OKR (Objectives & Key Results) Template

Description
OKR stands for "Objectives and Key Results". It is a goal setting and tracking methodology aimed at aligning individual & team goals with organizational objectives, in a global spirit of enpowering the front lines and teams to maximise productive output.

The history of OKRs starts in 1954 with the father of management, Peter Drucker, and Management by Objectives (or MBOs). His insight was that managers often lacked tacking a step back to reflect on the pertinence of their actions compared to the organizations strategy and vision. Fixing objectives enables to keep all compasses aligned and individual and team focus on what matters most. 

Later, in the 1970s, Andy Grove, at that time successively President, CEO and Chairman of Intel, upgraded Peter Drucker's MBO concept by adding a layer of "Key Results". OKRs were born. The addition of Key Results, added the necessity to quantify steps leading to an objective being made. E.g. Instead of "Increase Outbound Sales", you put "Increase Outbound Sales by 45% in the next 12 months" as an OKR and "Increase Sales" as the objective. It is generally advised to have 3 to 5 OKRs max per objective. If sub-tasks exist, they can be hosted elsewhere, typically on Project Management Softwares such as Asana, Trello, Wrike or Wimi.

In 1999, John Doerr, a former Management Team member at Intel, became a close advisor to Google, after his VC firm, Kleiner Perkins, invested in the tech company. As a key advocate of OKRs, he decided to convince Google Founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to adopt OKRs at Google. It was a great success, and is still to this day, one of the pillars of Google's organizational culture, and management style.

Google leading the way, many other tech companies such as Airbnb, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Gap, Lear, Deloitte, and Adobe later adopted OKRs, some of them still using them today, others not. Indeed OKRs influence culture, and some tech companies found them incompatible with what they had in plans (Spotify for example).


Given the global popularity of OKRs over the last 70 years, and their continued pertinence for the future, I decided to create a OKR Excel and PowerPoint template, for any team or individual to use in their firm.

For it to work, it is strongly advised to align all top management, team leaders and individuals as to make sure all teams are focusing on the essential strategic objectives.

In OKRs, objectives and KRs are rarely met, so you have to be 100% okay with almost always being under complete completion. Remember, OKRs fix the direction, the essential is to be ambitious and to move forwards in that direction.

The Best Practice is:
- 2 Excel Models (one empty and one example)
- 2 editable Microsoft PowerPoint Template Slides (1 for the Objectives Dashboard, and one to analyse a specific objective)
- with an online & offline 24 step-by-step methodology, with pedagogical illustrations for each step.

Should you have any questions about this top tier Objectives and Key Results OKRs Framework, you're welcome to reach out to me via Private Message.

Good Luck!
- Tim

Other ressources on OKRs:

- The OKR Method, by Project Management and Collaboration SaaS software, Wimi : https://www.wimi-teamwork.com/blog/okr-method-objectives-company/
- Using OKRs for Teams, not for individuals, by Harvard Business Review : https://hbr.org/2020/12/use-okrs-to-set-goals-for-teams-not-individuals
- A history of OKRs by Plai : https://www.plai.team/blog/history-of-objectives-and-key-results
- Comprehensive definition of OKRs, by Whatmatters : https://www.whatmatters.com/faqs/okr-meaning-definition-example