Organizations adopt OKRs to drive the following parameters forward:
Alignment
Performance
Focus
Engagement
In this guide, we will show you how to do this by using Gtmhub.
Setup
The first thing you need to do is to decide the OKR cycle of the company.
Before doing so, you should keep in mind that companies typically plan OKRs in quarters (3-month periods). However, it’s not uncommon for smaller and larger companies to use shorter (1 or 2 months) and longer (6 to 12) periods of time, respectively.
To setup your company’s cadence, follow these steps:
Navigate to the OKRs screen
From the drop-down menu choose Manage sessions
Click on the Create a session button
Define your first session for the current quarter by filling in the Title and Timeframe sections and then click the CREATE SESSION button
After doing this, you’re ready to start driving your organization towards improving the alignment, performance focus, and productivity parameters.
You can learn more about OKR sessions in this article.
Alignment
Goal: Set top-level objectives so that your teammates can align their objectives with the company ones.
To do so, follow these steps:
Navigate to Gtmhub OKRs screen
From the drop-down menu choose the respective session you want to add an objective to
Click on the Add new objective button
Define your objective as follows:
Write your objective: Increase demand
Short description: Last quarter we've improved our sales process and closing rates, so to deliver on our targets we now need to focus on top of the funnel.
Owner: Use Assign to me button to take ownership of the objective
Alignment: Leave this empty, as this is a top-level objective
5. Click on the Save objective button
Congratulations! You've just shared your top-level objective with everyone in the company. This is the first step towards achieving alignment in your organization.
To learn more about defining your OKRs, we recommend reading the following blog post: Anatomy of an OKR: How to set your OKRs.
Now, let's invite some of the teammates to Gtmhub. After all, one cannot align with oneself.
Navigate to People screen
From the drop-down menu choose Employees
Click on the Invite people button
Enter the First name, Last name and Email of your teammate
Click on the Invite users button
After inviting your team members to join Gtmhub, you can then start defining objectives for them. For better illustrating purposes, the top-level objective that we just created in the previous step will also be used in the following example.
There are three ways of setting OKRs in an organization: top-down, bottom-up and negotiation. Even though we recommend negotiation as being the best approach, in this case we will use a top-down approach for the sake of simplicity.
To do so, follow these steps:
Navigate to OKRs screen
From the drop-down menu choose the respective OKR session
Click on the Add new objective button
In this example, we will define a child objective that will support our top-level objective to Increase demand. Define it as follows:
Write your objective: Increase organic traffic
Short description: Inbound marketing is the area where we can significantly improve and organic traffic has traditionally been source of high quality leads
Owner: Start typing the name of the colleague to whom you wish to assign the objective and then select him or her from the selector
Alignment: Click on the Select button and choose Increase demand objective
Click on the Save objective button
By aligning this objective with the top-level objective of Increasing demand, we have started to achieve an alignment within our organization. In order to define the goals and strategy for the current period, we should repeat this process right from the start.
You can navigate to the Alignment subsection under the OKRs screen view to see visual representation of objectives within your organization.
Performance
Goal: Define key results that will allow us to track and improve performance against our objectives.
Once we have defined the objectives, we can now start defining key results which are effectively success metrics.
Navigate to OKRs screen
From the drop-down choose the respective OKR session
Click on the Increase demand objective
Click on the Add a key result button
Define your first key result as follows:
Name: 100 new opportunities
Type of key result: Number
Initial value: 0
Target: Should increase to 100
6. Click on the Save button
Typically, best practices point out that every objective should have 2-4 key results defined. To learn more about choosing key results for your objectives, you can read the Anatomy of an OKR: How to set your OKRs blog post.
Attaching quantitative key results to objectives defines the tactics behind achieving objectives but also gives everyone an insight how well is the organization performing.
As your organization grows, the OKRs > Statistics view will become indispensable as it shows aggregated performance of all the OKRs in the given session.
Focus
Goal: Make sure everyone is focused on what's important and that OKRs won't become a laundry list of things that would be nice to do.
OKRs are as much about what will not be done as they are about what will be done. When just starting out, many organizations fall a pray to defining too many objectives.
Gtmhub helps you manage this process by limiting the number of objectives a person can have in any given session as well as number of key results any given objective can have.
Here’s how to do so in a few simple steps:
Click on the Settings icon on the upper right corner
Go to the Configuration subsection
Scroll to the bottom
Set following values:
Limit the number of objectives per user: 1
Click Save button
Limit the number of key results per objective: 3
Click Save button
OKRs best practices recommend that there are up to 3 objectives per person and up to 4 key results per objective. However, in practice, we have found out that organizations that start with more limited approach of 1 objective per user and 3 key results per objective are more successful in adopting OKRs.
By limiting the number of objectives any given person can have, we enforce radical focus within our organization.
Engagement
Goal: Celebrate every victory, give credit where it's due, and advice where needed.
People are engaged when they have a purpose and when their contributions are being recognized. As companies grow, this simple fact can often be overlooked. OKRs and Gtmhub, however, help you keep this essential part of the culture as you scale.
First, through transparency and alignment of the objectives, it’s easy for every team member to know what is going on and how she contributes to the mission.
Secondly, Gtmhub provides an easy way for everyone to give feedback and praise.
To do that, just follow these simple steps in order:
Navigate to OKRs view
Select the respective session
Select the Increase organic traffic objective
Scroll at the bottom and leave a comment
Click on the Post button
Summary
In this definitive guide, we have demonstrated how OKRs and Gtmhub can help you drive alignment, performance, focus, and engagement throughout your entire organization.
Gtmhub has been engineered for achieving an overwhelming simplicity and lowering the barriers for OKRs adoption. To learn more about the sophisticated features of Gtmhub, browse our documentation portal or schedule a demo.
"Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay