Aligning Chaos: How to Make OKRs Work at Every Level of Your Organization

but don't worry we are broadly aligned

July 30, 2024

Springing off the back of my LinkedIn post here (feel free to go check it out and give it a like) I figured I would explain a little more in detail about OKRs and why I love to hate the term broadly aligned

Am sure this will end up being part one of a series of posts over time but anyway let’s get back on to broadly aligned 👇

"Broadly aligned"—it's a phrase that often signals misalignment more than clarity. But in today’s complex organisations, we truly need not just broad alignment, but precise, actionable alignment. That’s where OKRs come in.

When truly embedded in an organisation at all levels, Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) offer a framework that drives clarity and alignment in work, effort, and impact.

However, they have to be designed and owned from the high levels of the boardroom right down to the individual contributors.

Today, I will delve into the three tiers of OKRs and share how they help create a connected strategy. The three tiers are:

  • Us - Organisational.

  • We - Team.

  • Me - Individual.

Based on this, I will share how they can be used to create a connected strategy.

(US) - Organisational OKR

At an organisational level, the OKRs often serve as a North Star, similar to how sailors read the stars to stay on track. An organisation uses it as a guiding indicator or point of reference to ensure they stay on course.

This objective should be courageous and bold; it needs to be something that gets you fired up, motivated, and excited. Most importantly, it should be so aspirational that it gives you the energy to drive the momentum needed to achieve it.

Let's pretend you are a digital pharmacy wanting to change the world of pharmacy with the use of AI. Your vision objective might be:

At DigitalPharma, our mission is to revolutionise the pharmaceutical industry by leveraging cutting-edge technology and data-driven insights to provide exceptional care, convenience, and a digital-first experience to our customers.

At an organisational level, this North Star objective will link to the company mission and priorities, which are often growth, customer experience, and so on.

This objective is set by the folks at the top and is often a Batman-type signal to the organisation below to rally and align on how functions and teams need to converge their efforts to drive this forward.

(We) - Team OKRs

The team level is where it can often feel the trickiest. If we have a clear vision, then as a team, we can start to turn the vision into something more explicit and executable. However, a weak abstract vision can often leave teams feeling a little lost at sea.

Teams may struggle with setting clear OKRs if the organisational vision is vague. To try and overcome this, it is helpful to involve team members in workshops that clarify the vision and break down its components into actionable steps. However, starting off in vagueness is never a good sign.

This first big step would be for the team to do a portfolio health check to see which of our current products, projects, and initiatives align versus which do not. It is also at the team level where OKRs get more detailed, looking at leading indicators and outcome metrics that measure the impact of the team’s work.

At this level we often talk about obsessing over our customers in more detail as well through sensemaking and discovery following this approach also us realign our understanding of what our customers want, but more importantly, what they need, and align our products to them as well as the vision. After all, a business without a well-served customer is a business living on borrowed time.

At a team level, these OKRs might be as simple as:

HR Team OKRs

  • Objective: Cultivate a Future-Ready Workforce to Drive Innovation and Customer-Centricity.

  • Key Results:

  • Enhance Skill Development:

    • Launch a digital skills academy with a 90% enrolment rate among employees, focusing on data analytics, digital marketing, and customer experience design.

    • Achieve a 40% increase in internal promotions by equipping employees with new skills relevant to emerging business needs.

  • Optimise Talent Acquisition and Retention:

    • Reduce the turnover rate among high-potential employees by 25% through targeted retention programmes and career development plans.

    • Implement an AI-driven recruitment platform that shortens the hiring cycle by 30% and improves the quality of hiring by 20%.

  • Strengthen Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI):

    • Launch a company-wide DEI initiative with a 100% participation rate in awareness training.

    • Increase the representation of underrepresented groups in leadership roles by 25%, fostering a more inclusive company culture.

For a product development team, they could look something like this:

Product Team OKRs

  • Objective: Innovate and Elevate the Digital Pharmacy Experience.

  • Key Results: Pioneer Personalised Health Solutions:

    • Develop and launch an AI-powered health assistant that achieves a 75% user adoption rate within the first quarter.

    • Integrate wearable device compatibility, providing personalised health insights to 50% of the user base.

  • Accelerate Time-to-Market for Key Features:

    • Implement an agile development framework that reduces the average time-to-market for new features by 50%.

    • Achieve a 90% on-time delivery rate for major product milestones, ensuring the timely rollout of critical features.

  • Enhance User Engagement and Satisfaction:

    • Increase the Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 20 points by improving the user interface and experience across all digital touchpoints.

    • Launch a user feedback loop, incorporating user insights into 100% of new product developments and achieving a 30% increase in user satisfaction.

(Me) - Individual OKRs

OKRs at an individual level are critical, often because they help the employee find meaning in their day-to-day work and help them understand how their roles contribute to the broader objectives of their team and the organisation.

Using the made-up scenario of DigitalPharma, an individual in HR's OKRs may look like this:

  • Objective: Optimise Recruitment and Onboarding Processes.

  • Key Results: Recruitment Efficiency:

    • Screen and shortlist 10 qualified candidates per week, reducing the time-to-hire by 10%.

    • Implement a candidate feedback system post-interview, aiming for an 80% response rate.

  • Onboarding Improvement:

    • Develop and distribute a new onboarding feedback survey, achieving a 90% response rate and identifying key improvement areas.

    • Lead 3 onboarding workshops per month, focusing on company culture and team integration.

  • Diversity and Inclusion:

    • Coordinate with at least 3 diverse hiring events or job fairs, increasing the diversity of the applicant pool by 15%.

    • Contribute to the creation of a D&I training module, ensuring it's completed and implemented within the quarter.

An individual in the product development team may have OKRs like this:

  • Objective: Deliver User-Centric Product Enhancements.

  • Key Results: Feature Development:

    • Complete 2 key milestones in the development of the medication reminder feature, ensuring functionality meets user needs.

    • Conduct usability testing with 20 users, gathering feedback to improve the feature's interface.

  • Security and Performance:

    • Enhance platform security by integrating encryption protocols, with zero security incidents reported.

    • Reduce page load times by optimising code, achieving a 15% improvement.

  • User Experience Enhancement:

    • Design and implement 2 new UX improvements based on user feedback, targeting a 70% satisfaction rate in follow-up surveys.

    • Collaborate with the customer support team to address and resolve 10 user-reported issues per month.

Often when I hear employees say they have no meaning, ownership, or accountability, my first question is, "Show me your OKRs." These OKRs often focus on contributions to specific products and projects, but they can also be mapped to personal development.

It is for this reason that individuals should set their OKRs—not only does it drive ownership and accountability, but it also holds a mirror to their skills and self-development.

Aligning OKRs: that dreaded word again

One of the biggest reasons why an OKR approach fails in many organisations isn’t because the OKRs are not well thought out; the reason often comes down to communication and transparency.

What tends to happen in most immature organisations is that a team will come up with their OKRs, but then never communicate them beyond the team, often not even with each other. The result of this is duplicated effort and a giant misfiring of team effectiveness.

  • OK Postcards: A nice little hack I have used is “OK Postcards.” Every week, teams send out their 'OK Postcards'—a simple template that teams fill out with any updates on their OKRs and then send them out to wider cross-teams.These postcards create an opportunity for cross-teams to highlight any interdependencies and updates to OKRs. They also create a space for teams to discuss how to merge resources if needed.

  • OKR software: The market is awash now with OKR software tools that can give you a nice visual overview of the alignment of OKRs across the organisation. This, plus real-time tracking, helps keep most organisations ticking over. However, you don’t always need to be super fancy with the tech.

  • Scrappy Happy: When I was a director at a large consultancy, I ran a quick experiment. Rather than bringing in a tech platform, I created a template for each team member to use and an open Miro board for the team to upload their OKRs. I would work with each team member on how to self-identify their OKRs as well as find other OKRs cross-team that they could align with and support.

The template also had a little section where the performance score would be shared openly (a step I think is super important but often missed). This scrappy, happy approach has a tipping point when it comes to scale. However, when you look at individual (Me) and team (We) OKRs, it’s a nice, cheap alternative.

The Rub

The three tiers of OKRs—Organisational (Us), Team (We), and Individual (Me)—create a structured yet flexible framework that aligns goals across all levels of a company.

Implementing OKRs helps to cultivate a culture of transparency, alignment, continuous improvement, ownership, and meaning. It shifts the focus from merely completing tasks to achieving meaningful outcomes, driving overall success in a dynamic and often unpredictable environment. As organisations evolve, the ability to adapt and align swiftly with strategic goals becomes ever more critical.