OKR Ebook

Learn best practices and strategies for a

successful OKR Implementation.

www.profit.co
 Table of Contents
Practitioners manual to OKR’s

What is OKR?

Why OKR?
Practitioners manual to OKR’s

We all know that Ideas and Strategies are abundant. The key to success is always
Execution. And the key to execute is to keep the Focus, Measure frequently and
Celebrate achievement.

Profit.co uses the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) method to help ensure that
everyone in a company is working towards a defined goal and in line with their
organisation’s strategy.

2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
What Is OKRs?

An OKR can be defined as a rigorous goal setting and tracking method invented by Andy
Grover and used in Intel from its early years. Andy Grover derived the concept of OKR from
the teachings of Peter Drucker’s Management by Objectives.

OKR consists of two components:

➔ Objective: The term for the goal itself,

for what you want to accomplish on
whatever scale and timeline.

➔ Key Results: The term refers to the

actionable steps that form the plan of
action to reach the objective. It’s
important that these are the steps
whose effectiveness can be measured
and quantified in order to realistically
track the progress toward the objective.
 OKR methods are not just for the leadership team in an organization but for every
employee in the organization. Employees can set goals, track, and measure their
progress towards goals. It puts everyone in the company right from c-suite executives
to entry-level executives on the same page.

Setting OKRs does not end with putting it on a goal journal. It is a continuous
management process. You need frequent check-ins to track and measure progress, and
adjust the direction and level of your effort. Check-ins show the difference between the
expected result and actual result. Most OKR check-ins are done weekly, while in some
cases it makes sense to check-in on a monthly, or quarterly basis.

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Why OKR?

On many occasions, this is the number one question we face from our clients who has
no background information about OKRs. Many of them say it sounds similar to an
Employee Performance Management System, so why do they need to invest their time
on a new methodology and on top of that, potentially a new software tool.

The short answer is that, many times you do not know what you do not know. Now, we
are talking about iterative business execution. That really is what OKR will enable you to
do — iteratively execute your business strategies and get them done faster.
Below are the 5 Basic Challenges which OKR will help you solve:

➔ Focus Challenges: In business you always want to accomplish a lot of things. At

any point in time there are a million things to do and because of that you know
focus is a huge challenge. It’s really important to prioritize from a business
standpoint. What are the three things or five things that you want to achieve for
this year and then how you are going to achieve those on a quarter by quarter
basis. It is extremely important to pick your battles. When priorities are clear,
pathways become clear.

➔ Alignment Challenges: Many times, you observe in organizations that there are
huge lack the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. When there
is lack of alignment at the higher levels of the organization, it usually gets
amplified when you go down the organization hierarchy. The employees tend to
concentrate on their own set of goals without understanding and ensuring
alignment to the company’s vision and goals. Company’s vision often is lost
along the path since employees & managers are focused on their daily workload
and tend to just get things done. When there is poor alignment, it’s hard to
measure the impact of the strategic decisions on operational aspects of the
organization.

➔ Commitment Challenges: Lack of commitment and lack of initiative are definite

problems in the workplace, but this may not be completely an employee’s fault.
In an environment where you’re told what to do there is usually a lack of
commitment as opposed to when you’re encouraged to come up with your own
approaches, ways and means. Most of the time, it is a mindshare problem. Are
you going to move and shake to make things happen or simply wait around to be
told what to do, now and next.

➔ Tracking Challenges: If you do not track progress properly, you will not even
know that you are running really fast, or pretty much staying at the same place.
Below are the 5 Basic Challenges which OKR will help you solve:

➔ Focus Challenges: In business you always want to accomplish a lot of things. At

any point in time there are a million things to do and because of that you know
focus is a huge challenge. It’s really important to prioritize from a business
standpoint. What are the three things or five things that you want to achieve for
this year and then how you are going to achieve those on a quarter by quarter
basis. It is extremely important to pick your battles. When priorities are clear,
pathways become clear.

➔ Alignment Challenges: Many times, you observe in organizations that there are
huge lack the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. When there
is lack of alignment at the higher levels of the organization, it usually gets
amplified when you go down the organization hierarchy. The employees tend to
concentrate on their own set of goals without understanding and ensuring
alignment to the company’s vision and goals. Company’s vision often is lost
along the path since employees & managers are focused on their daily workload
and tend to just get things done. When there is poor alignment, it’s hard to
measure the impact of the strategic decisions on operational aspects of the
organization.
The key to improving any aspect of the organization is to have a
process that:

➔ Knows what KPI’s to measure to know the health of the aspect of the
organization.

➔ Knows how to track and measure those KPIs on a periodic basis

➔ Set improvement targets for the KPIs set

➔ Track progress towards the targets

It seems simple, but like every seemingly major problem in an organization usually has
no simple solutions.

Stretching Challenges: What is your culture? Which of the following statements is true
about your organization?

➔ My organization appreciates when a person commits to completing 3 tasks and

completed 4 tasks, resulting in a 133% accomplishment rate.

➔ My organization appreciates when a person commits to completing 10 tasks

(comparable to those in #1) and completes 7, resulting in an accomplishment
rate of 70%.

If you answered #1, then you do have a challenge that you may not even know that
exists. This sandbagging effect is pretty prevalent. Sometimes, especially when
involving external commitments — customers or investors, it may be necessary to
sandbag.

Within the business though, sandbagging will create layers of comfort zones and hence
result in a lot of wastage and the worst part is, you won’t even know about it. In this
vacuum, leaders will tend to set their aspirations too low or focus on the wrong
elements of a transformation.”
 The Key considerations any customer would have during initial OKRs
adoption :

How do we ensure that the

objectives that we are setting at
company or departmental level
are best for the organization?

The Key Results are apt to the

objectives that we have defined
its neither too low or too high
which would not be achievable.

Can Profit.co team support us in

defining the Objective & Key
Results?

To get our clients at ease we thought of coming up with a OKR practitioners manual for
various divisions like Strategic Planning, HR, Finance, Sales, Marketing to various other
divisions in an organization. This will help them draft the OKR’s independently with all
confidence without any fear whether they are on the right track or not, though Profit
Customer Success team is always there to support them.
Strategy & Planning OKRs

Before we start with defining the OKR at the company or Strategic level it’s important to
have a clear understanding of the what we want to achieve, challenge that we want to
overcome or the Business Objective - we are hoping that OKR will help us achieve.

An OKR best practice is to start with top corporate objectives which are then cascaded
to department or team OKRs. The resulting department, team, and individual OKRs
must be aligned with, in support of, and contribute to the top company priorities.

Think of the objective in OKRs as a “strategic theme,” a broad, overarching, qualitative

headline of what is to be achieved. The objective’s key results resembles the KPIs (Key
Performance Indicators). The key result can be either a metric or a measurable
milestone.

Examples of Strategic / Company level OKR (Quarterly) :

Objective 1: Grow global business footprint

Key Results:

➔ Achieve company global sales target of $100 Million

➔ Achieve 28% year-to-year sales growth in the EMEA / USA geography
➔ Increase the company average deal size by 20% (with upsells)

Objective 2: Newly launched product contribute to the Corporate revenue

target.
Key Results:

➔ Averages deal size amounting to $50,000.

➔ Total revenue from new product sales to be $2 million.
People & Human Resources OKRs

Human Resource departments are the backbone of any organization. They fulfil various

functions like implementing effective policies and procedures, building the company

culture, Talent Acquisition, Performance Management, Compensation & Benefits, law

compliance, Organization & Development and Employee Relations. These functions are

generic for any organization, irrespective of the industry they belong to.

Examples of Human Resources OKR:

Objective 1: Improve Employee engagement

Key Results:

➔ Employee NPS from 6 to 7.5

➔ Decrease employee turnover from 13% to 8%

Objective 2: Build & Promote a diverse / inclusive team

Key Results:

➔ Increase women in leadership positions to 33%

➔ 100% of hiring team attends unconscious bias workshop

Objective 3: Increase Recruiting Effectiveness

Key Results:
➔ Reduce Recruitment lead-time per hire by 20 Days
➔ Attrition rates of your new hires (in 6 months)
➔ Number of position fulfilled from upskilling to 38
Finance & Compliance OKRs

Finance departments can be the biggest supporter to the organization as it helps to

assess the expenses, revenue, and cash flow of the organization in totality.
Simultaneously they also have to keep a check on the financials of other departments
too.

Setting the finance team objectives can be a bit complicated since it is not always clear
how specific objectives would be able to link to the growth of the organization. It is
mainly focused around controlling cash flows or costs. For the financial team
objectives to succeed it is necessary to be able to connect them to the broader aspect
of what the organization wants to achieve.

With the help of the OKRs, it becomes possible to connect the dots between the
strategic objectives company, the operational objectives of the team and the individual
goals of the employees.

Examples of Finance Department OKR:

Objective 1: Improve the Debt Status on the Balance Sheet by Q4

Key Results:

➔ Decrease the Long term Debt from 20% to 10% by Q4

➔ Increase income generating capital Assets from 40% to 60% by Q4

Objective 2: Reduce Tax Liability

Key Results:

➔ Increase tax advantaged investment from 70% to 100%

➔ Decrease current liabilities from 40% to 25% by the end of Q3
➔ Decrease depreciation cost from 40% to 60%

Objective 3: Ensure Budget Adherence

Key Results:
➔ Maximum Variance Per Account %
➔ # of Accounts with Variance
Sales OKRs

OKR can be a powerful tool for sales team to achieve better turnout and higher
productivity than we might have thought. It serves as a convenient method to track
progress and facilitate follow ups. Moreover, OKRs for sales must be rightly owned,
aligned and co-ordinated between team members to bridge substantial data flow that
prevails within the team.

Examples of Sales Department OKR:

Objective 1: Improve Sales Effectiveness

Key Results:

➔ Decreased missed follow-ups from 75 to 5

➔ Increase Online sign ups by 45% by calling the leads

Objective 2: Penetrate European Market

Key Results:

➔ Establish a New Sale Office in UK by Q4

➔ At least 10 leads per week in the EU region
➔ Increase the No. of sales from 0 to 30 from UK & EU on monthly basis
Marketing OKRs

The nature of marketing work necessarily entails a much broader and less defined
industry standard for establishing and maintaining KPIs. Due to its highly subjective
nature, marketing teams across various industries may have an overabundance of
metrics or may have too few in place to establish an effective OKR. Though marketing
metrics may seem more abstract and difficult to track than those of, sales teams. There
are ways to take marketing strategies in place and translate them into meaningful
metrics. Therefore sharing and aligning with OKRs from other departments aids
effective and smooth functioning.

Examples of Marketing OKR:

Objective 1: Increase social media platform marketing for newly released products in
2020

Key Results:

➔ Increase 3,000 new followers on each social media platform in Q2

➔ Increase social media post engagement to at least 5,000 per post for each new
Product.
➔ Increase website visitors by organic search by 2x

Objective 2: Improve Customers Acquisition

Key Results:

➔ Increase inbound leads from 30% to 70% by the end of the Q4 (Marketing)
➔ Increase lead to demo ratio by 10% on monthly basis (Sales)
Operations & Administration OKR

Often when we think of defining OKR’s from the organization perspective, we think that
OKR’s are useful only for Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR and Engineering teams. The
Operations & Administrative teams are always looked as an invaluable department to
the Management Team. Efficient Operations & Admin teams basically serve all
departments in the Organization that acts as a pillar to the company’s success, but at
the same time poorly organized Operations & Admin teams can be a show stopper for
the organization to perform to its fullest.

Examples of Operations & Administration OKR:

Objective 1: Reduce operations costs by 20 percent.

Key Results:

➔ 15 % savings on tours & travel outlay

➔ 25% savings from changing vendor contract to quarterly instead of monthly.

Objective 2: Provide best System Availability to the Organisation.

Key Results:

➔ Reduce system downtime in Q2 by 30 percent.

➔ 13% Saving from Cloud cost by use of automation
Customer Support OKRs

Customers are the reasons why a business exists. In today’s competitive business
world, drawing customers attention towards us is tough, but keeping them delighted is
even tougher. Customer service plays a vital role in keeping the customers delighted.
OKR methodology helps an organization to know where you are lacking, where you need
to improve, and how you are going to achieve it.

Examples of Customer Support OKR:

Objective 1: Improve customer support process

Key Results:

➔ Target 20% of the customer support process to be automated

➔ 90% adherence to the defined SLA’s FY 2020

Objective 2: Deliver Amazing Customer Support

Key Results:

➔ Decrease the average resolution time from 8 hours to 4 hours by Q2

➔ Achieve a minimum first contact resolution rate by 40% in Q2

Objective 3: Build a high-performance customer service team

Key Results:

➔ Average # of interactions per day

➔ No of Escalated Cases in a month
Engineering OKRs

Often engineering team faces a set of challenges unique to its field. The OKR method
can be a powerful and effective tool to align the engineering team’s objectives against
the types of objectives and goals seen in other departmental pursuits.
For a field like engineering in which so much of the team’s output and daily productivity
revolves around data and the correction of quantifiable problems.
Due to the nature of the work involved, engineering team relies heavily on a spirit of
camaraderie and teamwork. Because the OKR is so cross-functional and transparent,
engineering teams that adopt this framework are able to communicate and collaborate
with ease.

Examples of Engineering OKR:

Objective 1: Improve Quality/Stability of the product to give customer an amazing
experience

Key Results:

➔ Ensure that the Portal Response time to 400 ms by Q4.

➔ Decrease production exceptions from 100 to 60 by Q4.

Objective 2: Improve release time to every new feature & functionality

Key Results:

➔ Increase reusable components by 30% to design functionality.

➔ Decrease defects by 17% in Q2.
IT & security OKRs

As it’s an compliance function , there are no ways to measure or to point out

improvements that were achieved in terms of raising the level of security.
OKRs are a great tool for setting the objectives of teams in general, especially in IT &
security.

Examples of IT & Security OKR:

Objective 1: Improve IT and infrastructure experience

Key Results:

➔ To reduce the support response time from 24 hrs to 12 hrs

➔ To reduce the system downtime from 7 mins to 2 mins

Objective 2: Improve Information security

Key Results:

➔ Implement ISO 27001 by Q3

➔ New security protocol to address 75% of current product security issues