3 Reasons Your OKRs Are Failing (and How to Fix Them)

OKRs, as popularized by Doerr’s book, have been adopted by numerous Fortune 500 Companies, including Amazon, Uber and Twitter. They’re also gaining popularity among smaller organisations from a wide range of different industries. OKRs offer a straightforward method of setting goals that align teams and individuals around shared, measurable aims.

The objective is what you want your company to achieve — the X on a map, marking the spot where buried treasure is hidden. While it might be challenging to reach, so long as the destination is clear and unmoving, the end reward motivates your employees on their quest. The key results are how your teams will achieve the objective — the milestones, measuring their journey's progress and describing the outcome of the tasks they need to complete along the way.

Set up correctly, OKRs drive performance, encourage innovation and facilitate growth. But when done improperly, employees are likely to lose interest and see them as just another box to tick off their ever-growing to-do list. To avoid this from happening, read on to discover the three most common mistakes made when creating OKRs and how to fix them.

1. Setting too many objectives or too few

The purpose of OKRs is to focus all of your team's efforts on the areas within your business that need improving. As a rule, set between three and five high-level objectives with around 12 key results per quarter. More than this can cloud your overall vision and burden your employees with unnecessary meetings and documentation.

On the other hand, only setting one or two might mean your objectives are too ambitious, causing your staff to feel frustrated that their goals are so big, they're impossible to reach. Instead, work with them to set challenging yet achievable OKRs to ensure the highest success rate possible.

2. Neglecting to provide meaningful feedback

OKRs shouldn't be seen as an end of quarter exercise to get off your desk as quickly as possible but as an everyday tool, pulling departments together to work towards a common objective. Weekly check-ins are essential for keeping your staff focused and to provide them with opportunities to discuss blockers and share their successes. This way, you can reward them with praise and coach them on how to continue hitting their targets.

Use performance management software, such as Clear Review, for a more intuitive and engaging way to give meaningful feedback, rather than sticking with dated paper-based processes. These systems are particularly helpful if your teams work remotely and offer company-wide visibility. This ensures vital information doesn't get lost and important notes are viewable by both managers and employees, any time, anywhere.

3. Vague objectives and unclear goals

Although objectives like 'increase sales' and 'lower our carbon footprint' have the right intentions, they don't clearly define the actions required for completion or how you'll measure success. Contrarily, writing clear, quantifiable goals, e.g. “drive a million visitors to the website” and “ensure 100% of our packaging is compostable'', enables managers to track their teams' progress easily and link daily tasks and projects to the company's long-term ambitions.