Speaker 1: OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results, are a great way to set goals and monitor company and team progress. But when you first start using OKRs, there's a few things you should keep in mind. In this video, we'll show you how to set a good OKR, what mistakes you should avoid, and run you through some examples to help you write your own. As a quick reminder, objectives are your big, ambitious goals. Key results measure the achievement of an objective, and weekly plans are the daily tasks and initiatives you do to achieve your goals. It's important to distinguish these three, as people often mix these up, which can lead to the unsuccessful implementation of OKR methodology. Before writing an OKR, you need a good understanding of what you want to accomplish. First focus on your objective. Think of the potential objectives you'd like to accomplish this quarter, and ask yourselves the following questions. Does the objective help achieve company goals? Is the objective inspiring? Does the objective move the company forward? Is the objective time-bound? And is the objective set for the end of the quarter or for the end of the year? After asking yourself those questions, it's also important to consider what objectives are not. Objectives should not be easy. You should only expect to achieve up to two-thirds of your objective in a single quarter. If an objective is achieved well before the end of the quarter, you weren't thinking big enough. And if you don't reach anywhere near that, you may have set an annual objective instead. Objectives are not projects with subtasks. Objectives are aspirational goals, which seek to improve your company. They are not one-off activities, which could be considered tasks or plans. So if we wanted to write an objective for a company to increase the revenue, a good objective might be to achieve record third-quarter revenue growth. This objective works since it's aspirational, time-bound, and helps move the company forward. An example of a bad objective would be keep making revenue. This is a bad objective as it's not time-bound, inspiring, and not forward-looking. After choosing an objective, you then need to decide on your key results. Remember, key results are the way you measure your objective. Key results should be specific, quantifiable, achievable, lead to objective grading, and be difficult but not impossible. It's also important to consider what key results are not as well. They are not binary. Key results should be numeric and updated throughout the quarter. If your key result is binary, it may be a task or plan and not a key result. Which moves us to our next point. They are not tasks to be achieved. While of course tasks and projects are important in supporting your objective, key results are metrics and should be treated as such. Some good examples of key results for a previous objective would include 1. Generate $100,000 in new revenue 2. Reduce customer churn in the first quarter from 15% to 10% 3. Onboard 300 new clients These examples are quantifiable, objectively graded, and while challenging, they should still be achievable. A bad example of a key result would be 1. Launch new business line The key result is not numerically measurable, and it is not objectively clear how it contributes to the objective. This would be considered as a project, or could be rewritten into a separate objective. Now that we have a better grasp on what makes for a good OKR, let's run through some examples and see what is good or could be improved about each. For our first example, we have the objective, Make our company go viral, with the following key results 1. Generate 100,000 views on our YouTube channel 2. Get 10,000 new followers on Instagram 3. Increase organic search traffic to our website by 20% This is a good example of an OKR. The objective is aspirational and moves the company forward, while the key results are numeric and objectively quantify the success of the overall objective. Bad key results for the objective would include things such as Make videos for YouTube, Get more Instagram followers, or Improve SEO For our next example, we have the objective, Design, create, and launch new product, with the following key results 1. Interview 50 existing customers on what they would like to see for a new product line 2. Create new product In this case, the OKR could use some work. The objective is likely not possible to achieve in a single quarter. And while the first key result is good, the second key result is not quantifiable For our final example, we have the objective, Implement new outbound email campaign, with the following key results 1. Write email copy to send to outbound leads 2. Get a list of outbound leads 3. Send the email to everyone on the list This, unfortunately, would not be considered an OKR, but rather a project with a task list. Remember, objectives are large aspirational goals, and key results are a quantifiable measurement of that goal. Hopefully, with these examples, you have a better idea on how to write your own OKRs. Using an online tool like Weekdone helps automate the process of using the OKR methodology. You can also check out OKRExamples.co to see more examples of OKRs to help you get started.