How to Implement OKRs Like an Expert

00:00:00
Here's what we'll be covering. We are in the welcome phase, and then Hannes is going to lead the "How to Implement OKRs" workshop. It's not just going to be him talking — this is going to be interactive and we would love nothing more than your input. We would love to have you join in with your questions. This will be followed by a live demo of our OKR module with the one and only Carlos Santana, followed by a Q&A. The webinar does have a Q&A section, so if you ask your questions there, if it's something simple we can answer on the spot, we will answer it in the chat. All of your questions will be answered towards the end in the Q&A session, and our very own Casey will be with you in the chat to answer any questions you might have. If you have any technical difficulties, you can reach Casey at [email protected]. I think that covers us through the

00:01:08
intro. With that said, I just want to introduce the king of key results, the pioneer of purpose, the overlord of objectives, the OKR Oracle himself, the goal-setting man from Munich. I came up with all of these in hopes of breaking Hannes, but he's standing rock solid so far. I will pass the mic to the one and only Hannes Albrecht, the founder of How to OKR Consultancy. If anyone knows their stuff about OKRs, it's him. Hannes, welcome — the floor is yours.

00:01:48
Amazing. What an introduction. I can see hearts floating around in the Microsoft Teams chat — it's incredible. Let me take over the screen. First of all, thanks for having me. Welcome to all the AI note-takers and real people out there. We're going to spend about 20 minutes on OKRs. I'm Hannes Albrecht from howtookr.com. We have been in this space for

00:02:30
13 to 14 years, so we are true pioneers in OKR implementations. We've had the pleasure and privilege to work with amazing teams and companies all around the globe — and especially interesting is the range of companies we've worked with, from startups to very traditional industries, which makes things super interesting. We are a very small boutique consultancy, mainly concentrating on C-suite and management levels, because if these leaders don't live and breathe the purpose of OKRs, it's really tough to get things going. That's our key focus —

00:03:20
a small team, mainly working with online trainings to bring that knowledge into teams and organizations. My expectation for today's session is that you get a clear sense of what OKRs are and what they are not, and also a very actionable, practical

00:04:03
view on how they are formulated and how you can actually start using OKRs within your team, your management circle, or — why not — even at home with your partner. We also have enough time to answer your individual questions. I know the group is big and people are probably hesitant to speak up, but please do. We're going to have a Q&A section at the end. Use the Q&A function within Microsoft Teams — whenever

00:04:45
I'm talking, just start typing your individual questions and we'll have enough time to go through them all. First, a bit of context. Where does it all come from? I won't spend a lot of time on this, but it's good to know. Up to the late '90s, the management world was basically driven by MBOs — Management by Objectives — a very top-down approach. In the late '90s, the management team at Intel

00:05:27
recognized three things that felt strange. First, whenever they talked about strategy and vision, those conversations were happening mainly at the top level of management. That felt odd. Second, at that time it was really hard to find good talent, and whenever they did find great people, the culture tended to be "we tell people what to do next" — which feels strange when you've hired someone because you think they're the best person for the job.

00:06:10
Third was the culture of sandbagging — setting goals for the quarter deliberately low so you could overachieve them. That culture felt very strange. And that was the starting point where those leaders said, "Let's rethink it. Let's modernize MBOs." That was essentially the starting point of OKRs,

00:06:49
beginning in the early 2000s, mainly at Google, which implemented this methodology from scratch and still lives and breathes it today. The reason it makes sense: when people work based only on short-term, activity-driven thinking — doing stuff without knowing the purpose — we want to shift that towards something driven by results and impact. We want to use vision and strategy as our steady compass.

00:07:36
We also want to solve that feeling that everything is important, with tasks flying at us from every direction. We want to be in the driver's seat to differentiate what's more important, what's less important, and what we should not do at all. OKRs also drive collaboration and help us overcome the apathy of "we've always done it this way." And

00:08:17
ideally, we can get out of that rut with a lot of bottom-up input — because we hire good people, so let's use their brainpower. OKRs are definitely not a task list. They are not a tool to measure people's performance — very important. We still need KPIs and health metrics — those remain essential. OKRs are also not a tool to manage your business as usual, your daily operations — you're already doing that and don't need a new

00:08:57
methodology for it. Psychologically, OKRs are also not a list to show how busy or how important you are — if that happens, the root cause is more of a cultural issue within those organizations. So what should be in there? Ideally, it's only about change — driving improvements, pushing us towards our strategy and vision — and it

00:09:44
should help us focus on the right things. Now let's talk about the terms "objectives" and "key results." An objective is like a catchy headline, like your internal press release. You read it and you immediately understand what it's all about. It describes where you want to

00:10:28
land — not something measurable, but something engaging. It describes a desired future state. These objectives are backed up by key results. Key results look like bullet points — metric, measurable, ambitious. All key results are based on assumptions. You shouldn't have too many. I like to call it the Rule of 12: in total, you should not have more than 12 key results. So you could have three or four objectives

00:11:08
covered by two, three, or four key results each, summing up to a total of 12 key results in your OKR set. If it's more than that, be careful — it's going to become a long list covering too many things. The fewer you have, the better. And then there are initiatives, actions, and things people do in teams — these are the things you're going to do in order to get there. You don't pre-plan all of that, because there may be

00:11:47
a thousand ways to reach your key results. The key result defines where you want to land. Your company will also likely have multiple ways to manage initiatives — a Kanban board, Scrum, a simple task list. Here's what a real example looks like. It's a random example from a company that apparently works with audio. The objective

00:12:25
for the quarter is: "We want to build brand awareness to facilitate end-user understanding of a feature called Sound ID." That's backed up by two key results. By end of quarter, the assumption is: grow monthly traffic to 30,000 monthly average visits. The second says: 2,000 monthly average users reached for an Android music app feature. That's our bet — our assumption. We don't list exactly how we get there, but this is where we want to land by end

00:13:06
of quarter. You also see there is an owner — someone driving it, like a project manager for that particular key result. And there should be a status — are we on track or behind? And there should be some kind of progress measurement so you can see whether you're moving in the right direction. It's not so much about the final score at the end — it's not about reaching 100% or overachieving — because

00:13:44
those key results are based on assumptions. We made a bet for the quarter. It's more about getting as close as possible, moving in the right direction, doing the right things. And that can already deliver a huge impact. Here's another example — a support team. The objective says "Eliminate our ticket backlog." One key result says "Answer tickets within 5 days," and another says "Improve documentation, FAQ, and train five agents." Take a moment to consider: does that look good or not so good?

00:14:28
I'll show you another version of the same objective. Here, the key results say: "Improve time to solve for support tickets from 48 hours to 24 hours" and "Maintain a satisfaction index at 85%." What's the difference between the two? The first version is more of a to-do list. I would always ask the team: why should you answer tickets within five days? What's the purpose of doing this?

00:15:15
What impact do you want to create? Those are the questions you always need to ask to move yourself toward a better-formulated OKR. The left side is basically a task list. The right side is based on results. And these questions are always the same, for whatever OKR or key result you're formulating: What's the purpose? What's the desired impact? What does success look like? These questions will lead you to better key results. Remember: it's about

00:15:59
results, not initiatives. A lot of teams and people struggle with this. A few more examples. If the initiative is "launch an Instagram campaign," that's a task. Ask the team: what should be the impact of doing it? What's the desired goal? Maybe it's increasing followers, maybe increasing sales. But

00:16:40
choose a key result that points toward a result. That makes a big difference. And the questions to get there are always the same. Now, key results can only consist of one of five dimensions — and this is the same whether you work in a tech company or a home services organization for elderly care. A key result can describe a time-related aspect, a quantitative change from point A to point B, something qualitative,

00:17:18
something related to revenue or cost, or — and this is something very easy for us to write — a milestone. "We have passed a security audit" is a binary key result: you can only answer it yes or no. It's very natural for us to write milestones because we love them. But

00:18:03
it's not ideal. If you have key results that describe a milestone, it's okay — sometimes it's the best you can choose right now. But be aware that you can only answer it yes or no, which is a challenge during the quarter because it's very hard to track whether you're moving in the right direction. If you ask a team how they're doing on passing the security audit, they can only say "we're doing fine, we've done this and that." It's hard to judge. But when you have a metric-based key result,

00:19:26
it's very easy to track progress and understand whether you're moving in the right direction. That's the big difference between binary and metric key results. If your OKR set contains only binary key results, I would say take a thorough look — you can probably find some metrics. It's always

00:20:02
better. How does it all come together? Defining a clear, easy-to-understand vision and mission is super important. Having strong values is super important. Defining your strategic themes or pillars for the next few years is super important — you want to give people direction. You want to describe which mountain you're going to climb in the coming years. You should also have health metrics and KPIs, and yearly strategic themes or baseline expectations. You can also describe those as yearly OKRs.

00:20:48
Whether you frame that as yearly OKRs or as a simple one-pager defining success for the year, I don't care — but you should have it. When teams have that clear direction and those guardrails, they can actually define their contributions bottom-up. Then they can set

00:21:31
their quarterly OKRs. And if someone on the team is working on something, they have a better understanding of how it contributes to the quarterly team OKRs, which in turn contribute to the yearly OKRs. People want to align by nature — they just need to know the direction. That makes a big difference and it absolutely works. Now you might be thinking: our team is

00:22:08
already packed with all kinds of projects. How does working on OKRs on top of that fit in? Think of it like this: every team's capacity is limited. The majority of that total capacity is taken up by business as usual — the things you have to do regardless. People in HR need to hire people. That's

00:22:47
the purpose of that team. Business as usual always takes up the majority of your total capacity. But there's another area — strategically important things that should get done but tend to get lost. We should fix it, we should prepare for it, but we can't get to it. This is the area where OKRs come into play.

00:23:28
OKRs are about change, improvement, and things that are strategy-relevant. OKRs should not be about covering your business as usual — that just leads to a long OKR list that adds no value and is very hard to manage. Now, a few very simple tips and tricks to get started with OKRs — either in your team, within your management layer, or at home. First, pick your team or group. Second:

00:24:11
agree on a time frame. It doesn't have to be a quarter — you can say "let's pick the next two months" or "the next four months." But what you formulate should point toward the end of that period. That's the goal you're setting. Third: agree on just one or two problems or topics with high impact that you want to

00:24:49
fix. The things that would drive you strategically in the right direction. Then, for those two topics, formulate a maximum of two objectives with two key results each. That's still the easy part. Number five is probably the hardest: set yourself a bi-weekly routine during the execution phase and sit down for five to ten minutes to talk through where you are. Are you moving in the right direction? Do you have

00:25:31
everything in place? Do you have the right approach to move forward? That routine is super important. Here's a simple guideline to kick off your thinking process. Agree on two problems you want to solve. Then go through these questions one by one:

00:26:08
What problem do you actually want to solve? Who is your customer? Why should you do this? It's okay to list a few activities just to picture what's involved — not a full project list, just enough to frame it. Then: imagine it's the end of the quarter. What should be different? What impact should have been created? Then:

00:26:42
can you measure that impact — qualitatively, quantitatively, as a milestone? These are your possibilities for key results. From there, you can formulate your first key results — maybe two, maybe one, maybe three. Define an owner who is driving it, and then formulate a catchy, ambitious objective. At that point, you have enough content to organize your objectives and key results. It's a super simple, very structured approach

00:27:22
to kick things off. Try to avoid the most common pitfalls. You need a good enough strategy and people need to understand the direction. Another common pitfall is what I call "set and forget" — you do a workshop, formulate OKRs, and then suddenly they end up in a mental drawer and you forget about them for two or three months. That's why you need your routines. Bi-weekly is a good cadence.

00:28:08
Another problem is conflicting or parallel goal systems — people won't be able to follow. Avoid that. And keep it super simple. Don't overengineer OKRs. Allow a maximum of two or three objectives. That's a good way to avoid the common pitfalls. I'm ready for your questions — sorry for talking so much. Do we have any questions in the Q&A?

00:29:30
We have all the goodies. Hannes, first of all, thank you so much for the amazing workshop. We have so many incredible questions from everyone who joined. I'll quickly adjust the presentation so you can all see. We saved every question — not just in the webinar Q&A but in the slide deck as well, so we'll go through each and every one. Hans, there are so many great day-to-day questions — OKRs vs. KPIs, what if business as usual covers everything and there's no room for OKRs — I've noted them all. Stick around until the end

00:30:13
because Hannes will be here for the full Q&A. Before that, we're passing the floor to our very own Carlos Santana, who will show you a practical demonstration of how Teamflect's OKR software can help you implement this methodology right inside Microsoft Teams. This will take about 10 minutes, and then we'll be answering every single question. Hannes is in the chat as well, so if you feel like dropping in some quick responses, please do. After Carlos's demo, we'll open the floor for Q&A.

00:31:23
And we will go through all of them. If you have product-specific questions for Carlos as well, feel free to pass them along. Carlos, the floor is yours.

>> Thank you, Emre. Let me share my screen. Can you see it? >> Yes. >> Perfect. So this is essentially what you'll see when you access Teamflect for the first time. As you can see on the left-hand

00:31:54
side, Teamflect comes with a lot of different capabilities and modules that support performance management programs within organizations. For today, we're primarily focusing on the OKRs module. Of course, if there's interest in learning more about the other modules, we can set up time to talk later. For folks who may only want the OKR module and perhaps one other —

00:32:21
Teamflect is extremely flexible. If there are modules that don't provide value to your organization today, you can easily turn them off in the admin center and explore them later. Let's look at the OKRs module. Here you can

00:32:51
see all the objectives I'm currently working on in this demo account — listed out with progress percentages, status, and due dates. When it comes to creating an objective from scratch, it's pretty straightforward. Descriptions can be made optional or mandatory depending on your preference, and

00:33:22
they go a long way in outlining the purpose of the objective or the impact it would have on your organization. We also have AI capabilities that can help you draft those descriptions if you're pressed for time. Now when it comes to objective types,

00:33:44
we typically start folks off with four different types — two focused more on individual objectives tied to performance or self-development, and two focused organizationally, such as department-based or company-wide objectives. You can also see some unique variations,

00:34:18
which really demonstrates the flexibility of the tool. If you want to create different objective types or change their names to align with your internal terminology, you're welcome to customize that. When it comes to owners, the objective will add you by default, but

00:34:43
as a team leader, you can easily add your team. There are two ways to set it up: separate objectives for each individual, or a single shared objective for the whole team. When it comes to measurement types, you have a few options. The first is a classic "reach" objective — you have a starting point and a target. In terms of metrics, you have percentages, numbers, and currency. You also have other measurement types: for example, "stay above" —

00:35:42
where you set a threshold you don't want to go below. The inverse is also available: "stay below" a certain metric, with a threshold and a target. And then the last one is straightforward — completed or not completed. On the right-hand side,

00:36:14
time frames are pretty straightforward. You can set up different time frames for measuring or completing objectives, and you can also customize them so they match your organization's unique timelines and terminology. Objectives can also be tied to parent objectives —

00:36:40
situations where a company-wide top-line objective is supported by department-level objectives that contribute to and influence the overall progress. You can

00:37:08
choose from a list of existing objectives to tie them together easily. We also have labels for those who like to slice and dice the data and group objectives by theme. You can customize and change labels as you see fit. We also have the capability to

00:37:38
set up groups — if there are cross-functional teams working on objectives together, they can have a shared space to map and track those goals. From a visibility perspective, most OKRs would likely be public — you'll want transparency across the board. But if you have goals that need to remain private until accomplished,

00:38:11
that capability is also available. Now let me show you how objectives can be tied together. Here we have an example objective: "Build a great place to work." It has key results such as "Improve our eNPS score by 10 points," "Reduce voluntary team member turnover to 8%,"

00:38:42
"Build out a membership coaching program," and "Launch two employee experience initiatives based on employee feedback." The platform is powerful in that the progress of your key results can automatically impact the progress of the parent objective. Let me demonstrate — let's say our eNPS score started at 70, we're currently at 75, and we hit our target of 80. We update the progress to 100%. As you can see, the progress of the parent objective updates as well. That's

00:39:43
designed to save you time. As you update key results, those updates flow up to the parent objective, and you can see those impacts quickly and easily. In terms of visibility, team leaders can see their team's objectives across the board and get a real-time feed of updates

00:40:16
happening across different objectives and key results. There's also a user view where you can see each team member, what objectives they're working on, what key results they own, and where they stand in terms of progress. And then there's a tree or cascading view — honestly my favorite — which makes it very easy to identify

00:40:50
roadblocks across different objectives. You can easily spot who may be falling behind and who you need to have a conversation with in a one-on-one to understand where the blockers are. When it comes to getting progress updates

00:41:24
on objectives and key results, you can set up reminders within the platform — choosing the cadence of when notifications go out, whether weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Those notifications will appear in the Teamflect chat in Microsoft Teams, making it easy for people to come in and update their progress directly from the notification. Here's an example at the top. We call it a "goal check-in," which is one of our customizable terminology options. You can update values, status,

00:41:54
and comments all within this interface without even having to navigate to Teamflect itself if you don't want to. Just hit save. For managers looking for a more real-time update,

00:42:22
they can go into any objective or key result and request an update with a note — the employee will then provide their update when they're able to. That's pretty much the streamlined demonstration of the OKRs module. Feel free to put any questions in the chat and I'm happy to answer them.

00:42:59
>> Perfect. Carlos, thank you so much. The questions we have — it's going to be a joy to go through all of them. The interest and engagement everyone has shown from start to finish has been incredible. We've noted down every single question because we wanted everyone to see them. Carlos, we have some questions about how to connect initiatives in Teamflect to goals, and I'm sure you can walk people through how tasks and to-do items work with goals. But let's start with questions for

00:43:33
Hannes. Hannes, I know you've already been typing answers in the chat.

>> Yes, we really have a lot.

>> We do. Let's get

00:44:13
into it. Someone wants to know: can key results be a business KPI? I can't answer that with a simple yes or no — I need to explain a little. Usually, no — because a business KPI is something you monitor to check whether the machine is running well. If all is green, you're driving toward your mountain fine. But

00:45:06
if something is wrong — if the oil warning light is blinking — you might take that KPI and dedicate one particular quarter to repairing it, to getting it smooth again. Once it's resolved, it goes back to being a KPI. But you can focus on specific KPIs in specific quarters if you see a problem you want to fix.

00:45:47
Otherwise, KPIs are KPIs and OKRs are OKRs. >> Perfect. Thank you. Carlos, there are some product-specific questions in the chat — if you can hop in and answer them, that would be great. Hannes, if an objective is not measurable, how do we know if we've reached it?

>> The objective has more of a communicative aspect. You want to connect people with it, increase transparency around what's important and strategy-relevant. An objective should be something that engages people. That's why we don't need numbers in the objective itself. Underneath the objective, the key results are measurable, and the key

00:47:11
results show whether we are reaching the objective or not. If an objective has three key results and they're all reached at 70 to 80%, the tool calculates a total accomplishment rate for that objective. The key results add up to define whether the objective was achieved.

>> Great — greater than the sum of their parts. Across an organization, different departments work on different timelines. What's the best practice for the cadence of new objectives — is everyone on a quarterly cadence, or does it sometimes make sense to do annual only?

>> Please stick to one cadence across the entire company. Cadence is such a strong organizing feature. It adds no value and only complicates things if team A is running four-month cycles and team B is running three-month cycles. Agree on one cadence company-wide.

00:48:36
The one exception might be that company-level OKRs are set annually, while team OKRs are set quarterly and contribute to those annual company OKRs. So you might have two cadences — yearly for the top level, quarterly for all teams. But everyone operates within the same rhythm.

>> Perfect. I love a good practical question. In one of your examples on how to get started, you said management picks one or two topics — but that seems very top-down. Is it meant to be?

>> You got me. It is super top-down at first. But that's a valid way to start. The first one or two quarters of OKRs are always more top-down than they ideally should be. The tricky part is gradually bringing in more bottom-up contribution.

00:50:40
The first quarter, or maybe the first two, will likely be fairly top-down. And then you should start turning that toward more bottom-up input from teams. But it's completely okay to start top-down in the beginning.

>> All right. What are your thoughts on managing up when your current organization doesn't currently utilize OKRs?

00:51:19
>> Make sure you are aligned on what problem you want to solve with OKRs. Then assess whether OKRs can actually help with that problem. For example, if the goal is mainly to drive more collaboration and break down silos, that's a strong purpose for starting with OKRs — because OKRs definitely drive collaboration.

>> Is a formal strategy formulation process related to OKRs in any way? This question was a bit unclear — whoever asked it, feel free to clarify in the chat and we'll get Hannes on it right away. The next one is clear though: can OKRs be the same for all members of a team, or is it better to have individual OKRs?

00:52:42
>> OKRs, for me, are always team-based. I'm personally not in favor of starting with individual OKRs. A team with eight people should not have eight sets of OKRs — you write OKRs based on the problems you want to solve as a team. If you want to solve two problems in a quarter, you have two OKRs with a few key results.

00:53:25
Those key results may not cover all eight people — and that's completely okay. Maybe only 50% of the team owns key results in a given quarter. The others might be focused on business as usual or supporting collaboratively. In the next quarter, you rotate and other people own key results.

>> What is your OKR formula for helping staff understand how to write OKRs and related key results?

00:54:02
We will actually be sending everyone who participated in this webinar the template that Hannes showed today. Tomorrow you'll receive a short survey about the webinar — we'd love it if you could fill it out, it helps us improve. But alongside that, we'll send you the actual template, which is editable and really well-designed. Shout out to our graphic designer.

00:54:32
>> It's a very structured, simple thinking process. It keeps you in line from top to bottom. If you go through it, I'm confident you'll come out with qualitatively solid OKRs to start with. And you can't really go wrong if you follow it.

00:55:03
>> All right, keeping it rolling. As someone who tracks department OKRs to report to senior leadership, what's the most effective cadence for reviewing OKRs without overwhelming your teams?

>> If your team is running quarterly OKRs, I'd go for every two weeks — but no extra OKR meeting. Use existing meeting formats within the team and dedicate maybe 10 minutes every other week to check in on OKRs, find out where you are, and identify areas to dive deeper into via a follow-up or one-on-one. For

00:56:16
yearly OKRs at management level, I'd say monthly or at minimum quarterly.

>> Before we move on, Carlos, I can see you're answering questions in the chat — if you head over to the Q&A section as well, there are some product-specific questions there. One of them is about something very near and dear to my heart — Viva Goals. Viva Goals was a Microsoft 365 native solution that sadly shut down and left a lot of people without a platform. If you're coming from Viva Goals, fear not — we have you covered. Moving on: are OKRs formulated individually, at a department level, or as small team-focused sets? If team-focused, how many people should be in such a team and which departments must they come from?

00:57:23
>> OKRs are a team thing. A team manager should not write OKRs in isolation and then present them to the team saying "by the way, you own key result 1." Include the team. OKRs should be created with the team, and the team should agree and align on a few OKRs they want to tackle in that particular quarter. Do it together.

00:57:57
And stay pragmatic. You can also call it a pilot — say "let's give it a try and learn from the first quarter, then do a proper retrospective at the end." I'm a big fan of the retrospective after the first cycle. It delivers a lot of learnings and actions to fine-tune the process further.

>> With Teamflect, you can cascade objectives at company, department, and individual levels — including individual development goals — and connect each of them together. There are also custom objective types you can create and arrange in your own hierarchy. We also have a tree or hierarchy view for this. Whatever form your OKR methodology takes,

01:10:46
we've got you covered. For any pricing-related questions, you can reach Carlos at [email protected] or visit teamflect.com/pricing. Wrapping things up — for those who asked: yes, you can also get the OKR template, and we will be sending it to you tomorrow alongside a short survey and information on how to contact Hannes afterward. I'm at a loss for words — and for the first time in my life as someone who talks for a living, this has been incredible. The attention, engagement, and energy everyone has brought today has been brilliant. And that is due in no small part to the OKR Oracle himself —

01:12:05
Hannes Albrecht. You can reach Hannes at [email protected] — just go to howtookr.com and learn more about their consultancy and practices. He's doing incredible things. Before we wrap up, Hannes, anything else you'd like to say?

>> I'm blown away — the questions were superb. Thank you for your time and for being here. And I just want to say: if you need someone to challenge the way you've been approaching OKRs, or if you need support setting things up,

01:12:47
you know where to find me.

>> Hannes, you're always welcome. If you can't get enough of Hannes Albrecht, we recently had him on our podcast, The Team Check-in — available on Spotify and wherever you find great podcasts. And if you'd like to learn more about the highest-rated OKR software in the Microsoft Teams ecosystem, Teamflect, you can reach Carlos at [email protected] or visit teamflect.com. This entire webinar will be uploaded to YouTube in full, as well as in shorter clips. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us and for being a part of this. We look forward to the next webinar — we have plenty of amazing events coming up throughout the year. Stay tuned, and have a great rest of your day.