Five Tips to Improve Objectives

Five Ways to Improve Objectives

To make Objectives more actionable, ask yourself five questions:

• First: Are you asking for something incremental, or for a leap, or a discovery?
• Second: Can you make your Objective more specific?
• Third: Can your Objective be more action-oriented?
• Fourth: Can you frame it more concisely?
• Fifth: Can you make it more memorable?

I really like these five questions, and so let me share a bit about why I ask each of them.

Good OKRs describe distance to the goal

Let’s begin with the first question: Is your Objective asking the team to make an increment, or a leap, or a discovery?

OKRs are meant to describe what we want to change. If the change that’s most important right now is incremental to the status quo, describe it that way.

In fact, incremental goals can significantly stretch your team. It may be that increasing sales by five percent in the next quarter really moves the needle.

You can also leap into an incremental change. Perhaps you want to stretch your team more than that five percent. You’re aiming for a small leap of 10, or even 20 percent.

But maybe you want your team to think more radically – maybe you need an audacious leap. In that case, you may need to invent an entirely new product or raise tens of millions of dollars.

Or maybe you don’t have a baseline yet, and the priority is to learn something new or make a discovery, such as finding a new audience or testing a rocket’s performance limits.

The language you choose to write your Objective will be different than what you’d use for an incremental improvement or a big leap.

In my experience, you and your team are the best judges of what stretch means for you. But do be clear about how much change you’re asking the team to commit to. And match that with the language in your OKRs. You’ll quickly find out whether an Objective is underwhelming or overwhelming – or whether it pushes the team just the right amount.

Good OKRs are specific

The second question I ask is: Can an Objective be made more specific?

Vague goals are weak goals. When goals are specific, concrete, and action-oriented, they’ll give your team more clarity. If there’s too much room for interpretation, a team might be unable to effectively coordinate its efforts to reach the goal.

Take, for example, an editorial team tasked with creating “the best content on leadership.” What does “best content” mean?

What if we changed the Objective to: "Create the most useful leadership resources”? This goal is more precise because it steers us to how we’ll try to improve. You might even take this one step further and say: “Create the most useful leadership resources for new managers.”

Do you see how added specificity changes the direction of the Objective?

On the other hand, excessively specific Objectives can start to resemble a list of tasks or to-dos. In that case, zoom out a bit to give your team more room for creativity.

For example, if you were to say, “Publish a new resource for new managers on conducting one-on-ones,” you’ve probably gotten too specific.

Good OKRs are actionable

Let’s move on to the next question on our list: Is the Objective action-oriented?

The language you use in your OKRs is important because they express your strategy. Passive language does not inspire people like action-oriented language.

Consider the difference between “improve our customer service” versus “own our customers’ issues and fix them.” Owning and fixing will inspire more specific Key Results than “improving.” These action-oriented verbs also strike a different tone. To own a customer’s issues implies more empowerment for the team than to be asked to improve things.

Here’s a clear litmus test for this one: Does the Objective evoke the action you want to see happen?

Good OKRs get to the point

My fourth question is: Can we frame this Objective more simply and concisely?

There’s a huge difference between “Ensure that every new business in the Northeast corridor wants to establish their headquarters in our city” or “Be the home of commerce in the Northeast.”

Again, the language we use really matters. When we’re too verbose or jargony, we do not connect well with the team. So try to find ways to say more with less. Objectives are more powerful with clear and direct language.

Good OKRs are hard to forget

And now for my final question: Can you make this Objective even more memorable?

Earlier we discussed the importance of understanding what our organizations stand for. Your team will be spending a lot of time focusing on your Objectives throughout the cycle, and so it helps to have some stickiness to them.

To make your Objectives more memorable, tie them to a higher purpose. Then your team can see how they fit into the bigger picture. Providing a simple way to remember the big picture lays the foundation for crafting great Key Results.