OKRs won’t help you, if you have no strategy 😭

How to write good OKRs and why many scale-ups struggle

I am working with product companies since 2015. Many struggled with implementing OKRs. One company I worked with, however, had massive success. Let’s explore together what they did differently.

The company is a 3yr old b2b SaaS startup w/ product/market-fit & on their way to Series A.

Their product is all about managing construction costs for small architecture offices. Their customers conduct a lot of tenders and are either a) using Excel or b) using industry-software (AVA) for that.

Their OKRs for 2022 (numbers have been changed)

What I like a lot here is:

1. There is a clear context — aka Strategy, aka having a plan. It is reflected in the why and the why now. If you have no clear company strategy yet, then you are simply not ready for OKRs.
2. The objectives are prioritized and follow the GEM model. If a critical resource can only be used for project a or project b, then the OKR prioritization informs the allocation.
3. The high-level HOW is figured out. E.g. the company is aligned on how to grow its user base (by scaling the “Excel-segment” through content marketing).
4. The OKRs focus on where they are the most meaningful: at org-level. For operational & tactical work, they use team-specific tools, such as Notion & Google Sheets. See image below:

This company doesn’t use team-OKRs. Instead OKRs are broken down into e.g. EPICs for the product teams. If multiple teams are working on a topic together, then it usually leads to a company initiative. Work-items can still be traced back to company OKRs, while maintaining the flexibility of visual work tools.

Common pitfalls that I have seen with other companies, that we managed to avoid:

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Summary

OKRs is a powerful tool, but just 1 out of many. You need a strategy before you start writing OKRs and it is better to have 3 good company-OKRs than 30 team-OKRs.

What are your thoughts? Did you encounter a company that is happy with their OKR implementation? Please share in the comments :)