Use OKRs to grow your business
High-growth companies tend to have one thing in common. They set clear goals that allow the entire organization to move in the same direction with alignment. While it’s easier said than done, there’s one sure-fire way to achieve the razor-sharp focus that aids in goal-setting: OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Not only are OKRs simple, agile, and user-friendly, but they are also known to bridge the ‘strategy-execution gap.’
For the uninitiated, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are a goal-setting framework that helps organizations strategically align their goals with transparency at all levels. We’ve compiled a list of them here to help you frame specific OKRs for your teams and organization as a whole.
Sales
Sales teams, by definition, are driven by metrics. It’s understood that their targets are directly tied to the organization’s bottom line. So, how can OKRs help them? The correct answer is: it helps them align their strategy with what the Product and Marketing teams are doing. This is when they can be the most effective.
Objective: Increase recurring revenues.
Key Results:
- Reach monthly recurring revenue ($ MRR) of $250k.
- Increase the share of monthly subscriptions vs one-time contracts sold to 85%.
- Increase average subscription size to at least $295 per month
Objective: Achieve record revenues while increasing profitability.
Key Results:
- Hit quarterly revenue of over $100k.
- Start sales in 2 new countries and achieve first quarter revenues totaling over $100k.
- Increase gross profit % margin from 23% to 54%.
Marketing
More often than not, marketing teams have their budgets set in advance. By using OKRs, these teams can streamline their focus and target big boulders or projects to tackle in the coming months.
Objective: Clarify product messaging to attract relevant customers.
Key Results:
- Update the content of the website and digital channels before Q2.
- Run 4 weekly ads in Q2 and measure performance.
- Attract 300 MQLs in Q2.
Objective: Grow digital presence.
Key Results:
- Increase LinkedIn followers to 180K.
- Manage the website to have a Google SERP ranking within 10.
- Increase the website traffic to 20,000 monthly visitors.
Engineering
When Andy Grove first introduced OKRs at Intel, he brought the nuts-and-bolts approach from engineering to the structure of OKRs. As the natural sum of their parts, OKRs for engineering look like an expanded view of a diagram.
Objective: Drive platform stability and speed.
Key Results:
- Maintain a 99% uptime.
- Reduce the time taken to load a page: <0.5s.
- Reduce the number of bugs created per feature: 50%.
Objective: Offer seamless, integrated and inclusive UX.
Key Results:
- 100% plugin coverage across mobile apps, Slack, MS Teams, and Chrome.
- Increase new language support to 10 in Q2.
- Update 100% features for visual impairment accessibility: in Q2
Product
Product teams strive to help users get the most out of the product. The way they go about this is they identify what exactly the customer needs and deliver the right capabilities through their products. So, their OKRs have to reflect these values.
Objective
Successfully launch version 3 of our main product
Key Results
- Get over 10,000 new signups.
- Achieve a sign-up to trial percentage ratio of over 25%.
- Achieve a trial-to-paid percentage ratio of over 50%.
Objective
Research, analyze & understand what users and non-users really think.
Key Results:
- Sales team to conduct 50 phone interviews with key accounts.
- Support team to conduct 50 phone interviews with churned accounts.
- Product management to interview 25 external team leaders (non-users).
Design
Designers work closely with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Sales teams. It’s safe to say that they work on all aspects of a user’s journey. An OKR framework can not only help designers collaborate better, but it can also bring consistency across experiences.
Objective: Redesign the new landing page.
Key Results:
- Test existing landing pages on external users for understanding issues.
- Conduct stakeholder interviews with 10 people from Sales and Marketing.
- Design a new version of our site structure, navigation and all pages.
- User-test page prototypes on 12 people.
Objective: Become a design-driven company.
Key Results:
- Establish a set of live brand and design guides and assets, as PDF and online.
- Set a budget for design software, online presence accounts (like Dribbble), and premium resources that make no sense to create ourselves (mockup templates, wireframe kits, stock photos and illustrations).
- Run at least 1 design sprint.
Customer Success
Customer success teams ensure that users are well looked after and continue to have positive experiences with the brand.
Objective: Ensure that all customers understand the value of Q1 feature releases.
Key Results:
- 95% of clients are aware and use new features within 30 days.
- Increase weekly active users to 20m.
- Launch e-engagement messages for 7 customer lifecycle touchpoints.
Objective: Retain customers, reduce churn where factors are in our control.
Key Results:
- Run post-engagement debriefs for contracts above $55K of valuation.
- Attain an NPS of 70.
- Get an average, annualized customer retention of 86%.
People and Culture
It’s well established that building a great team enables people to do their best work. For the People and Culture team, improving the employee experience is a big part of their OKRs.
Objective: Build a workplace people LOVE to work at.
Key Results:
- Attain an employee NPS of 85%.
- Launch an advanced D&E inclusion program in Q2.
- Increase company diversity from x% to y% to better reflect the local community that we serve.
Objective: Drive a continuous performance and goal-setting culture.
Key Results:
- 100% implementation of the company’s OKR program in Q2
- Reduce department-level OKR review and prep time from 14 to 5 days
- 100% of employees scheduled for OKRs refresher workshops with OKR Champions.
P.S. If you’re looking to simplify your company’s goal-tracking or setting process, check out Mesh. We’ve automated check-in reminders, made it easy to schedule 1:1s and set agendas, have set continuous feedback loops, and created sliced and diced versions of data analytics, to help you make the whole experience more collaborative.
Interested in learning more about OKRs? Check out our Ultimate OKR Guide.
