OKRs are for significant improvements

alt text

When the few percent performance each quarter that you can expect from a KPI is not enough, the company or a team needs to put extra effort behind an improvement.

This is when we launch a project/initiative or OKR. OKR stands for “Objective and Key Results”.

Objective

The “Objective” is the overall, qualitative, often inspiring, end goal of the project. For example “$COMPANY in Africa”.

Key Results

The Key results are the measures by which we can see if the project was a success by its deadline. For that reason, they are often written in perfect tense:

  1. “Closed 3+ deals with customers headquartered in Africa”
  2. “Built pipeline of 10+ Sales Accepted Opportunities in Africa”
  3. “Gathered leads for clients in 10+ African countries”

OKR Antipatterns

  1. Key results that are not metrics but subprojects
  2. Umbrella and Thematic objectives

About Midstage Institute

We focus our practice on midstage startup companies that need to remain agile, and where what used to work for the smaller startup just isn’t as effective anymore.

 

We ensure founders and leadership teams win, with our over 40 years experience in venture-backed tech startups. We are Silicon Valley veterans with the scars and wins to prove it. We don’t use an inflexible off-the shelf methodology, we adapt best practices to you, your market, your company, and your leadership team.

 

We always:

  • Focus on right sized best practices to get to the next level
  • Focus on the 20% of effort that will yield you 80% of the benefits
  • Teach Perfection is the enemy, better is your partner and ally
  • Align with your business needs so you can thrive