OKRs that Clarify, Inspire and Motivate

A Framework and Examples

WorkBoard OKRs

Objectives and Key Results and OKR software keep WFH and distributed teams connected, aligned, and moving toward results.

Employees work in a variety of ways – around products, functions, and journeys – and we need to be aligned within and across teams to achieve our priorities as an organization. We’ve seen the speed of change in the media and technology landscape accelerate, and the ability to more quickly iterate and align on strategic priorities is key to sustaining our leadership.

OKRs provide a common vocabulary and quarterly process for teams to articulate and align what they want to achieve, focus efforts on measurable outcomes, and iteratively learn with data over time. OKRs are a way of defining and achieving our best possible outcomes as teams and as an organization; they are not a way to measure individual performance. OKR software provides a platform to stay on track.

Objectives

Clarity on intent and direction

  • Communicate 3-5 things you want to accomplish and why they matter
  • Inspire and motivate people with sense of purpose so they want to be on board
  • May be long or short time span

What does your team want to accomplish and why is it important?

Key Results

How success this quarter is measured

  • For each objective, 4-6 specific, measurable quarter outcomes
  • The best possible results – not most probable – so likely won’t hit 100% on all key results
  • Numbers quantifying an end state or outcome, not action items or opinions

What would be great team outcomes this quarter?

What Are OKRs

OKR First Principles

Aspire & Inspire

Teams establish their best possible results in a given quarter, focus efforts on great outcomes, and use retros to learn and iterate.

Global + Local

Teams localize OKRs into their nouns, verbs and numbers and enrich them with the team’s expertise and insight.

Outcome Focus

Quarterly key results provide radical clarity on where value is created. This helps teams and the organization drive business impacts faster.

Transparent

OKRs, alignment and progress are transparent to everyone with OKR software, so it’s easier collaborate and we make good decisions faster.

Example OKRs by Function

Objective

Maximize our ability to grow by optimizing our unit economics

Key Results

  • $3.1M in net new ARR
  • CAC Payback Period for new business deals improves from 10 months to under 8 months
  • Improve LTV to CAC to 3.7
  • Gross margins move from 74% to 79%
  • $1.28M total MRR EOQ

Customers for Life

  • Maintain average NPS of 8
  • We meet with all 55K and above customers renewing in the quarter
  • Increase average number of users per account from 45 to 90
  • Drive gross revenue retention above 83%

Create an experience that enables all teammates to achieve their fullest potential

  • ERG participation increases 15% so we build networks and relationships beyond any individual team
  • <5% differential in under-represented groups for new hires and first line managers (visible to e-staff and HR only)
  • >70% of people understand our strategy and feel confident in their contribution to it
  • <3% differential in belonging index across under-represented groups, gender and age

Our team members thrive on diversity and in the face of adversity or prosperity

  • All managers have 1on1s at least 2x/month with their team members
  • Everyone has a career path conversation this quarter
  • 60% of our managers attend all 3 segments of Managing in Challenging Times course, including the unconscious bias segment
  • All employees read and acknowledge the anti-discrimiation policy and pledge
  • Blind screening is used across all open Dev/Product roles by EOQ

Unified value across customer journey from marketing, sales, product, onboarding and instrumentation

  • Develop the high value strategic use cases and embed in every function
  • 10 T1 customers actively using K2
  • 25 customers integrate product into their primary management metrics
  • 5 T1 customer testimonials published on our value differentiators
  • Cultivate 4 champions from meetings with 3 T1 strategic partners/allies and 3 T2 partners with defined next steps/plan for partnership

Objective

Acquisition amplifies the success of acquired companies

Key Results

  • Employee NPS is the same or better than prior year
  • No regrettable people losses
  • 80% of employees understand the strategy and are motivated by it
  • Stand alone deal cycle time is the same or faster than 4 trailing quarters
  • Developer velocity is within 10% of pre-acquisition trailing 3 quarters

Realize the business value of xyz acquisition

  • Revenue
  • IRR
  • Integration completed and available in catalog
  • 1000 sellers enabled
  • 12 new logos in energy sector on our paper

Go-to strategic growth advisor to the business

  • NPS of 9 on our market and portfolio analyses for TRM BU (they love our work)
  • Complete analysis of 10 technology companies and provide a recommendation to close the 7 gaps James identified in his AI landscape (build/buy/partner)
  • 3 of the recommendations in our growth vision deck are adopted by the BU
  • Get buy in and agreement to exploratory diligence on 2 key players in the ML/AI domain
  • Identify 20 early stage companies with disruptive innovation synergy; map a fast path to deal for each

Be the partner, investor and acquirer of choice

  • Matchmaker for 45 innovator companies not seeking funding with a Kikasko counterpart and establish 2 benefits the company wants from us
  • Reputation baseline survey of 1000 technology companies Series A through D
  • Every executive meets with at least 3 companies on our Top 100 list to build a personal relationship with the CEO/founders
  • The executive “Talk Track” is backed by at least 5 value tactics we can offer these companies

Build stronger alliance and trust with the business

  • Everyone does a 2 week rotation with their LoB counterpart
  • We are at the table in every BU’s strat planning process as partners not spectators
  • Bi-weekly huddle with VP Product in TRM BU and ACC BU so we’re dialed into the problems they’re solving

Objective

Deliver high quality, scalable solutions

Key Results

  • Maintain <500 milliseconds average successful response time on server requests
  • Fewer than 15 field reported bugs per month
  • Maintain 100% uptime
  • 0 critical bugs on initial deploy of production code
  • Bug turnaround time in JIRA <48 hours

Tap into the power of analytics to create a differentiated product

  • Identify and execute 6 data science prototypes
  • Evaluate 2 machine-learning opportunities
  • 50% of team members attend a data analytics skills training
  • Run 3 data code analysis experiments

We own product delivery and we learn every time

  • 100% of releases have a retro
  • 0 customer-reported bugs
  • 0 repeat production bugs
  • 100% of code pushed to production has 95% test coverage
  • Explore 3 automations to reduce future spend

We are code experts that celebrate our successes and learn every day

  • Celebrate 100% of key feature launches
  • 0 regrettable losses - no one gets left behind!
  • 2 QA hires
  • 3 social events this quarter
  • Attend or host 2 tech events

Objective

Keep and expand our customer base

Key Results

  • Retention forecast 70.10
  • $650K in upgrade quota
  • CX to host 5 lunch and learns between customers and developers by the end of year (day in the customer life)
  • $125K renewals MRR

Provide RevOps data and insights that move us from good to incredible

  • 100% of Rev Ops requests use Zendesk by Feb 15th
  • Define and publish Revenue Ops SLAs
  • Deliver quarterly tools usage report value survey
  • Provide a real time RevOps workstream and project intake visible to the entire company

Provide exceptional customer experience that extends customer lifetime

  • 100% of new accounts active on high-value features at least twice a week
  • At least 50% of customers use our differentiated features
  • Retention forecast accuracy within 2% of actual
  • Measure NPS of ALL customers, not just active customers, with NPS at least 6
  • NPS for cohorts onboarded in 2018 of 8

The Customer Experience team operates at its best

  • 6 new hires hit their first quarter targets
  • 5 new CSMs onboard their first account within 60 days of hire
  • Reduce average initial response time on P1 tickets by 50%
  • Hold 3 knowledge-building seminars this quarter

Objective

Enable the sales team to open, win and close more deals

Key Results

  • Deliver new leads with $13m in pipeline value this quarter
  • 2 integrated campaigns to 2 target channels
  • 3k inbound leads
  • Set 500 demos

Empower our sales team with great collateral and tools

  • 6 fresh case studies added to web site
  • Deliver messaging framework and solution overview for our 4 buyer personas
  • Revamp sales collateral for every stage of the sales cycle
  • 20% increase in use of collateral
  • Host 2 sales enablement sessions

Our content establishes ourselves as the thought leaders in our industry

  • 5 blog posts this quarter
  • 10% increase in blog subscribers
  • Increase website traffic 15%
  • Hold 3 thought leadership events this quarter

We’re a passionate learning team that drives the market for our company

  • 100% of the team identifies 1 professional development skill
  • 2 people from the team present at industry conferences
  • We establish a mechanism for sharing best practices

Objective

Make our number with a diversified mix of product and services

Key Results

  • $11m in US bookings for Geronimo product line
  • $3m in Wombat pipeline stage 2 or later
  • 20 Wombat committed pilots in lighthouse accounts
  • $9m in EMEA bookings for Geronimo product line
  • Every rep closes at least $750k in the quarter

Improve efficiency with a data driven approach to sales

  • Complete Salesforce cutover
  • All validated opportunities in SFDC
  • 4x pipeline coverage ratio
  • Average deal size goes from 20.5K to 32K
  • Qualify MQLs within 7 days

We are a lean mean fighting machine -- well-armed, always winning

  • Systematized measurement of demo rotations, skips and activity goals
  • Improve win rate by 10%
  • $3.1M in new logo ARR
  • $258k new MRR

We are strategic about improving our win rate

  • 20% of our demos are for the C-Suite
  • 95% of deals are compliant with pricing structure
  • 100% of sales team receives negotiation skills training
  • Every sales team member receives 2 hours of 1on1 coaching per month

Objective

Move the business into the 21st century and make employees’ lives easier

Key Results

  • Touch projection available in 9 Los Angeles conference rooms
  • Shorten hardware and software procurement time from 30 to 7 days
  • 100% wifi coverage in every office – no dead conference rooms
  • Complete migration of help desk to new cloud provider

Increase our agility and ability to invest in the business by moving apps to the cloud

  • Close 3 data centers
  • Migrate 12 apps to the cloud
  • Reduce data migration time to 14 days
  • Reduce storage and infrastructure costs $4.5m

Learning is our passion and priority

  • Lunch and learns once a month
  • Each team member spends an hour a week on a passion project
  • Everyone identifies and learns one new technology, methodology or toolkit this quarter
  • We take on 2 experimental projects and share the results with the team

Be the architects of our future

  • 3 Blockchain use cases in enterprise non PROD environment
  • 4 Chatbots or NLP use cases in non PROD
  • 60% of our team can code
  • 100% of investment decisions go through a data-driven evaluation process

Get Started with OKRs

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OKR Program Job Descriptions OKR Program Job Descriptions
Authoring Great OKRs Authoring Great OKRs

Industry leaders share their OKR success stories

The OKR Podcast The OKR Podcast
Microsoft Azure Marketing: New Energy and Urgency with Chief of Staff Andrew Kisslo Microsoft Azure Marketing: New Energy and Urgency with Chief of Staff Andrew Kisslo
Zuora: Unlocking Growth with CEO Tien Tzuo The OKR Podcast
Greenfield Global

"I literally dream about OKRs! Everything is in WorkBoard, and we’re so much more productive and efficient as a result."

Malwarebytes

"A company that unlocks its best possible outcomes wins the race."

GHX

"Anchoring monthly business reviews on OKRs grounds the discussion in facts, not fluff."

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