How do you ensure that your OKRs are good at scale?

Objectives and Key Results (OKR), when correctly deployed, is a powerful tool that can be used to guide an organization towards success. However, the way that the OKR has evolved has caused many company leaders to approach the framework with many preconceived notions.

These notions include the idea that OKRs are synonymous with task management or performance management. Both perceptions can cause issues with a company’s OKR implementation.

One question that many individuals new to OKRs ask is: “Will OKRs improve the performance of underperforming teams or underperforming employees?”

It is a common question many people ask when testing waters with OKRs. It’s important to note that the OKR framework isn’t a performance management methodology. However, OKRs can be used to help employees make better use of their time, effort, and skill. OKRs are a great way to get the most out of your team and therefore improve performance— but the approach you take to this performance improvement is very important.

The Business Process Equation:

Many business leaders are eager to learn about OKRs and performance improvement because many of us are biased towards outputs or inputs. Leaders tend to wonder if they have the right people, and if those people are doing the right tasks. However, success is about more than inputs and outputs. All successful organizations realize at some point in their evolution that measuring the journey is a critical component of ensuring timely and cost-effective arrival at their intended destination. This has resulted in a market chock-full of software that helps organizations track progress and process. However, not all measuring tools are created equal.

What happens when you are focused on Output?

Larger organizations usually have more elaborate silos and departmental structures than smaller businesses. Therefore, they are more dependent on systems and reporting to inform the executive team of team progress towards the company’s mission.

What happens when you focus on Employees?

This time, the approach is more biased towards employee development. There is a heavy emphasis on skill alignment and ensuring that goals are cascaded down from the executive leadership team to individual team members.

This sounds great in theory. The problem is that the very same issues exist with this approach as with the previous task focus. They are just masquerading under a different set of metrics. Developing an employee’s skill set sounds like an arguably good idea

All the examples are relatively simplistic, and one would hope that any organization would be able to avoid these issues. And yet, because large organizations can become so complex, problems with simple solutions can be unidentifiable.

The larger and more complex an organization gets, the more important it is for teams to use the OKR framework and their chosen OKR software correctly.