Single-minded focus to OKRs is the secret to the future of your business

Taking yourself out of the day-to-day running of your business for even a short period of time to focus on your future strategic objectives can sometimes seem an impossible dream.

You’re too busy dealing with your team, customers, suppliers and emails to even think about the important strategic priorities of your business.

But while setting strategic objectives might be difficult, doing so is invaluable to the future of your business.

In his book, Measure What Matters: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth, John Doerr explains OKRs. His passion is based on their simplicity and their power to help teams identify and accomplish their goals.

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, a simple goal-setting system that provides a structured way for teams and individuals to set and achieve their goals.

OKRs help to create clarity, focus, accountability, alignment and momentum to deliver real results.

Objective – WHAT do you want to achieve?

The objective should be significant, concrete, action-oriented and inspiring.

The objective should be hard; the point is to push yourselves as a team. As Doerr writes, “when properly designed and deployed, they’re a vaccine against fuzzy thinking — and fuzzy execution.”

Key Results – HOW are you going to achieve your objective?

Key results should be specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic, measurable and verifiable.

They enable you to set assessable milestones to monitor your progress.

Used correctly, OKRs will help you work out and execute the objectives of your business.