OKRs for Start-ups
Distraction is the cause of all evil.
A day in a well-established corporate office is vastly different from a day in a start-up. Your day-to-day activities are usually structured in a corporate office. You probably know what you are going to work on for the day and might possibly even know how long it will take for you to complete your activities and be done for the day. Start-up life is usually anything but structured. It can be chaotic. One moment you are passing product requirements to your developer; next you are articulating your well-practiced sales pitch and 30 minutes later, you are working on a Marketing Content in Canva.
The problem is, in a start-up, everything might seem important. You might spread yourself too thin trying to work on everything. What's worse is that you might unintentionally force your employees to do so as well. And when the stress gets real, you and your employees risk a job burnout.
OKRs drives focus
A strategic planning framework, like OKR, brings clarity to you and to your organization. And clarity brings in focus. OKRs are an effective way to drive focus back to what matters most now.
OKRs help communicate goals and set expectations
OKRs promote transparency and help set expectations. Everyone knows what the company is trying to achieve. This will help you communicate what everyone should be working on and what the expected outcome should be. If you don't see any progress on your objectives after some time, it means your teams' day-to-day activities are not aligned with the company's goals. This is where a project management software like TaskBeri can help you with achieving alignment between company level goals and teams' day-to-day activities.
OKRs promote Growth Mindset
OKRs are supposed to be ambitious in nature. If your goal is up the revenue by 2M, try setting a target of 3M. OKRs are often called as moon shots. If you plan for the moon and fail, you will at least be among the stars. The Growth Mindset is contagious. And it urges you to go out of your comfort zone to achieve your goals.
A quick recap on what OKRs are. OKRs stand for Objectives and Key Results. It helps you answer:
An objective should be easy to understand. It should provide a sense of direction. It should be ambitious and inspiring.
A key result should be relevant to the objective. It should be measurable, and time bound.
Here's a simple example of an OKR:
