OKR implementation planning
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We've built this OKR implementation checklist as a resource for you.
There are 4 main considerations for planning your OKR implementation:
Who is leading your OKR process?
Who will be working on your OKRs?
How, exactly, does your team do OKRs?
What are your OKRs?
There are three leadership roles for your OKR process that need to be filled in order to have a successful implementation:
Executive sponsor - This should be a leader who is both passionate about having OKRs and has the power to enforce compliance. Ideally, the CEO or COO, but the Chief of Staff can also take this role as long as they are seen as a leader in the organization.
Program owner - This person will monitor adoption of OKRs and help the team navigate the OKR process. They will become an OKR expert and will be the main point of contact for all OKR questions. The OKR program owner and the Executive sponsor will work together to develop the OKR playbook and ensure teams are following it.
OKR champions - These people will act as liasons for all teams that are working on the OKRs. They will become highly knowledgeable about OKRs, particularly on writing and tracking OKRs. OKR champions can be anyone in the organization who is interested in the process and will work with teams to answer questions or bring tough questions to the OKR program owner.
Not every team member should be part of your OKR process, especially to start. We recommend starting your OKR process with just the executive or leadership team in order to firm up your process and show the rest of the organisation that leadership is committed to this as a process, not just as make-work for employees.
Even as you roll out OKRs beyond the executive team, not every team should be included right away. There are teams that are going to be more task-driven than outcome-driven. Those teams (generally, Engineering, security, and IT teams) will be more resistant to the new process when there are still issues being worked out, and the shift from thinking in terms or projects and tasks to outcomes is a difficult one that should be done slowly.
You'll also want to be careful around scaling your OKR process too quickly. One quarter of success with an executive team doesn't automatically translate to success with a full org roll out. It takes time to understand the process of OKRs, and the more ill-formed OKRs you have, the harder it is to right the ship.
Your OKR process should be thoroughly documented so that any team member who is new to OKRs can pick the process up quickly. This also helps manage distrust in the process by having clearly defined expectations and instructions on how to suceed. Many employees who are new to OKRs feel that OKRs are a way of micromanaging work and running additional task lists, so clear expectations can make sure that those fears are managed.
To document your process, create an OKR playbook. Your OKR playbook should include:
One paragraph about why your organization does OKRs (ex. "To improve transparency and give our teams more autonomy, we use OKRs to set a clear direction without getting lost in the details of the day-to-day work the teams are doing")
Your company mission and vision. OKRs should act as the bridge from your daily tasks to your mission-- the mission of the company informs the goals you set, which informs how work needs to be done.
How to write OKRs. We suggest using the goal setting masterclass as a guide, but you'll want to include:
What is an Objective? What are key results What is the different between tasks and key results?
How many objective and key results each team should have
The process for writing OKRs at your organization (for example: Top level goals will be published first, all teams are expected to have at least one aligned objective, how to manage tasks)
A list of your OKR contacts (who is the executive sponsor? Who is the OKR program owner? Who are the champions?)
Before your teams can write their own OKRs, they'll need to know what the priorities for the business are. Top-level/company OKRs should be written first and published so that teams can see what the organization has committed to in order to write goals that are aligned with those committments.
Your top-level OKRs need to be announced, and the Executive sponsor is responsible for that announcement. This is best done live at an all hands with a follow up email detailing the process and linking to your OKR playbook.
In the announcement, the executive sponsor should explain why the organization will be doing OKRs, what the top expectations are (who is working on OKRs this quarter, how will we report progress, where will OKRs live), and then detail the top-level OKRs. Commit, during the annoucement, that progress will be shared during future all hands meetings.