Slides from our webinar conducted on January 28th, 2015 about the Objectives & Key Results goal-setting process. It’s the start of a new year, and for many of us that means setting and achieving some serious company goals. A lot of companies are attributing their success to a sophisticated goal setting process called Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs for short. OKRs is the goal setting methodology used and popularized by companies like Google, Dropbox, and Zynga. OKRs help businesses achieve complete transparency and alignment with clearly defined goals. It also helps with measuring their progress and provides opportunities to reflect back and understand what worked and what didn’t. It’s no wonder companies everywhere are flocking to it. …So, where do you start? And how do you become one of the many companies benefitting from OKRs? In this webinar we’ll cover: – Quick introduction and how to get started if you are new – How many OKRs you should have – How to align and cascade OKRs – What are the responsibilities of the employees and managers during an OKRs cycle – How to create engagement during an OKRs cycle – How to measure, score, and learn from OKRs – What is the timeline of the activities that need to be done to execute an OKRs cycle – Audience Q & A session

1. Webinars
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
How to use the OKRs process to achieve great results
in 2015 and beyond

2. @7Geese #OKRs2015
IT’S NICE TO MEET YOU.
Wendy Pat Fong
Director of Customer Success
Amin Palizban
CEO & Founder

3. AGENDA 1. History of Management by Objectives
2. Introduction to Objectives & Key Results (OKRs)
3. Attributes of an OKR
4. Cascading and Aligning OKRs
5. Closing, scoring, and learning from OKRs
6. OKRs Process Timeline
7. OKRs Common Pitfalls and Best Practices
8. Audience Q & A

4. MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES
Management framework where managers set objectives (derived
from bigger objectives) and measure performance against it
Popularized by Peter Drucker in the 60s
Enforce all efforts are aligned with organization’s common goal
Eliminate gaps, friction, and duplication of work
Using self-control to drive performance rather than domination
Enable motivation, alignment, and better teamwork

5. MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES
SMART Goals, KPIs, & Balanced Scorecards in 80s and 90s
OKRs is an MBO process invented by Intel and introduced to
Google in 1999 by John Doerr
After Google’s success with OKRs, Zynga, Dropbox, LinkedIn, and
many other tech companies adopted the process
Rick Klau from Google Ventures presented how Google does
OKRs in 2013 and it has become even more popular

6. ANATOMY OF A SINGLE OKR
Create multi-planetary life
- Send unmanned vehicle to Mars by 2002
- Send humans to Mars by 2040

7. ANATOMY OF A SINGLE OKR
Conduct a great webinar on OKRs
- Have 50 attendees join
- Finish on-time within 1-hour
- Have 10 people commit to trying OKRs

8. ATTRIBUTES OF OKRS
Set quarterly and annually
Measurable & graded each quarter & stretch (70% achievement is good)
50% top-down and 50% bottom-up
Cascaded: Company, Department, Team, and Individual levels
Are publicly available to all the company
Maximum 5 Objectives per person with 4 Key Results
De-coupled from performance evaluations

9. CASCADING AND ALIGNMENT
CEO or the executive team set annual OKRs and then
derive quarterly OKRs for the organization
Each Key Result from company quarterly objective
becomes an Objective for managers one level down
The assigned manager then sets Key Results for the new
objective inherited in negotiation with her manager
The process is repeated until everyone in the company
has set their OKRs
CEO’s Objective
Department Leader’s Objective
KR KR KR
Team Lead’s Objective
Individuals Objective
KR KR KR
KR KR KR
KR KR KR

10. CASCADING AND ALIGNMENT

11. CLOSING, ASSESSING, & LEARNING
Every objective must be graded by employee/manager at end of the quarter
Google recommends rating all Key Results from 0-1
- average of all KR grades become the objective score
- average of all objective grades become individuals overall score
If objectives are measurable, the objective progress can become the score
and then you can just say if the objective met or did not meet expectations
Important: Grading/assessment is meant to be for learning and reflection
purposes and not performance evaluations

12. OKRS PROCESS TIMELINE
Jan FebDec
Set and communicate
Q1’s organization OKRs
Everyone to draft their
Q1’s OKRs and align to
their manager
Managers meet with their direct
reports to close/grade Q4’s OKRs
and approve Q1’s OKRs
Managers to have 1:1s at least once a
month with their direct reports to
review progress on OKRs
Q4 Q1

13. PITFALLS & BEST PRACTICES
Demotivation if OKRs are too hard & linked to compensation
Takes CEO & Exec team commitment
Takes about 2 quarters to get right
Must be negotiated and not delegated
Focus on learning and continuous improvement
Make sure teamwork is promoted
Limit number of Objectives (max 5) and Key Results (max 4)

14. Q & A
Email wendy@7geese.com for any other questions

15. THANKS FOR
JOINING!
A recorded version of this Webinar will be available
on our blog at blog.7geese.com
Webinars