Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a trending methodology for collaborative goal-setting invented by Andy Grove (Intel) and made famous by Google, which still uses it today. Companies implement OKRs primarily to execute their strategy, communicate what their top priorities are, and align teams and individuals on what is most important. Read how we use OKRs to grow our business at Safetica.
Why OKRs at Safetica?
When Richard Brulik joined Safetica as the new CEO in 2020, he first used the term OKRs during one of our management meetings: “We should use OKRs to execute, communicate and measure the success of our strategy.” Execution, communication and measurement of our success became the focus of our work with OKRs. The other benefits we were looking for were alignment, growth, increased transparency, and better cross-functional collaboration.
What Do OKRs Bring Us?
After 3 quarters of running OKRs, we did an evaluation of realized OKRs benefits (the solid color) and benefits employees would like to see in the future (the lighter color). Alignment, Transparency, and Track Progress to Goals were desired and mostly realized benefits in our org. The focus was also rated highly but there was a gap indicating that some people would like to get an even better focus. And the biggest gap was for sure in Cross-team Cooperation.
OKRs help us grow, shine a spotlight, and align everyone with the top priorities of our business.
How Do We Use OKRs?
We set OKRs based on a strategy that aligns with our vision and mission. From the strategy, we define a set of company-wide OKRs that are typically set for 1 year. These company OKRs represent our top priorities for the year and define how we will measure our success. At the next level, we invite key contributors and set Shared or Team OKRs that align with the company-wide OKRs. OKRs on the second level are typically set for a quarter. OKRs are here to help our company fulfill its mission while staying aligned with the vision and our core values as demonstrated in the picture below.
We have weekly check-ins where we discuss the current results, roadblocks, and what we can do to improve the results. At the end of each quarter, we close the OKRs, do a review & retrospective, share the results, and set new OKRs for the upcoming quarter. These routines are the heartbeat of our OKR system and allow us to learn rapidly.
And What Are the 2022 Safetica OKRs?
To better illustrate how we work with OKRs, here are examples of our company-wide OKRs for 2022. Check out our main goals for this year!
- Double the efficiency of the entire Safetica ONE customer journey: The goal is to bring the best customer experience possible at all stages of the customer journey, and make our customers successful.
- Rapid growth by mastering the best practices of SaaS: We want to make excellent data protection easy with our new SaaS solution Safetica NXT.
- Safetica is the top Czech-based company in which to grow: The aim is to let our employees grow; this objective focuses on employee satisfaction and growth index.
And what have we learned by implementing and using OKRs? I have shared our experiences and tips for a successful implementation in this article. OKRs themselves are simple but accomplishing them is not easy. It is about changing the mindset, not being afraid to fail, and most importantly, to learn and improve.
