A workshop on understanding the basics on using OKRs for your organisation. Ericsson's High Performing Team Environment (HTE) network Learnathon (learning marathon), February 2015.

1. OKRs
Objectives and Key Results
Nikos Batsios, Agile Coach/ScM @ IXG, PDU Mobile Core
Ericsson’s HTE Learnathon, 4th & 5th February 2015

2. –Jurgen Appelo
“OKRs? A good mix of common sense”

3. a little bit of history
Peter Drucker: MBOs
60’s
George Doran: SMART
80’s
Andy Grove: OKRs @ Intel
early 90’s
John Doerr: OKRs @ Google
late 90’s
Rick Klau: OKRs @ Google StartupLabs
2013

4. what are OKRs?
• OKRs are a framework to connect personal and
organizational goals. Could help in a simply way to
create structure for organizations, teams and
individuals.
• could be used as a self-improvement framework for
your personal life and for yourself at work.

5. how they work?
• first you set up an “objective”
• then you set-up a number of “key results”, that will
help you hit your objective
• then you decide how often you will reflect on your
learning and your improvement
• reflect, adapt, and re-start

6. what is an objective?
what <point_of_view> want to accomplish for the next
few months
• less is more, (4-6 objectives per quarter are enough)
• each objective should be ambitious and feel a bit
uncomfortable (stretch goals, slightly out of reach)
• the purpose is improvement not compliment
• keep them stable during the “working” period
< point_of_view >: my organization, my department, my team, myself

7. objectives examples
• I want to grow my agile coaching skills (personal)
• i want to be a healthy runner (Jurgen Appelo)
• improve Blogger’s reputation (Rick Klau)
• improve internal employee engagement

8. which are your objectives for the next few
months? {2’}

9. what are key results?
how <point_of_view> will accomplish the objective
• should clearly make the objective possible
• less is more (five or fewer per objective)
• you must define multiple key results (if one fails, you have
others)
• are quantifiable
• lead to objective grading
< point_of_view >: my organization, my department, my team, myself

10. key results examples
• i want to be a healthy runner
• run 75km per week
• run at least 10km per day
• average running time < 55min/10km
• no pain in my back, legs or feet
• improve blogger’s reputation
• re-establish Blogger’s leadership by
speaking at 3 industry events
• coordinate Blogger’s 10th birthday PR efforts
• ID and personally reach out of top xx
Bloggers users
• fix DMCA process, eliminate music blog
takedowns
• setup @blogger on twitter, regularly
participate in discussions re:Blogger product
• i want to grow my agile
coaching skills
• publish 3 new post in my personal blog
• read two new books
• read two articles per week
• practice 2 new insights from books/articles
with my teams
• improve internal employee
engagement
• average weekly satisfaction score of at least
4.8 points
• conduct weekly fun fridays all-hands meeting
with an external speaker
• implement OKR’s in all teams and
departments by January 31st

11. which are your key results for every objective
you have set for the next few months? {5’}

12. grading the OKRs
• regularly update each key result on a 0-100% or
0.0-1.0 scale
• 60-70% or .6-.7 should be your target
• score matters less than the process
• use low grades to reassess: worth doing? what will
we do different to achieve our objective?

13. grading example
• objective: grow my agile coaching skills (52.5%)
• key results:
• publish 3 new post in my personal blog (30%)
• read two new books (30%)
• read two articles per week (100%)
• practice 2 new insights from books/articles with my
teams (50%)

14. where to start in your
organization?
• commit to the OKRs process
• identify an OKRs “champion” who fully understand the benefits of the approach and
can support anyone on getting started or staying on track (CxO, line manager e.t.c)
• set OKRs on organization level, management level, team level, personal level. they
should all work together to keep the whole organization on track
• encourage bottom-up objectives (too much top-down dictation kills motivation and
aspiration)
• make them public to the whole organization
• communicate OKRs: make use of 1-1 conversations to develop, negotiage, review
personal OKRs, team meetings, stuff meetings e.t.c to set, negotiate, review,
achieve alignment
• experiment to find your own way

15. benefits
• discipline thinking (the major goals will surface)
• communicates accurately (lets everyone know what
is important)
• establishes indication for measuring progress
(shows how far along we are)
• focuses effort (keeps organizations in step with
each other)

16. consider the following
• OKRs must be supported by the entire organization..
Everyone should agree on their goals and priorities
• we should focus on setting measurable goals or
quantifiable targets
• should be aggressive yet realistic. should be stretched but
not to the point of breaking ourselves and our teams
• should not be connected to bonus payments, or
performance evaluations. it could be seen as an easy way
for someone to figure out what she/he was working on and
what had been accomplished

17. group exercise

18. our case study (10’)
• we are <your_team_name_goes_here>!
• we are passionate about helping organisations find
better ways of doing business
• we are doing that by creating the environment
where new insights can emerge! we are bringing
an ultimate conference experience in your city!

19. 2015 summit
we are bringing un ultimate
conference experience in
your city
programme
logistics
marketing
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20. sharing & reflections (5’)

21. inspiration
• Rick Klau, Startup Lab workshop: How Google sets goals:
OKRs
• Jurgen Appelo, What are OKRs? A good mix of common
sense
• BetterWorks, Getting Started with Objectives & Key
Results (OKRs)
• BetterWorks, Goal Science Best Practices
• Kris Duggan, Keys to OKR success: A Q&A with the Man
Who Introduced OKRs to Google, John Doerr

22. thank you