OKRs: Setting Objectives
You've read our OKR overview. Now let's dive deeper to learn what an objective looks like
The objective is the what
The thing you want to achieve over three months that if successful will take you one step closer to your strategic goals. It's a fantastic mechanism that reduces the 'Activity Trap', which is when your team seems busy but their outcomes don't have any real impact on the business.
An objective needs to be
- Ambitious - It should be something that, if completed, will make a meaningful step forward in our success as a company.
- Qualitative - An objective shouldn't be quantifiable because that's the job of the key result. For example, you don’t set an objective to lower churn by x%, this is an output. Why is churn high in the first place? The objective would be to ‘provide the best customer experience in the history of our company.’
- Timebound - The objective needs to occur in a certain time frame, otherwise focus tends to dissipate. 'We'll make the best pizza in the world' isn't time bound because the goalposts are always shifting.
- Actionable - You have to be able to make them come true, otherwise you'll never be able to decipher when the thing is done.