How to keep your team on track using OKR tracking software

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Introduction 

Did you know?

The two years of the pandemic opened new avenues of remote working for the company and the employees. According to an article by the Times of India, 82% of employees prefer working from home and have reported increased productivity. With the increase in the remote working setup, organisations have adopted OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework to keep the team motivated and work towards a common goal. Intel was the first company to adopt the OKR goal-setting method and Google has pioneered it , followed by Netflix, Atlassian, LinkedIn, and Microsoft, to name a few.

Goal Setting is one task, but tracking them and identifying pitfalls to achieve the goals is vital. Automation takes over all processes, and an OKR Tracking System helps track the set goals, the weekly deliverables, and more. Organisations can use the tools to align their team and individual goals for better performance.

Tracking OKR-  Why is it important?

As discussed earlier, setting goals and defining responsibilities is just half of the task. It is important to track whether every goal is met or whether there are any challenges in achieving them. Tracking of key results is vital for the effective achievement of the set objective. When teams work on their independent key results, the weekly check-ins will help leaders understand shortfalls and help accordingly. It will also help empower the teams to help each other and themselves to achieve a common goal. When teams help each other, the OKRs can be achieved faster. The individuals will also display accountability and responsibility towards their and their team’s OKRs.

How to track OKRs?

• Be specific in your objectives and key results to help better track the goal, Setting relevant objectives that align with your company’s mission and vision helps relate to the bigger picture. Every key result must be precise with details, also it’s important to define the right and enough number of key results with the right metric to achieve the objective. For example: if you draw a minimum of three objectives for a quarter, ideally, the objective can have 3 to 5 key results to measure.

• While working on the details of the OKRs, it is important to assign specific responsibilities to your employees and hold them accountable for each other. Assigning specific responsibilities like the links of a chain will help identify a gap in effort or difficulty and address them effectively. Each objective should have an owner who can lead the entire objective and the key results can be shared with multiple stakeholders but even KRs should have at least one owner and rest of the team members can be a contributor.  An OKR tracking software will help to give an insight into the status of your peer’s goals and responsibilities.

• All goals must be time-bound. Be it big or small. A goal without a deadline is just a wishful thought. Even if you set a goal of making 100 valid cold calls daily, break it down and set 50 to be done by morning and 50 in the second half. 

• It’s very important to have weekly check-ins by the owners and contributors for better tracking. As part of the check-ins it’s important to update the metric, rating and weekly progress. Continuing from the above example, if 50 calls need to be done in the morning, 10-12 calls per hour must be completed. If required, the superior or the leader can interfere.

• Weekly review meetings with your subordinates will help you to get the OKRs on track and also understand the major roadblocks. 

• One-on-One conversations play a major role in motivating the team, identifying the good and bad, which helps in taking better decisions to achieve the aspirational goals.

Conclusion

So, why are you waiting to optimise your teams and goals? Opt for 10xWinners OKR goal-tracking tools for a better and more agile tracking experience. Our OKR goal-tracking software is developed to give one of the best experiences with interactive UI, accessible dashboards, customisable goal templates, and graphics to visualise your goal data. To know more about how you can give a unique work-from-home experience to your team, click on the link below.