Small businesses are the backbone of any economy. They create jobs, drive innovation, and provide essential goods and services to communities. However, small businesses also face significant challenges, such as limited resources, intense competition, tight budgets, and rapidly changing markets. To succeed in this challenging environment, small businesses need to be strategic, agile, and highly focused. One tool that can help small businesses achieve these objectives is OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).

OKRs are a management methodology that helps organisations set clear objectives and track their progress towards achieving them. OKRs consist of two parts: the objective and the key results. The objective is a specific, measurable, and time-bound goal that the organisation wants to achieve. While the key results are the measurable outcomes that will indicate progress towards the objective. Together, they can revitalise and guide your business decisions.

Discover the basics of OKRs and learn how to take your business to new heights.

What Are OKRs?

Objectives and key results (OKRs) are ambitious goals with measurable results that help track progress, create alignment and encourage engagement. Objectives are whatever you want to achieve, while the key results are how you achieve them. The former are long-lived, while the latter evolve as work progresses. OKRs were first introduced by Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, and popularised by John Doerr, a venture capitalist who brought the concept to Google.

What Are The Benefits Of OKRs?

So, why are OKRs so advantageous for small and growing businesses? 

OKRs Align Teams

The OKR framework can help align disjointed teams, ensuring they understand the company's strategic goals and what it takes to achieve them. Instead of needing clarification about all the different goals your company may have, OKRs simplify everything for your team, giving them a more straightforward path to achieving excellent results. It's also much easier to understand than you might initially think. Simply communicate, refine and reevaluate. Communicate the goals set, refine weekly to account for any lagging targets and reevaluate what you need to implement for the next OKR.

OKRs Lead To Better Decisions

With proper OKRs in place, your business can make the right decisions for your situation. The likes of Google, Intuit and many successful start-ups use OKRs - and it's no secret how much they've grown since the early days of their inception. Although you may not grow as rapidly as Google, having OKRs in place allows you to head in the right direction. 

Previously, you may have made the wrong business decisions, leading you down the wrong path. But with OKRs, you can begin making more realistic decisions that will help you grow.

OKRs Help To Achieve Transparency

One of your company objectives should involve transparency. Transparency involves being open, honest and straightforward about what your company gets up to in its performance, revenue, internal processes, sourcing, pricing and business values. To be more transparent, invite your customers into your premises to showcase how you make your products and run your services, or in a simpler way, share pictures and footage from behind the scenes on social media. 

Then, with your OKRs, you will help stakeholders at all levels and departments align, ensuring everyone understands what you're trying to achieve. Being ambiguous won't help your cause. 

OKRs Increase Overall Business Productivity

With OKRs, there are many ways to improve your business productivity. For example, if you encourage risk-taking and innovation, you may improve employee productivity. Create a business environment where your employees feel safe to make mistakes and learn from them for better future results.

In doing so, they will take more risks which ultimately pay off. Not only that, but they will also align with your company objectives and achieve key results to push you further. It's about instilling complete trust in your team so they feel valued enough to progress.

OKRs Allow Businesses To Regularly Track Progress

As a business owner or department manager, you must track your progress to analyse your performance. With OKRs in place, you can monitor the teams' progress, maintain motivation and engagement, and collect important data. If the business plateaus, you can change tack and replace the previous OKRs with new, refreshed OKRs to ensure stability and growth. 

Simply letting things play out with no tracking can be a dangerous approach. But by controlling this element, you allow your team to focus on constant improvements and adopt a company-wide ambition of always seeking positive change.

The information presented in this article is provided as general guidance, it should only be used as the basis for further research or requesting professional advice.