Recommended reading: 7 requirements for a successful OKR implementation
Promote Focus
Aligning your objectives with your goals and strategies is not enough. Proper communication of those strategies with your teams is what going to help your execution. Teams need to understand how their work is interrelated.
However, in a study, a shocking 95% of respondents said that they do not understand their organization’s strategy. How is one supposed to hammer away if they are not aware of the reason in the first place?
In another study, poor communication is termed as one of the top three reasons why strategy execution fails.
OKRs are known for narrowing down your focus to 2-5 objectives that matter most out of the thousand things you would like to achieve.
You can further narrow down this focus by communicating with your teams about the strategies you are aiming to implement.
This will help your teams focus on the actions that are required to be taken to deliver the expected results.
Your teams have limited sources of time and energy. Leaders often fail to acknowledge this fact and leave a communication gap between the leadership and the teams.
As a result, teams fail to have a laser focus on the thing most important i.e execution.
Promote communication as part of your OKR framework to make your teams willing to go that extra mile to execute the set goals and handle the issues that come in their way of accomplishing the set goals.
Set strategic Timeline
Set planning timelines so that a balance between strategy and execution is maintained.
Set timeline for every OKR. Creating deadlines to achieve your objectives and key results will create a sense of urgency for achieving your goals.
Help and assist your teams to stay on track with OKRs with visual metrics and the related timeline.
Tracking OKRs is the only way to make sure that everyone in the team is making progress. You can imagine it as a sports event where a scoreboard is created to see which team is leading ahead and which one’s falling behind.
Everyone knows the score as the game progresses. So that the coach (here, OKR leaders or managers) can help the teams to move together at the same pace as others.
Keep a check on progress
Review your progress frequently. In a study, leaders of an alarming 49% of organizations said that they spend only one day a month reviewing their strategic implementation.
When we talk about checking on the progress, we are not referring to unnecessarily long meetings that do nothing more than waste time and resources.
Instead, organize purposeful meetings with dedicated OKRs queries and discussions.
Progress reviews can be of various types depending on the purpose. This includes team status updates, mid-quarter OKR check-ins, OKR adjustment updates, etc.
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