THE

GOAL-SETTING
HANDBOOK
O B J EC TIVES & KE Y
RES U LTS (O KRS)

Robin Weninger & Sophia Bolz

THE GOAL-SETTING HANDBOOK
—
Objectives & Key Results (OKRs)

Originally published by

shapingwork
 3 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

Table of
Content
—
1. INTRODUCTION 5

2. THE BASICS OF OKRS 6

3. SUCCESS FACTORS OF OKRS 8

4. VALUE OF OKRS 11

5. OKRS IN ACTION 12

6. OBJECTIVE-DRIVEN CULTURE 17

7. FINAL WORDS 20

8. ABOUT 21
 “A goal
without a plan
is just a wish.”
J E F F RI CH
1. INTRODUCTION 5 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

1. INTRODUCTION
—

Goals are the core, the indispensable nuts and bolts of each company.

Whether they realise it or not and whether goals are clearly defined or ‘unwritten laws’ that
everyone agrees on, organisations need goals that are building a basis for all their actions.
Goals provide orientation and get your company going. However, they are useless if they are
locked away in the dusty archives of your office or long-forgotten software packages.

Effective goals that lead to success must be transparent across the entire company and
aligned with the organisation’s vision. They need to be formulated in a way that they get your
employees committed and focused on contributing to the company’s success. A successful
goal-setting framework is the Objective and Key Results (OKRs) approach.

Objective and Key Results is a goal-setting framework that helps to identify what your company
desires to achieve and how to get there. Thus, it represents a valuable tool that can support an
organisation’s performance in several ways.

Throughout this book, you will learn what objectives, key results and key performance
indicators (KPIs) are and how they work together in a holistic goal-setting approach.

The benefits of OKRs are presented to show you what you will get from establishing this
goal-setting framework at your organisation. Furthermore, the book explains how OKRs can
effectively be implemented by leading you through the entire process from defining a corporate
vision on to formulating OKRs and over to reviewing them.

After having learned how to introduce OKRs, the last chapter provides tips on how to ingrain
the methodology within your company and create an objectivedriven company culture.
2. THE BASICS OF OKRS 6 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

2. THE BASICS
OF OKRs
—
Starting in the 1970s, technology leaders of Intel and Oracle developed the goal-setting
model based on traditional management and goal-setting approaches such as MBOs
(Management by Objectives) and SMART Objectives. Around 20 years later, John Doerr
introduced OKRs to Google whereby the methodology gained popularity.

OKRs enable managers and employees to define, track and measure goals in conformance
with their organisation’s overall vision.

Firstly, OKRs are defined from top-down so that team and individual goals can be aligned
with company objectives. However, individual and team results, ideas and feedback may
then influence the company’s OKRs reactively from bottom up. Thus, the methodology
makes goals transparent and visible within the entire company, which stimulates
alignment, cross-functional collaboration and gets organisations into a strategic flow.

OKRs are composed of objectives and key results which build a coherent system allowing
for monitoring through key performance indicators. But how exactly do these particular
elements look like? What needs to be considered in order to formulate them successfully?

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN OBJECTIVES, KEY RESULTS AND KEY

PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
—
What are Objectives? Fuzzy Side Note:
Objectives define what shall be achieved and, hence, describe desired outputs. They are There may be different meanings
strategic and qualitative as well as motivational. At the same time, they should be challenging, for the terms ‘Objectives’ and ‘Key
meaning their accomplishment requires high effort and commitment. Hence, setting Results’ as they are used in the
ambitious goals implies to take risks. Google and several other enterprises, thus, regard OKRs methodology. What is called
reaching sixty to seventy percent of your objectives as optimum level of achievement. OKRs ‘Objective’ in the OKRs framework
do not serve as evaluation tool but rather as a base for a progress based, steady development is usually known as ‘Goal’. However,
of new objectives. what the OKRs approach names
‘Key Result’ is mostly referred to as
Generally, there are two types of objectives: Operational objectives are related to a company’s ‘Objective’ in the business world.
metrics whereas aspirational objectives provide ‘bigger picture ideas’. The latter can originate
from each company level while operational goals are either defined by the management on
the company level or by employees on departmental levels.

What are Key Results?

Key Results have to be established in order to show how the objectives shall be realised.
2. THE BASICS OF OKRS 7 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

Serving as milestones, they must be formulated concretely and as well be measurable. Like
this, key results determine how the accomplishment of the previously set objectives can be
measured and evaluated afterwards. In addition, they enable grading of the objectives.

If you compare Objectives and Key Results the following dimension can be distinguished:

Definition
Objective: Something you want to achieve
Key Results: Concrete achievements supporting the realisation of objectives

Time Frame
Objective: Quarterly
Key Results: Individual

Measurement
Objective: In general not measurable
Key Results: In general measurable via KPIs

Characteristics
Objective: Qualitative, Motivational, Strategic, Ambitious
Key Results: Quantitative, Concrete

Action
Objective: Generic
Key Results: Specific

What are Key Performance Indicators?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics that can be calculated based on data. They
can be referred to as the organisation’s heart beat as they measure how your company is
performing. KPIs are measured on a defined, regular basis and help to understand what has
happened during a certain time period.

An example for a typical KPI would be the number of sales. You could, for instance, measure
the number of cars your sales representatives have sold during a specific time frame.

Based on such measurements, performance can be reviewed and the effectiveness of goals
can be analysed. KPIs provide an overview of where support from the management is needed.
3. SUCCESS FACTORS OF OKRS 8 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

3. SUCCESS FACTORS
OF OKRs
—
When formulating OKRs, there are several factors that should be considered in order to
be successful:

TRANSPARENCY AND ALIGNMENT

—
Objectives only work if they are transparent for everyone within the company and aligned to
the corporate vision. Hereby, transparency is a prerequisite for alignment. Without knowing
what your colleagues are working on and without being aware of your company’s top
priorities, you cannot ensure to contribute as effectively as possible to the overall goal. The
exigency of making objectives visible throughout the entire company becomes clear when
having a look at a research conducted by Donald Sull. His survey points out that only a third
of senior managers can correctly identify their firms’ top three priorities.

When it comes to aligning goals, it is crucial to understand that goal-setting needs to take
place on different levels within an organisation. The highest level of objectives are company
goals providing the ‚big picture‘ and corporate orientation.

Team or departmental objectives show, which prioritises the respective team should
concentrate on. They are not simply a gathering of individual objectives of team members
but rather provide a road map for the entire team. Every employee’s individual objectives are
the lowest level and include specific actions and goals they need to work on. In either case,
the objectives must be linked to the goals of the upper level, meaning they have to align with
the organisation’s corporate vision.

MEASURABILITY AND MONITORING

—
Simply enunciating objectives is, however, not going to help when they are not linked to
measurable results. And this is where key results are appearing on the scene.

As described in the previous chapter, key results should be measurable which does not
only include measuring progress but also the overall performance. Use your key results to
transform the qualitative objectives that have been set before into quantitative metrics.

Once objectives and key results have been set, the goal-setting framework can further
be supplemented by key performance indicators (KPIs) which are used to measure
the organisation’s status quo. Providing feedback on the overall as well as individual
performances and achievement of OKRs, KPIs represent a valuable tool for companies
using the OKRs approach which is not directly related to performance evaluation itself.
3. SUCCESS FACTORS OF OKRS 9 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

—Peter Drucker

To better understand the correlation between objectives, key results and key performance
indicators, have a look at the following example:

Imagine your customers have been complaining about your products or services. In this case,
you will likely set the goal to improve customer satisfaction. Though, this is not going to get
you anywhere since you did not yet determine any measurable key results. Therefore, it is
necessary to add milestones such as closing thirty customer support tickets each week and
reducing customer hold time by twenty per cent. Finally, you should define KPIs that will
enable you to measure your outcomes.

Teresa Amabile of the Harvard Business School found out that monitoring progress on your
way towards reaching your goals raises the success rate of accomplishment, especially if it is
reported publicly. A meta-analysis of 138 studies with a total of 19,952 participants conducted
by Benjamin Harkin of the University of Sheffield, in addition, shows that the success rate
increased even more as the frequency of monitoring activities has been increased.

TERMINABILITY, LIMITATION AND GRADING

—
All good things come to an end and so do your objectives. The business world has never been
changing faster than in today’s times. Thus, objectives may also require changes from time
to time, which is why they should be terminated. Set quarterly time frames for formulating,
implementing and reviewing your objectives. Every three months you and your team should
evaluate whether the OKRs are still reasonable. If they are not relevant anymore due to
altered circumstances, objectives and key results, as well as KPIs for the next quarter, should
be revised accordingly.

Furthermore, the number of objectives set on each level should be limited to maximum five
goals at a time. In terms of key results, it is recommended to define a maximum of four key
results per objective. Otherwise, employees may lose control and their focus may shift away
from important objectives or key results.

“If we look at great inventors throughout history, all

innovation, or creation as I like to call it, comes from
small wins. It comes from exploiting and learning
from the thousands of “so-called mistakes” along the
way in which one’s initial approach did not work.”
—Peter Drucker
3. SUCCESS FACTORS OF OKRS 10 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

At the end of each quarter, objectives on each company level must be graded by the ones
responsible for their attainment. Hereby, reaching sixty to seventy per cent of your goals is
regarded as the desired average while forty per cent represent bad performance. However,
according to Google’s understanding of the OKRs methodology underachievement is rather
considered as learning opportunity than failure.

The grades should, furthermore, not be used to evaluate individual employees’ performances.
Grading OKRs is aimed at identifying which objectives and key results should continuously
be pursued or better be neglected or rethought. Further, the grading as such should not
take centre stage but stimulate the successful and committed execution of OKRs. In order
to transfer valuable information for the entire company, everyone needs to apply the same
grading scheme.
4. VALUE OF OKRS 11 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

4. VALUE OF OKRs
—

Setting OKRs across your company will make life easier and work better as you will get more
things done and spend less time and effort on time-draining meetings.

One of the major benefits of OKRs is the transparency of goals within the whole company.
Everyone is informed about what is happening in each department of the organisation.
Like this, a stronger sense of alignment and focus is created as everyone works towards
the same vision. Plus, transparent OKRs can help leveraging work as people are enabled to
see what is going on all across the organisation. By this, they are enabled to either combine
activities, source work from other individuals or teams or outsource certain activities to
colleagues. This avoids duplication of work and increases the quality.

OKRs foster disciplined thinking and provide purpose. They do not only emphasise the
major objectives but also give employees an understanding of why they are doing what
they are doing. Making conscious decisions on what needs to be focused on is facilitated by
applying the OKRs methodology. Moreover, knowing the goals of each colleague stimulates
empathy and increases team spirit. However, OKRs also increase the intrinsic motivation
of each individual and thereby, also the productivity within the entire company. As the
organisation grows it will be easy to get new employees committed because OKRs enable a
more accurate communication of the corporate vision.

The improved communication and transparency help to coordinate the company’s

workflow more effectively which makes the goal-setting framework especially valuable for
large organisations.

Lastly, OKRs are perfectly matchable with the utilisation of KPIs that allow a company to
measure their performance. OKRs provide a clear picture of what needs to be measured
facilitating the establishment of appropriate KPIs. However, results of the analysis can, in
turn, be easily reflected in the OKRs by revising them if required.
5. OKRS IN ACTION 12 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

5. OKRs IN ACTION
—

OKRs are a multi-step process leading from the corporate level down to the individual level
and thus, include everyone within the company.

5.1. VISION AND STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

—

“Vision is a destination - a fixed point to which we

focus all effort. Strategy is a route - an adaptable
path to get us where we want to go”
—Simon O. Sinek

Before starting to establish actual objectives and key results it may be useful to conduct a
brainstorming in order to bethink yourself of the overall vision as well as upcoming strategic
initiatives and projects. Collecting and arranging all topics according to their priority makes
it easier to focus on the right things when defining OKRs.

HOW TO CREATE A COMPELLING VISION?

—
If your company has not yet formulated a concise vision, this should first be done. Due to the
fact that the vision describes an organisation’s long-term orientation, it builds the basis for
the short-term objectives set during the OKRs process.

Think of a vision as a picture of what your company should look like in the future. What do you
want to see on the canvas? What makes your picture special and unique? What are the things
you are proud of and what are you working on?

When setting up a vision two things are important. First of all, the vision must be motivating
and aspirational. Every day your people have to wake up and feel inspired by your vision to
make it a reality. Second, your vision needs an emotional component. Your vision has to create
an identity for your people and make them attached to their work.

Setting a suitable vision is a tough work but there are some steps to follow that make the job
easier:
5. OKRS IN ACTION 13 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

• Get your people aboard

A vision is not something you create in the dark without anybody knowing about it. Get your
people involved in the process and ask them for input. How do they see your organisation in
the future?

• Layer all the input together and create a “best of”

Put all the information together and set up a list of priorities. Is there something people
mention all the time?

• Draft a first vision statement

Make it long if you like, it is not about making the perfect vision right know. Just formulate a
first draft that includes everything that is important

• Find a common language

Translate your vision in a way that everybody understands it. Use simple language that makes
people feel comfortable talking about it, without having to look up every second word

• Make it easy
Now comes the hardest part. Make your vision simple. Get rid of everything unnecessary and
get it down to a single sentence

• Make it operational
A vision without action is useless. So you have to make it operational. Formulate strategic
initiatives that will make your vision reality. They define what you want to achieve in the
mid and long term. Strategic initiatives also enable you to cluster OKRs and help to align the
entire tree of objectives

5.1. VISION AND STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

—
Another aspect to consider before OKRs are defined, is to assign an OKRs Champion who
understands this management framework well. As your expert, the assigned employee
will be able to aid the organisation with getting started and implementing the approach
effectively. In addition, an OKRs Champion should have the competency to motivate fellow
colleagues to get engaged and commit themselves to OKRs. He or she is the one responsible
for ensuring the successful execution of the OKRs process.

5.3. COMPANY, TEAM AND INDIVIDUAL OKRS

—
Company OKRs
Now it is time to establish your first OKRs. This process starts at the highest level, the
company level. You have to think about which outcomes your organisation desires to
achieve in the next quarter based on your predefined strategic initiatives. Define the most
important objectives of the company as a whole so that each team and individual can then
set their OKRs supporting the superior company objectives.

Team OKRs
In the next step, each team or department has to set its own OKRs. For this purpose,
analysing company OKRs is required with regard to the possible and needed contribution
of the respective department to reaching the target. Here, different teams will obviously
5. OKRS IN ACTION 14 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

identify different actions they need to undertake in order to add to the successful
completion of corporate goals. That is why the definition of distinct OKRs at each level is
of high importance. Furthermore, teams or departments have to get together to make sure
that all team OKRs are in line with each other as well.

Individual OKRs
Employees are the ones putting a company’s vision into action. They are the ones fulfilling
all the tasks that need to be done. Thus, you need to ensure that every individual within
your organisation knows his or her responsibilities and has a clear picture of his or her
role and position in the company. All employees must establish their personal OKRs which
conform with the objectives at team and company levels.

5.4. WEEKLY TEAM MEETING

—
All your OKRs are now set and everyone within the company can start working towards
their achievement. Even though each individual is responsible for their own goals, the
OKRs approach aims to not only make the desired outcomes transparent throughout the
entire organisation but also the progress that is being made. Thus, it is recommendable to
schedule weekly team meetings in order to determine the current state of your company’s
performance and what is coming up next. These meetings should, however, be well prepared
so that you do not waste valuable working time.

First of all, you need to schedule the meeting. Besides setting a date, time and venue for the
meeting, you have to invite all employees to attend the meeting.

When starting the meeting, you should present the agenda informing everyone which
topics will be touched. The main focus should always lie on collecting information from
your employees concerning their progress. Therefore, preparing specific questions you will
ask may be useful.

During the meeting each employee should answer the following questions:
• Are you on track with your goals?
• What are your goals for next week?
• Can anyone help you to achieve your goals?
• Do you need any resources to reach your goals?
• What might put the achievement of your goals at risk?

Once you presented the questions, you need to give each employee time to answer them.
However, everyone should try to keep their answers short and concise so that the meeting
does not take too long.

In case your employees mention any problems concerning their goals and tasks, you should
arrange follow-up meetings to solve such issues. Make sure that everyone who is concerned
by the problem or could help to sort it out attends these meetings.

At the end of each team meeting, you should shortly sum it up and share its results company-
wide. Therefore, writing concise minutes during the meeting is helpful.

To get the most out of the weekly team meetings follow these five tips:
• Start and end meetings on time
5. OKRS IN ACTION 15 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

• Only focus on relevant topics

• Share the results with your organisation
• Try a stand-up meeting
• Add some fun!

5.5. QUARTERLY REVIEW OF OKRS

—
You have set all your objectives and key results on company, team and individual level and
every individual worked towards the achievement of them. Now, it is time to review your
OKRs and revise them if required.

Since today’s business world changes rapidly, the OKRs you set at the beginning of the
quarter may not seem reasonable anymore three months later. Thus, the framework
schedules quarterly time frames for setting goals. Like this, your company is able to react to
changes in the market but can still focus on achieving the set objectives. In contrast, annual
objectives would not allow for prompt adaptation to newly arising trends or requirements.
After three months you and your team should review the goals of the past quarter in order to
decide on whether to keep on going in the same way or to revise them according to altered
circumstances.

The following structure has been proven to be highly successful in practices:

• Get your team together

Since the OKRs methodology involves everyone within your company in the goal-setting
process, it is also crucial to get them involved in reviewing OKRs every three months.
Schedule a meeting and ask your employees to prepare reports about the achievements
they made during the last quarter regarding the implementation of their individual OKRs.

• Grade your OKRs

Grading OKRs on individual, team and company level within the organisation will help you
to get an overview on which goals have successfully been reached during the last OKRs
cycle. In order to be able to compare the grades in an optimal way, they must be based on
a corporate grading scheme. According to Google’s understanding of the OKRs approach,
the desired level of accomplishment should average out at sixty to seventy percent. This
results from the fact that goals are defined rather aspirational than definitely attainable
and thus, are not always easy to be achieved. Although reaching less than forty per cent
of your goals is regarded as bad performance, such failure will not be punished but rather
used as learning opportunity.

• Go on, revise or discard?

Now that all your OKRs have been graded, you need to decide whether to continuously
pursue or revise respectively neglect them. The grades you related to each OKRs provide a
basis for identifying if it will be worthwhile to maintain it. You can record goals that have been
fully achieved as successfully completed. Those goals that lie within the satisfactory sixty to
seventy per cent of accomplishment will likely be worthwhile to be continuously worked on.
However, you should carefully consider whether to revise or completely neglect OKRs that
have been graded below the desired average. Here it is important to take current changes
influencing your business into account. Goals that do not at all seem to be reasonable
anymore should be discarded so your company can focus on promising OKRs.
5. OKRS IN ACTION 16 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

• Redefine OKRs
You have already sorted out successfully completed OKRs, OKRs you will continuously
work on and those you are not going to consummate. What should now be left on your list
are such goals that require redefinition as they must be adapted to changes that occurred
during the past goal-setting cycle. Although they may not be reasonable anymore in their
current version, adjusting them to new circumstances can reassert them so that they
become valuable again.

• Formulate new OKRs

Now that you have reworked the OKRs of the past quarter, it is time to think about new
goals for the upcoming three months. Of course, there are already some OKRs set for the
next quarter which you determined throughout the previous steps of the goal reviewing
agenda. However, completely new goals should as well be formulated in order to keep
your organisation going and to enable growth, innovation and long-term survival.

SOME ADDITIONAL TIPS TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF OKRS:

—
Convince your team of the benefits of OKRs
Establishing the best objectives does not lead anywhere if your team does not embrace
the OKRs methodology. Communicating the value of OKRs in the right way will stimulate
motivation and commitment of your team and, thereby, help to incorporate the approach
into the business culture in the long term.

Illustrate your OKRs with a visual approach or software

Although OKRs can be implemented without any special technological tools, utilising a
visual approach or software to illustrate your company’s OKRs concept may help to make
it even clearer and easier to understand. Such visual approaches or software facilitate
tracking what is going on in the entire company and how individuals, as well as teams, are
contributing to the company’s overall goals and interacting with each other.
6. OBJECTIVE-DRIVEN CULTURE 17 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

6. OBJECTIVE-DRIVEN
CULTURE
—
Although setting OKRs is a big step forward for your company, it will not be of value if they are
not implemented successfully across the entire company.

To incorporate the goal-setting framework efficiently, changes of the organisation’s values

and culture may be required. What your company needs is an objective-driven culture since
this is the kind of working environment desired by today’s workforce.

If you are now thinking about how to get your organisation more objectivedriven, you should
think about how to establish the OKRs approach so that the whole company benefits from
it. The objectives need to be aligned from top-down but also bottom-up reactively. And
what is equally important is to convince everyone within your team of OKRs. Therefore, the
management needs to introduce OKRs and act as a role model in executing the new approach.

“There’s no magic formula for great company culture.

The key is just to treat your staff how you would like
to be treated.”
—Richard Branson

6 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF AN OBJECTIVE-DRIVEN CULTURE

—
Transparency
Each objective and key result — irrespective of its level — must be made visible to everyone.
This is of high importance as it provides context for what is happening within an organisation.
Further, your workforce gets a feeling for why their work matters — and exactly the answering
of the “WHY” motivates and gives a solid foundation to understand how daily tasks and
routines impact the bigger picture. Transparency gives employees the capability to prioritise
which tasks matter and aligns the organisation holistically. It reduces the time wasted for off-
track work significantly. Another benefit of transparency is the fact that it creates an identity
within the workforce and gets everybody aboard.

Accountability
Each employee needs to know his or her responsibilities and what is expected of him or
6. OBJECTIVE-DRIVEN CULTURE 18 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

her. Therefore, individuals should report on the processes concerned with their personal
OKRs in order to help to surface them and showing how they are linked to higher-level
OKRs. Accountability does not only provide guidance, it also accelerates performance. That
is because accountability leads to single responsibility. And single responsibility allows
leaders to coach better and to script critical steps towards the goal, which are then executed
with confidence. Furthermore, accountability triggers creative thinking and might enable
individuals to come up with better solutions.

Alignment
Alignment of the organisation must become one of the top priorities for you. This means that
objectives have to form an integral part of your company’s DNA. Furthermore, they need to
constantly remind your employees of the overall vision in order to keep them motivated and
committed. But not only the top-down processes benefit from alignment. Also, the bottom-up
processes get value out of alignment. An aligned organisation enables bottom-up information
to work along the goal structure and push important information to higher-level positions.
It can close the gap between strategic senior management and the operational workforce.
Moreover, it fosters closer collaboration among different hierarchy levels.

Collaboration
A well-established communication system is likely to stimulate teamwork. Like this, employees
are enabled to exchange their ideas and knowledge making collaboration more efficient and
productive. Collaboration benefits the whole organisation as the flow of ideas and creativity
leads to innovative solutions. However, collaboration is not about putting five people with the
same background that share the same opinion into a room. It is rather about joining different
thoughts and interdisciplinary teams and making them work together. Thus, collaboration
also embraces diversity and is open to the uncontroversial.

Execution
This simply means to not only set your OKRs but to ensure that they are being executed as
well. In order to monitor the accomplishment of goals, it is useful to record the progress made
in the implementation of each OKRs. Especially elements like transparency and collaboration
can raise the question „Who has the most (important) goals?“ potentially leading to group
pressure. This might damage the culture of working for what matters and make people set
random goals and to-do lists. When it comes to executing goals it is highly important to ensure
that everybody strives for the best possible instead of polishing the ego. That is also one of the
reasons why goals should not be used to grade employee performance.

“Execution really shapes whether your company takes

off or not.”
—Pete Cashmore

Recognition
Progress reports enable you to recognise good work. Reward well-performing team members
so as to keep them engaged and motivated. By providing incentives you can, moreover,
6. OBJECTIVE-DRIVEN CULTURE 19 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

increase the productivity of those employees who might not yet be hundred percent
committed to their tasks. Here are some proven best-practices to recognise work:

• Provide your team with experts

Train your staff members so they become experts in different areas. Like this, you enable
them to help their fellow colleagues if any difficulties arise. Moreover, your experts can
onboard new employees more effectively.

• Show gratefulness by writing thank you notes

Write personal thank you notes to your employees to express that you appreciate the effort
your team takes. Such nice touches are likely to motivate your staff to engage.

• Ask for feedback

Ask your employees to give feedback. Collect all potential problems and issues your staff
members mention. Use the gathered information to arrange training to improve your
employees’ skills and abilities.

• Reward good work with incentives

Incentives are another good way to stimulate employee engagement and commitment.
Reward staff members who deliver great work with personalised incentives that motivate
them to continuously be committed to achieving goals. There are different types of
incentives which can range from simply giving positive comments on good work to offering
small presents.

• Use gamification to motivate employees

To reward well-performing employees and to increase your employee motivation you might
want to try out gamification. This means to introduce some kind of ‚game‘ which enables
your team members to gain something if they show engagement and contribute to the
achievement of the organisation’s objectives. A good example for the implementation of
gamification is a leader board showing the bestperforming employees of a specific time
period. Another option would be to introduce a ‚wall of compliments‘ where everyone can
praise his or her fellow colleagues and leave positive comments about their achievements.
7. FINAL WORDS 20 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

7. FINAL WORDS
—

Goals build the basis for all actions an organisation undertakes. Without knowing where
you want to go, you cannot define what you need to do. OKRs is a goal-setting framework
deployed by Google in 1999 that helps companies to define and execute goals in order to get
more things done. Developed by technology leaders of Intel and Oracle based on traditional
methodologies such as SMART objectives and ‘Management by Objectives’ (MBO), OKRs puts
a special emphasis on transparency, alignment and collaboration.

Making objectives and key results visible across the entire company as well as aligning them
from the top to the individual level and vice versa commits employees to working towards the
corporate vision. OKRs give purpose and enable everyone to know what their colleagues are
working on. Like this, a stronger community cohesion is likely to develop and your organisation
will be more productive through improved collaboration. Furthermore, OKRs make time-
draining status meetings unnecessary and, hence, make it possible to considerably save time.
Combining the objectives and key results with strategic key performance indicators (KPIs)
allows for measurement of your organisation’s current state.

Since OKRs are formulated for quarterly time frames, the approach provides a perfectly
applicable goal-setting framework for today’s time. The business world is currently developing
and changing faster than ever before and therefore it is crucial to frequently review and revise
goals in order to survive in the long term.

Although OKRs provides many benefits, it does not lead anywhere if it is not implemented
in the right way. The methodology needs to be ingrained within the entire company. Since
leaders are the ones introducing OKRs to their organisations they must act as role models and
convince their employees of embracing the approach.

Finally, execution is what leads companies to success. Simply setting goals is not sufficient
but pursuing them in a disciplined manner will result in accomplishment and ultimately
to success.

Having read through this book you are now well-prepared and ready to get going with OKRs.
Take everyone in your company with you on a journey towards working more transparently,
aligned and focused in order to achieve the corporate vision of your organisation. Follow the
OKRs process from the vision and strategic initiatives and projects of your company down
to defining OKRs on the company level, the team level and the individual level. Make sure to
review OKRs frequently.

And, remember to establish an objective-driven culture as it will facilitate the adoption of

OKRs and at the same time improve the working environment.
8. ABOUT 21 © Zigurat Global Institute of Technology

8. ABOUT
—

ZIGURAT
—
Zigurat Global Institute of Technology is an educational institution that provides certified
qualifications, Master’s degrees and postgraduate courses to those who wish to achieve
professional development in architectural, engineering and digital business areas. Zigurat
has been offering qualified knowledge for the past 16 years, promoting continued growth in
the practices of architecture, engineering, building and technology development.

THE AUTHORS
—
Robin Weninger is a lecturer of the Digital Business Global Master at Zigurat Innovation &
Technology Business School and the Managing Director of the think-tank shapingwork. He
aims to influence and shape the future of work by impacting and designing the culture of
organisations with a holistic approach. With a focus on the digital evolution, Robin helps
companies find their digital mojo by getting a hold of the “Digital Mindset”. He works closely
together with universities, thought leaders and management thinkers to develop state
of the art management practices, frameworks and best-practices for action orientated
management. He designs individual coaching and training programs, helps organisations
create goal-setting framework and get into a strategic flow. Robin runs management
courses at business schools and was honoured as a Global Shaper by the World Economic
Forum in 2015.

Sophia Bolz is Business Development Manager at shapingwork. She engages herself in

academic research on the impacts of the ongoing digitalisation on businesses. Currently,
Sophia is developing a digital maturity model aiming to evaluate an organisation’s level of
digital readiness. In the same course she elaborated a digital roadmap that guides companies
on their road towards digital excellence.
IMPRINT
—
Zigurat Global Institute of Technology
Almogavers 66, 2º
08018 Barcelona, Spain
-
digital@e-zigurat.com

Originally published by shapingwork

© 2016 shapingwork. All rights reserved. Duplication,
translation and transferring, including abstracts and
electronic text, requires written approval of the publisher.

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Zigurat Global Institute of Technology
Almogavers 66, 2º
08018 Barcelona, Spain
(+34) 933 00 12 10 | digital@e-zigurat.com
-
www-e-zigurat.com/digital