OKR planning is a method developed by Andy Grove, CEO at Intel during the 1970s and made famous by companies like Google and LinkedIn due to the OKR evangelism of legendary venture capitalist John Doerr.

OKR is an acronym for Objectives and Key Results. Recognized by tech companies as a gold standard planning method, OKRs are an effective way to set targets and align organizations in any sector. That said, in using the model myself at Mobify it became apparent that there was room for the model to evolve.

OKRs were conceived by Grove in 1971. They improved upon the Management By Objectives (MBOs) approach developed by Peter Drucker in the 1950s. According to John Doerr’s book, Measure What Matters, there are several key distinctions between OKRs and MBOs:

• OKRs decouple goals from compensation. MBOs were tied to compensation which created interesting behaviour and sandbagging.
• OKRs are visible across the organization. MBOs were individual goals shared between an employee and their manager.
• OKRs are dynamic. We have all experienced the “set it and forget it” method of planning, as Doerr calls it. OKRs are a dynamic ongoing system vs static goals.

It worked. One of the most dramatic examples of the power of OKRs is Intel’s Operation Crush. As Doerr relates in his book, this operation saw Intel respond in a matter of months to an existential threat. OKRs were the backbone of a complete go-to-market reset involving thousands of employees. Without OKRs the pivot would have been impossible. OKRs helped Intel avoid a collapse and instead achieve market dominance.

In my experience, and also throughout Doerr’s book, OKRs can be difficult to implement.  Many organizations struggle to ensure that inter-dependencies across teams and functional silos are visible, understood and agreed. That is where SupportingLines come in. SupportingLines help OKRs empower cross-functional teams.