10xGoals

• OKR vs KPIs: OKRs are both input & output-driven talking about the what and how of achieving an objective. Whereas KPIs on the other hand are output-driven and used to measure the quantum of success.
• OKR vs Balanced Scorecards: When creating Balanced Scorecards, most companies will draft objectives and measures that are designed to stay in place for at least one year, but often longer. With OKRs, however, most organizations break down their annual objectives into quarterly objectives and iteratively work on them.
• OKR vs SMART: SMART views goals in isolation and provides a simple, yet memorable acronym and criteria to describe their structure. OKR also provides a structure but draws a distinct line between the Objective of the goal (what you want to achieve) and how to measure progress towards it using Key Results.

The size or stage of the organization does not determine whether OKRs should be implemented or not. There are plenty of examples across the board where organizations in different stages and of different sizes derived immense value out of the OKR methodology. Example: Flipkart adopted OKRs when there were 1000s of employees, Curefit when 35 employees, xto10x when 3 employees.

There are primarily 6 major pitfalls that any organization needs to be wary of while implementing OKRs.

1. The critical thinking required to frame the OKRs should begin from setting the annual goals for the organization. This should feed into the quarterly OKRs.
2. Lack of commitment from the founder and top leaders. OKRs take at least 3 quarters to show real impact.
3. Organizational culture plays an important part in successful OKR implementation.
4. The lack of an owner for the OKR process implementation and management.
5. The implementation requires a rigorous review process. It’s recommended that a weekly frequency is followed for the review.
6. Last but not the least, we recommend linking performance to the OKRs. 

For most organisations, it’s recommended that quarterly cycles are followed. This provides more agility to iterate in case the chosen strategy needs revision.

Irrespective of the cycle duration, it’s important that annual objectives are defined keeping in mind the long-term vision of the organization. The annual objectives are further broken down into a bunch of quarterly objectives that add up to the annual objective. As part of the best practice, organizations also set up monthly milestones to keep a track of their progress on quarterly objectives.

We recommend taking a milestone-based approach and tagging these OKRs as “Solutioning” OKRs. This sets clear expectations and encourages creativity, risk-taking, and innovative thinking in the organization. Solutioning OKRs may not move a metric majorly in the current quarter but will help in identifying future levers that will impact outcome. End of quarter the only expectation is to hit the milestone that was supposed to be achieved.