Dear Andy,
Our company has an established business planning process where we lay out our strategic priorities and monitor progress with a scorecard. I’m hoping to leverage OKRs but find it hard to find meaningful differentiation from the strategic priorities and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) we already use.
For example, one of our strategies is to grow market share. Our priorities for that include improving and introducing new digital capabilities with KPIs around digital satisfaction. How do I weave in OKRs meaningfully?
Sincerely,
Rachel
Hi Rachel,
Integrating OKRs into an established strategic goal-setting process is critical to providing your teams with focus, alignment, and, ideally, better results. Here’s how you do it.
Strategy is, more or less, a theory about what approach will work best to achieve your mission. No matter how good it looks on paper, however, strategies aren’t enough to lead teams to success. OKRs are the missing link between strategy and execution. They enable teams to make conscious choices about how to best allocate time and energy toward achieving the strategy, using Key Results to measure whether the strategy is working.
Take the launch of Google Chrome, for example. In 2008, Google Chrome set out to become the world’s most popular browser. But how does one do that? Do you need to be the world’s fastest browser? The most secure? The one with the best user experience? Each choice would affect execution. Without a shared strategic priority, the team might each execute differently, putting the goal at risk. This is where OKRs came into play.
The team decided to prioritize speed, determining that to become the biggest, they first needed to become the fastest. They wrote an OKR with this Objective: “Become the world’s fastest browser.” With the teams aligned behind this vision, and KRs to prove when they became the fastest, they turned strategy into reality. Speed did drive adoption, and as of 2024, Chrome has 3.45 billion users.
See how that works? Without OKRs, multiple teams would’ve worked in silos, prioritizing their own goals, rather than focusing on the thing they truly all needed to do to make the strategy work. Most of our readers relate to that scenario!
OKRs align actions across teams toward strategies. What are the big choices involved in incorporating new digital capabilities? If you could only do one of them, which do you, as a group, think will bring you closest to growing market share? What do you need to ensure that you maintain user satisfaction? Can that all be done at once, or does something need to happen first? The answer to these questions forms the jumping-off point for your OKRs.
Defining priorities in each cycle moves strategy from theory to reality, and that aligns with the outcomes you want. Strategic priorities and KPIs don’t necessarily help you decide what to do day to day. OKRs break them into cycles, making the choices (about those priorities) shared and transparent, and helping organizations collaborate better.
KPIs are great for measuring the health of your project. And yes, sometimes, they make good Key Results. But from what you’re describing, the strategic priority/KPI combo might be longer-term and broader. What’s the most important thing to do in order to get a perfect scorecard on your strategic priority? OKRs can help turn those answers into cohesive actions across the organization. That improves everyone’s chances of success.
Thanks for writing in, Rachel, and best of luck to you on your OKR journey.
Sincerely,
Billy from the What Matters Team
