How to create Task in OKR?

Category: Tasks

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is the fabled goal-setting tool used by the likes of IBM, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Dropbox, Spotify, Disney, and BMW to get thousands of employees moving toward the same ambitious goals.

But you don’t have to be a multinational corporation – or even a team leader – to benefit from OKRs. This simple framework is equally powerful for setting personal goals too. In short, it’s a system for making sure what you want to happen, happens.

OKRs might be the perfect fit if you:

  • Are looking for a more rigorous way to set and track goals
  • Put in a lot of work but feels like you’re not progressing on the right things
  • Have a hard time saying “no” and sticking to priorities
  • Feel like you’re plateauing in your personal growth and want to challenge yourself
  • Need to set priorities and align action across a company, division, or team

This guide draws on lessons from John Doerr – venture capitalist, OKR evangelist, and author of the New York Times Bestseller Measure What Matters – to give you an overview of what OKRs are and how to make them work, individually or as part of a team.

If you’re already familiar with OKRs, you can skip right to the section on how to track them in Todoist.

Common misconceptions about OKRs:

  • “You have to be data-savvy to do OKRs.” OKRs are way simpler than you think and can be implemented without any special data skills.
  • “Measurable means numbers.” Lots of people will tell you OKRs have to be based on numbers – eg, Make $10,000 of new sales, get 5,000 new subscribers, reduce churn rate by 25%. That’s not necessarily true. While many key results are numbers-based, plenty of worthy key results can be measured only as a 0 or a 1 — either you did it or you didn’t. The more important question to ask of your OKRs is: “At the end of this time period, will I be able to say I accomplished this or not?” If the answer is yes, then it’s a measurable result.
  • “OKRs are only for teams and companies.” While OKRs are usually talked about in the context of companies, you can use OKRs just as effectively for yourself, whether you’re a company of one or just want a more rigorous way to track your personal goals.
  • “OKRs should encompass all of your work.” OKRs are meant to emphasize your most important work. So while some items on your to-do list are related to your OKRs, many (like one-off tasks, regular meetings, answering emails) are not.

What are OKRs?

Let’s start with the basics. OKRs stand for objectives and key results. Put simply, objectives describe where you’re going. Key results are how you get there. Here’s a simple example of a personal OKR to illustrate:

Objective: Run a marathon in under 4 hrs

Key results:

  • Join a marathon training group
  • Train 5 days per week with 1 long run each week
  • Increase mileage by 5 miles per week
  • Drink at least 3 liters of water every day
  • Sleep at least 8 hours every night

In Measure What Matters, Doerr describes objectives and key results as the yin and yang of goal setting. Without key results to make them actionable, objectives are just wishes. Without objectives to ground them in a higher strategy and purpose, key results are just a directionless to-do list.

However, when taken together, OKRs represent the best of both worlds, pairing inspiring ambitions with concrete actions. Big, high-level goals may motivate and give purpose, but it’s your short-term actions that ultimately drive results. You need both to be effective.

Objectives

  • Describe where you’re going or what you want to accomplish
  • Higher-level and bigger-picture
  • Aren’t necessarily time-bounded – can rollover quarter to quarter or even year to year
  • Concrete & action-oriented, but may or may not be objectively measurable
  • Inspirational – should connect back to your overall mission and why you do what you do

Example objectives:

  • Become a company that attracts and retains top talent
  • Improve 1-month retention rate by 20%
  • Self-publish a novel

Key results

  • Describe how you’ll get there, or the actions you’ll take to accomplish an objective
  • Time-bounded – should be completed by the end of the cycle
  • Concrete and measurable – at the end of the period, you must be able to say “I did or did not accomplish this result”
  • Constantly being evaluated and evolved throughout the cycle

Example key results:

For the objective “Become a company that attracts top talent”:

    • Redesign our company website and job descriptions to better represent our ambitions and culture
    • Boost PR and social media presence of our leadership team
    • Make ongoing recruitment a top priority for the leadership team
    • Hire a head of HR
    • Create ongoing mentorship and career growth opportunities within the company

For the objective “Improve 1-month customer retention rate by 20%”:

    • Conduct 25 interviews with lapsed customers to identify current pain points
    • Clarify value proposition on main landing page
    • Revamp email welcome series
    • Create new in-app onboarding experience
    • Identify & double down on marketing channels with best retention rate

For the objective “Self-publish a novel”:

    • Write 1,000 words a day
    • Find an editor
    • Identify the best self-publishing platform
    • Build a personal brand on social media

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