OKR Impacts - real world experiences

Are you wondering whether OKRs could deliver significant benefits to your business? A study undertaken by Mooncamp of 40 diverse organisations that have implemented OKRs provides some fascinating insights into OKR impacts and challenges. If you're thinking about adopting OKRs, I recommend you read the full report, which is available for download here. But here are some highlights to whet your appetite.

Businesses have diverse reasons for implementing OKRs. OKRs are a great tool for ensuring strategy execution, and 80% of businesses said this was a very important or extremely important reason for introducing OKRs. But that's not all OKRs are good for!

Reflecting their versatility, other very or extremely important reasons cited for introducing OKRs included:

• to increase transparency about goals and performance (88% of businesses)

• increase communication between staff and teams (75%)

• support change and transformation (70%)

• improve team prioritisation (78%)

• increase team focus (78%)

• improve alignment between teams (75%).

OKRs lived up to expectations, delivering positive impacts across multiple dimensions, with the greatest impacts being experienced in:

• increasing transparency about goals and performance (average impact score of 4.3 out of 5),

• ensuring strategy execution (3.7)

• increasing team focus (3.8)

• improving team prioritisation (3.8)

• improving alignment between teams (3.6)

Perhaps not surprisingly given the positive impacts businesses experienced after introducing OKRs, 83% reported that OKRs have benefited their company overall and OKRs as a management framework achieved an NPS of 41 and an average NPS score of 8.5/10.

Participating businesses also provided some great insights into challenges and success factors when introducing OKRs. Some key learnings are:

• Communication is the most important factor in the success of OKRs

• Prioritising important issues can be challenging, as can separating these from BAU

• Setting up OKR processes and methodologies requires careful planning and ongoing commitment

• Defining an overarching business strategy is essential to guide OKR users

• OKRs often require a shift from output-targeted thinking to outcome-targeted thinking, and employees need to be supported through this transition

While implementing OKRs may require initial effort and a shift in mindset, the potential benefits are substantial. By focusing on key outcomes and aligning teams around shared goals, businesses can achieve greater success and drive innovation.