OKR is fast emerging as one of the top tools for strategy execution around the world. What are the key benefits of using OKRs?

Here are the key benefits of  using OKRs:

Laser Focus on Priorities: By virtue of the very structure of the OKR Framework, it allows organisations, teams and individuals to focus on what matters most. OKRs are the creamy layer over the ‘Business as Usual’ that allows you to prioritise on those few goals that create most impact to your team or business bottom-lines. Its a simple 80-20 rule. By focusing on the 20% priority goals, you achieve 80% of business impact.

Higher Aspirations: OKRs are not just top-down cascades like archaic goal setting frameworks. It allows individuals and teams to also add bottom-up goals to the strategic and tactical OKRs. In principle, when Organisational OKRs are created, teams and individual can also add their own ideas and aspirations to these organisational goals. This not only helps in tapping into the collective intelligence of the organisation, but it also creates higher levels of involvement and accountability.

Greater Alignment: OKRs by their very nature need to be aligned. “Borderless” OKRs help foster teamwork and ensure greater alignment to the overall strategic OKRs.

Job Significance: Due to increased alignment of individual and team OKRs to the organisational OKRs, employees can clearly see how their work contributes directly to the organisation’s success. This, by far, is the most robust finding in the space of employee motivation – a clear understanding of the result of their work.

Employee Engagement & Collaboration: When OKRs help in adding personal aspirations that are aligned to the strategic and tactical goals and provide job significance and alignment, teams are naturally geared to be motivated and they collaborate better.

Increased Innovation: Using the collective intelligence of the organisation and setting the right culture of multi-directional goals setting, employees contribute more. Moreover, OKRs enforce and agile culture where rapid experimentation, a ‘fail-fast’ mindset and organisational learning is a given. This heavily contributes to the level of innovation across the board.

Ownership: More involvement means more ownership. With OKRs, teams and members are constantly involved and support by agile leadership where the leader plays the role of a coach and a facilitator allowing team members to co-create the blueprint for organisational growth.

Value Creation: Last but surely not the least, OKRs help focus on the outcome (results) and not the activity. This leads to employees spending more time in finding solutions to create better results rather than simply completing activities in their to-do lists.