Learn about the most important and latest trends shaping the world of Business Planning and Execution with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). While AI plays an important role, there is more to it.
Key Trends in OKRs
1. Emphasis on Employee Engagement & Employee Experience:
OKRs Setting, Tracking & Reviewing are not just top-down exercises. Companies are using OKRs to enable more employee involvement in the goal-setting process, boosting ownership, alignment, and motivation. OKRs can also support the feedback culture in an organisation by facilitated workshops, aligned weekly check-ins and bottom-up feedback channels for strategy and company OKRs. Furthermore we advise clients to run a quarterly retrospective exercise on the OKR process itself and have certified OKR Champions to facilitate the process.
2. Transparency & Cross-team Collaboration & Alignment
OKR target an success data are becoming more transparent in organisation by using OKR tools or shared files. This promotes visibility into the goals and progress of other teams and departments, fostering collaboration and reducing silos. Companies are combining top-down strategic OKRs with bottom-up, team-driven OKRs to bridge the gap between overall direction and individual contributions. Therefore we advise to make OKRs visible on each level in the entire organisation and run cross-team OKR workshops to e.g. set-up project or customer experience OKRs.
3. Use of AI and Automation for OKRs
Artificial intelligence is finding its way into OKR tools. The main used-cases are more AI-powered goal & results recommendations, progress predictions, and automated reporting to streamline the OKR process. Automation is a bit a two-edged sword as automated results (e.g. by connecting Epics and Issues in Jira or milestones in other tools) can speed up the process, but can also defy the alignment and collaboration focus of OKRs. Ideally weekly OKRs should not only be result progress updates but also root-cause and brainstorming meetings to understand why a results progresses or not and what are the next actions.
4. Integration with Data & Analytics Tools:
OKR Platforms are integrating data analytics to provide real-time progress tracking, and offer insights that drive better decision-making and course adjustments. Furthermore most OKR Platforms can be integrated with your current action / task or project management tool for data-driven OKRs, which means key results are being linked to real-time data dashboards, providing continuous feedback on progress. Furthermore Bots and AI assistants integrated into communication platforms like Slack are used to facilitate regular check-ins, updates, and nudges. Click here more tips on choosing the right OKR software
5. OKRs Beyond Business Purpose:
OKRs are not confined to businesses anymore. Non-profits, education, and even personal goal setting are seeing increasing adoption of the OKR framework. Furthermore we also see a mix of OKRs & KPIs in bigger and more traditional corporations to enhance agility and short-termed quarterly goal setting for projects with more rigid yearly success KPIs. We successfully implemented that for government clients in Singapore.
Why Do These Trends Matter
The OKR world is changing because the world of work is changing. These trends emphasize mainly:
Agility in a complex environment
The need for data-fueled decisions
Empowerment and active engagement of employees
For more information how to implement OKRs successfully please contact us on transform@asiapmo.com or on our contact form.
This blog was written by Carsten Ley, Entrepreneur, Enabler & Project Lead in Customer Experience, Project & Business Transformation leading large scale project implementations in Retail, E-commerce, Banking, Consulting & Experience Management for companies like Deloitte Germany, VW Mexico, Rolls-Royce UK, Lazada Vietnam and H&M South East Asia. He founded 2018 Asia PMO, a consulting firm focussing on getting clients fast and efficient into implementation of company objectives, customer & employee experience improvements to foster a result- and team-oriented environment.