Setting OKRs is a great way to improve performance by rallying your team around clear, action-oriented goals.
The best OKRs are ambitious, but realistically achievable, within reasonable deadlines.
In this post, we’ll look at how to set and manage your own company OKRs using an integration between OKR management software Weekdone and workflow management software Process Street.
We’ll cover:
- OKR management best practices
- How to automate your OKRs with Process Street & Weekdone
- Supercharge your OKRs with a workflow management platform
OKR management best practices
Set goals for teams, not individuals
OKRs function best as team-based goals. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be clear ownership of specific KPIs or tasks associated with moving the dial on the main OKR.
Rather, the whole team should have buy-in for top-level OKRs and understand that the work they do on a day-to-day basis is an important contribution to the OKRs set on a team or departmental level.
Horizontalize knowledge & cultivate transparency
To cultivate knowledge sharing and have everyone move in the same direction you need to allow transparency throughout the entire organization. Ideas and pieces of information, like pieces of a puzzle, need to connect to produce a bigger picture. This is not about sharing high-level financial targets; transparency comes from meaningful discussions led by the OKR process.
It begins with communicating company OKRs for the quarter with context and background information such as:
- What problems are we facing?
- What areas should we improve?
- What’s stopping us?
Encouraging everyone to share ideas and participate in these discussions creates an environment for effective communication among teams and individuals.
A knowledge management tool could help you build an internal knowledge base that lists company policies and procedures, as well as OKR documents and processes designed to support your team’s OKRs.
Use an OKR management tool
By using OKR management tools like Weekdone you can build transparent, easily-accessible reports and dashboards for your OKRs, facilitating weekly check-ins (plans, progress, and problems), comments, and updates.
When using an OKR management software like this, you have the potential to integrate your OKRs set inside of the software with the processes and documentation you maintain elsewhere.
It’s also easy to automate reporting to communication platforms like Slack, and clearly see what tasks & activities went into accomplishing a given goal.
Automate your OKRs with Process Street & Weekdone
Let’s look at an example of a customer-success related OKR, and how you might set up an automated system to make the tracking and reporting of such an OKR effortless for your team.
Example: Customer Success OKR
Example objective: To improve the support team’s performance.
Example key results: To have 2 training sessions conducted per quarter to optimize performance, and have 95% of the team maintaining a personal score/rating of more than 8/10.
Step 1: OKRs defined & set up in Weekdone
Start by clearly defining your OKRs and setting them up in an OKR management software like Weekdone.
Step 2: New Objective triggers a Process Street workflow
The creation of a New Objective in Weekdone (e.g. “Improve support team performance”) triggers a Process Street Workflow (in this case, a workflow like “Assess support team performance this week”) with a dynamic due date for the end of the week.
Step 3: Complete the Process Street Workflow to automatically update the OKR in Weekdone
By the end of the week, data has been collected via the Process Street Workflow about the performance, and the Workflow Run can be completed to coincide with the final report of the end of the week.
Completing the Workflow Run then triggers an Update Item in Weekdone where the findings for that week are updated.
Step 4: Trigger an automatic message report to Slack
Weekdone can then deliver the report for that week in the form of a Slack message to facilitate horizontal communication & transparency.
Supercharge your OKRs with a workflow management platform
Now you can automatically track your OKRs from your Slack HQ in a way that facilitates horizontal knowledge sharing and transparency in your organization.
The kind of work tracking & reporting that a workflow management platform offers is a great way to fast track your OKRs and ensure the whole team is on the same page when it comes to understanding the action items required to move the dial on your most important goals.
By clearly setting out OKRs in Pages, and using an OKR management tool like Weekdone for reporting in combination with Process Street’s Workflows to streamline & automate manual tasks, you can create a well-oiled machine that allows you to focus on doing the important work that will make the most impact.
Sign up to a Process Street trial here (Pages is free, forever, for your whole team).
If you want to read more about OKR management & goal setting, check out these two additional resources:
- How to Meet Goals and Inspire Your Team Using OKRs (Includes OKR Examples)
- How We Smash Tough Goals and Objectives With OKRs (& How You Can, Too!)
What tools do you use to keep track of OKRs in your team? Let us know what has worked for you (or what hasn’t) in the comments below!
Oliver Peterson
Oliver Peterson is a content writer for Process Street with an interest in systems and processes, attempting to use them as tools for taking apart problems and gaining insight into building robust, lasting solutions.