”Nothing… drives the morale and engagement of a team more than winning… People want to win. They want to make a contribution that matters.
Sean Covey and Chris McChesney
The beginning of a new year offers the perfect opportunity to set meaningful goals and have a year that is bigger, better, and more significant. If you’ve ever felt like your efforts are scattered or disconnected from the bigger picture at work, creating aligned personal OKRs—Objectives and Key Results—is the solution.
Aligned OKRs ensure that your individual leadership contribution is what your company needs from you in order to achieve it’s strategic priorities. This ensures you’re a high value leader and creates clarity and purpose in your daily efforts.
Sure, it’s already mid-February… but better now then never. So let’s dive into how you can set impactful Q1 personal OKRs and tools to help you succeed.
Why Personal OKRs Matter
Personal OKRs are not just about setting goals for yourself; they’re about ensuring your efforts contribute directly and maximally to your company’s success. This is true at every level in the company, although the focus of this post is top leaders reporting to the CEO. By aligning your OKRs with the broader organisational objectives, you can:
- Enhance focus: Concentrate on what truly matters in your role.
- Make bigger contributions: Ensure your work supports team and organisational priorities.
- Achieve measurable results: Use clear metrics to track and celebrate progress.
- Boost motivation: Find purpose and satisfaction in knowing your work has a tangible impact.
- Be an A-Player leader: Because the above points are what makes an A-Player leader an A-Player leader.
How to Set Q1 Personal OKRs
1. Start with the Big Picture: Review your company’s annual and quarterly objectives.
2. Define Inspiring Objectives: An Objective should be qualitative, ambitious, and meaningful. For example:
- Company OKR: Increase market share by 10% in Q1.
- Your OKR: Launch a targeted digital marketing campaign to massively grow new customers.
3. Create Measurable Key Results: Key Results provide quantifiable benchmarks for success. Each Objective should have 2–5 Key Results.
Example:
- Increase article engagement rates from 12% to 20%.
- Publish 2 long-form guides with 100+ downloads each.
- Boost blog traffic by 30% through SEO optimisation.
4. Define Initiatives – The Work To Be Done
How can you sense check the ‘doability’ of your OKRs within the timeframe? This is not a science. But one of the most robust pressure-tests is to define the work you would need to do to achieve the Key Results, and sense check if that work can be completed and deliver the Key Results in the timeframe available. Keep it high level, simple and apply the 80/20 principle.
Tools to Master OKRs
Access here: Artofscale.io/book/tools
- OKR Guide E-Book: A step-by-step manual for creating, aligning, and tracking OKRs effectively.
- OKR Toolkit: Access templates, examples, and scorecards to simplify your OKR-setting process.
- The Art of Scale Book (Ch 28): Learn how to align personal OKRs with company strategy for maximum impact.
- Scaling Guide (Art of Execution, Part 3, OKRs): Get step by step guidance to implement Company and aligned leadership OKRs. See Artofscale.io/ Scaling Guides.
Get help
OKRs Implementation Coaching
Work with seasoned scale up leaders to help your team implement the OKR system. Gain the confidence to set and achieve big goals.
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