having clear goals is vital for every organization it allows team members to focus on the work that matters and deliver measurable results defining such goals is never easy but there is a secret weapon that can help you with that and it's called okr okr is a goal setting technique that helps team establish measurable goals in this video I will show how product designers can use this technique okr stands for objectives and key results you might think that okr has only two components but in reality there are three components object Ives are what your team wants to accomplish objectives tell the team where to go they are clear memorable and inspiring goals key results are how the team will measure the results towards the objective there should be three to five measurable outcomes that contribute to achievement of an objective initiatives are actions that the team needs to complete to achieve key results how to write okr here is a template that you can use to define okr we will objective as measured by key results we are initiatives before we dive into the individual parts of okr it's essential to explain the difference between kpi and okr many people believe that kpi and okr is the same thing which is untrue kpi and okr serve different purposes kpi stands for key performance indicator and it's the type of performance measurement kpi helps us evaluate how well something is working in our Organization for example we can track customer retention rate to understand how our product retains customers okr helps to understand how the team can achieve something for example what should we do if we want to improve our customer retention rate from 60 to 80 as you probably guessed okr and qpi can complement each other qpi helps us to monitor performance and identify areas where the team can do better okar can give you a big picture and drive Innovation let's dig into objectives a bit deeper an objective is a meaningful goal that you want to accomplish it sets the direction for your organization or team think of it as a Destin ation on the map questions to ask before writing objectives what is the most important area of our business that we need to focus on why does this goal matter to us how would we write our objective into a statement that inspires our team writing a good objective is never easy let's compare to objectives continue improving collaboration between design and customer success team to improve the quality of customer service this objective is poorly defined it's too wory unclear why this objective is important to the company as a result no motivation to achieve it and no information about the deadlines enhance product usability by the end of 2024 this objective is well defined it's shorten to the point the benefit is clear to the company better usability means happier customers clear information when you want to achieve it when writing an objective remember to keep it simple and focused it should be like a slogan that fits on a t-shirt now let's dig into key results if objectives are aspirational words of a leader key results are specific numbers and metrics of a scientist key results help to specify the objective and measure the progress towards it questions to ask before writing key results how we will know if we are successful how can we measure the impact of our work what metrics help us measure if we are successful let's compare to key results make the product more usable by following user Center design principles it's to whack no focus and impact no specifics about how we will measure our results achieve a customer usability score of 80 or above by the end of 2024 customer usability score is a measure of usability we've defined the bar that we want to achieve and when we want to do it it's important to remember that a good key result is an outcome not output output is something that you do like task you need to complete the outcome is a result of what you do finally let's talk about initiatives initiatives are the things your team will do to achieve the outcome questions to ask before writing initiatives what do we need to do in order to be successful what can we get done in this period who needs to be involved when when thinking about key results versus initiatives remember the key results outcomes you want to happen while initiatives are outputs activities you performing to get there since we wanted to improve customer usability score we need to invest in user research and usability testing when planning initiatives make sure you have necessary resources time and money as well as stakeholder involvement a big mistake many managers make when planning work is being overly ambitious okr helps the team maintain Focus but when the team tries to achieve a few objectives at the same time it's easy to lose focus because each objective may have many key initiatives it's usually best to select only one objective per quarter and focus on it to achieve a good results it's vital to define a set of metrics to monitor key initiatives it will help you understand if you are moving in the right direction finally let's quickly discuss some best practices for okr when it comes to okr less is more do not set too many okrs focus on critical things first first Define strategy then Define okr if team members don't understand the organization's purpose and where it's headed okr won't motivate the team to do something okr simply won't work because people will be doing their job without a sense of purpose and inspiration transparency is key team goals should be visible to anyone in your organization That's all folks let me know what you think about okr in the comments