further clarify our goals and focus on key success factors.
• Synergy: OKR is transparent, from the CEO down to the average employee, and everyone’s goals are public. Each employee aligns personal goals with company initiatives and collaborates with other teams. This top-down synergy, which links individual contribution to organisational success, gives work a specific meaning. Bottom-up OKR promotes individual involvement and innovation by deepening employees’ sense of ownership.
• Tracking: OKR is data-driven. Regular reviews, goal scoring, and constant re-evaluation keep OKR alive — all in the spirit of objectivity and accountability.
• Stretch: Stretch enough to challenge the impossible: OKR inspires us to go beyond the possibilities we set before us, even beyond our imagination. By pushing the envelope and allowing us to fail, OKR can force us to unleash our most creative and ambitious selves.

How do I set up OKR?

The greatest danger for us is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and we succeed

-Michelangelo

methodology

OKR setup has a complete methodology: Setup O -> Setup KR -> Analysis challenge -> setup Todo -> Implementation follow up

During the OKR setting process, which requires the participation of key team members, brainstorming can follow MeWeUs’s approach:

• Me: Personal thinking. Start by writing down your thoughts and answers as many as possible.
• We: Group selection. Take turns to share with each other in the group. One person should share an opinion. During the sharing process, no judgments or additional discussions should be made, and complete sharing content should be recorded.
• Us: overall sharing. Brainstorm with the team and select no more than 3 ideas to focus on the discussion output.

You can see a complete OKR discussion below.

Set OKR

OKR is usually set over a period of time, and the OKR is divided into two parts: goals and key results.

Target –

What the organization/team is most eager to achieve in this particular cycle is often the subordinate’s goal equating to a key outcome for the superior. OKR set can be top-down bottom-up, you first need to top-down, to get the boss’s OKR information in setting their own OKR to align the superior OKR, also want to communicate with my boss from bottom to top, share your expectations or team goal, for the corresponding resources and agree to understand the results.

There are several principles to follow when setting goals:

• Long-term: Aim for at least quarterly goals, ideally six months or annually
• Challenging: A goal is result-oriented and requires challenges, which usually requires considerable effort to achieve. In general, team members can be asked to give confidence index. If only two people in a 10-member team think it is an achievable goal, it usually means that the goal is challenging
• Focus: It is best to have no more than 3 goals to avoid distracting the team
• Qualitability: Goals are generally described as doing… To achieve… . It need not be a quantitative indicator, but a qualitative description. But avoid some general descriptions, such as: “improve comprehensive competitiveness.”

– Key results

KR- Key results are the key results that need to be achieved in order to achieve the corresponding goals. Generally speaking, key results must be quantifiable and should be formulated from the bottom up. The standards should have high challenges rather than conventional operational level predictions.

There are several principles to follow when setting key outcomes:

• Grab a few key results: in KR team discussion, need to collect all definition of KR, according to the contribution to sort on a target, in the final selection must constantly ask yourself, when whether achieve the KR can 80% complete, the number of key results as far as possible concise the team focused on core issues above need to achieve.
• Describe the results, not the tasks: Don’t think of the KR as a to-do list, always go back to the key results themselves, and don’t think too much about how to achieve the results when developing the OKR.
• There must be clear accountability: clear people should be held accountable for key results, preferably by the KR proposer who can conduct effective task design and ongoing oversight.
• Have interim milestones: Have interim milestones that you can check and don’t wait until the end of the quarter or year to review

Analysis of the challenge

We will encounter difficulties and obstacles to achieve our goals, and these are challenges. We need to make a detailed and thorough analysis of challenges. General challenges can be divided into negative challenges and positive challenges, which can be classified by SWOT.

When discussing challenges, it is necessary to adopt the method of 5Why to find out the real reason, otherwise the follow-up actions can not solve the problem well.

For example, many years ago, the stele in front of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington was severely eroded, and we needed to find the real challenge:

Why1 – Why is the stele so corroded? Because the staff cleaned the stone tablets frequently

Why2 – Why frequent cleaning? Because pigeons come all the time

Why3 – Why do so many pigeons come here? There are plenty of spiders to feed on

Why4 – Why are there so many spiders? Because the spiders were attracted by the moths

Why5 – Why are there so many moths? They had been attracted by the lights of the memorial at dusk

The ultimate Todo is delayed lighting!!

Secondly, when discussing challenges, it is easy to focus on problems that one cannot solve, thus affecting one’s mood and confidence in solving problems. There are three types of influence circles:

• Control: The extent to which one can control, for example, one’s own or team’s problems
• Influence: The area of influence you can have, such as working teams, large departments
• Concern: can not influence the scope, can only pay attention to, such as national policy, national economic environment, etc

When discussing challenges, try to focus on the scope of your influence and look for solutions.

To formulate the Todo

After analyzing the challenges, you can begin to formulate Todo for each challenge. The formulation of Todo is actually a sorting of the project action plan, which needs to include steps, person in charge, completion time, step output and resource support.

Here is an example of Todo:

The implementation of follow-up

OKR implementation cycle

On a quarterly basis, please refer to the following implementation plan

OKR of follow up

One of the benefits of OKR is that it is easy to track, and all key results are based on SMART principles and are quantifiable and time-limited. In reality, however, the OKR is often made at the beginning of the quarter, only to be remembered at the end of the quarter, and then rushed to evaluate the results, without actually using THE OKR to drive the usual tasks.

Therefore, it is necessary to reflect OKR’s progress in daily work reports. For example, here is a template for a weekly newspaper:

In this weekly report, the content of the OKR is first highlighted, the current completion status of each KR is given, and the major work items of the current week and the coming week are given, which need to be related to the OKR.

In the cyclical process, the PDCA cycle is constantly practiced, and KR and Todo can be adjusted in time according to the implementation of OKR, but as far as possible do not change the goal, the goal is carved in the rock, the plan is written in the sand.

Common Questions

When you first come into contact with OKR, you will have a lot of questions. Try to sort out some questions to help you understand better

Should goal setting be high or low in OKR?

OKR encourages employees to aspire to higher standards, so instead of setting regular operational targets based on the current status of the team, set challenging, long-term goals in goal setting. In a team of 10, only two people think a good goal is one that is achievable.

OKR and performance appraisal

OKR has nothing to do with traditional performance appraisal. Do not let the failure of OKR affect the performance appraisal. OKR’s goals won’t be simple, easy, or solved by a single person in a single quarter.

OKR is only a “strategy-objective” unified tool, and should not involve evaluation of people. Assessment will make employees avoid challenging goals, generate unnecessary conflicts of interest, and easily lose the free space needed for innovation.

How does OKR sell to team members

In the formulation of OKR, try to involve core members to share goals from top to bottom, formulate key results from bottom to top, discuss and analyze challenges together, and formulate action plans. If the OKR is made this way, it must be agreed upon by everyone on the team.

How to score OKR

At the end of each cycle, the actual results can be compared with the ORIGINAL OKR and scored on a scale of 1-10. An average of 6-7 is ideal, but too high or too low is not good.

How many goals do you set?

OKR emphasizes focus, so three goals are appropriate, and no more than five.

Write in the last

OKR is not a silver bullet, nor will it solve every problem in the enterprise. However, as a tool of management by objectives, it has been widely used in the Internet industry. It has the characteristics of focus, focus, coordination, tracking and extension, and is not related to performance appraisal. It can often achieve good results by encouraging people to pursue higher goals.

The implementation of OKR requires a certain amount of effort, which first needs to be promoted from the top down, and the acceptance and recognition of this approach at the whole company level. Secondly, the formulation, tracking, adjustment and other links should be closely around OKR, and continuous review can make it play a greater role.

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