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Top 4 tips for implementing OKRs at your organization

Best practices for implementing OKRs.
> How to implement OKRs

Tracking OKRs provides perspective on goal alignment during the planning process. Keeping track of progress toward your company goals serves as a motivating factor to achieve those goals while also uncovering which focus areas are falling short.
We surveyed Coda employees to learn how they were doing with the OKR process, and we got some interesting results. Over 50% of employees referenced their OKRs at some point during the last quarter. What was surprising was that a cohort of employees never looked at their OKRs—nearly 20%!
Why was this happening? Well, OKRs can feel like a disruption to daily tasks and work. When asked, 50% of Codans surveyed described their relationship with OKRs with this emoji response: 😐.
With the right adaptation, OKR methodology for planning and tracking are a natural extension of everything a team does—and the OKRs themselves serve as motivation for forward momentum. And that’s why Coda has invested in making the process transparent via data visualizations, accessibility to other tools we work with, and increasing visibility to progress with dashboards.
Here are four implementation tips and templates to show what we mean.
Track team goals—in one place.
Our central OKR docs are generally inserted into the staples of everyone’s schedule with , including one-on-one and team meetings. We keep them straightforward with this template: two connected tables that measure progress on both objectives and key results. Then, we customize the tables using Coda’s building blocks, like views, charts, and Packs, to design a tracking system highlighting what’s important to that team or individual. Copy the team goals template from .

Objectives progress
55%
Key results progress
49.7%
Add objective
Objectives
0
Goal
Associated key results
Progress
1
Improve customer satisfaction.
Exceed NPS score of 7.
71%
2
Increase recurring revenue.
Reach MRR of $1M.
Reduce churn % to less than .5% monthly.
39%
There are no rows in this table
2
Count
Add key result
Key results
0
Associated objective
Key result
Owner
Progress
1
Improve customer satisfaction.
Exceed NPS score of 7.
Lola Tseudonym
000
71
2
Increase recurring revenue.
Reach MRR of $1M.
James Booth
000
65
3
Increase recurring revenue.
Reduce churn % to less than .5% monthly.
Alan Chowansky
000
13
There are no rows in this table
3
Count

Visualize progress with a timeline.
Visualization plays a significant role in how people understand data. Timelines, otherwise known as Gantt charts, provide digestible snapshots of your timetable and signal when an OKR is “over.” And with a bit of conditional formatting, colors can quickly communicate when a project is overdue and highlight opportunities to adjust the plan. You can learn more about how our timeline template works with OKRs
.
Timeline
1
Jul 1 - Jul 22
Launch support chatbot.
Revamp our job descriptions to take into account DEI best practices
Plan virtual offsite.
Jul 1
Jul 8
Jul 15
Jul 22
Launch support chatbot.
Revamp our job descriptions to take into account DEI best practices
Plan virtual offsite.
Tasks
1
Title
Start date
End date
Status
1
Launch support chatbot.
7/3/2019
7/8/2019
Done
2
Revamp our job descriptions to take into account DEI best practices
7/8/2019
7/19/2019
Active
3
Plan virtual offsite.
7/13/2019
7/17/2019
Pending
There are no rows in this table
Connect OKRs with everyday work.
Connecting OKRs to the other tools your team uses daily, like Jira, creates an instant feedback loop and adds visibility for any stakeholders who happen to peek into the doc.
For example, the template below pulls issues into a table with Coda’s Jira Pack and connects those issues to your OKRs in the goals table—allowing you to track your work with an automatically-updating progress bar. Learn more about seeing your .
Goals
New goal
Search
Goal name
Jira issues
Jira progress
1
Roll out pricing beta to 20 users
Acquire budget
Conduct 30 customer interviews
2
Improve onboarding retention by 10%
Fix page load caching bug on Chrome
3
5,000 mobile app store downloads
Migrate from Azure to Snowflake
Maker-focused website design v3
Publish mobile app version 3.4 in app store
There are no rows in this table
Jira Issues
0
Issue
Priority
Status
Project
Created
Updated
Assignee
Reporter
Test Numeric Field
Satisfaction Date
Request Language
Zac Checkbox Field
Initiative Custom Label Field
Initiative
1
Epic topic
Medium
To Do
JIRA to Coda
10/8/2019, 11:52 AM
10/8/2019, 11:52 AM
Coda
2
Increase page width
Medium
To Do
JIRA to Coda
9/18/2019, 3:54 PM
9/18/2019, 3:54 PM
Coda
3
Epic work to be done
Medium
To Do
JIRA to Coda
8/20/2019, 2:21 PM
8/20/2019, 2:21 PM
John Scrugham
4
Fix API connection bug
Medium
To Do
JIRA to Coda
8/14/2019, 1:42 PM
8/14/2019, 1:42 PM
Hari Sivaramakrishnan
5
Add one-click checkout option to shopping cart
Medium
In Progress
JIRA to Coda
8/8/2019, 10:53 AM
8/8/2019, 8:50 PM
Matt Hudson
Coda
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Measure the short-term.
KPI, or key performance indicator, is an OKR-adjacent framework focused on short-term goals. Because OKRs are generally stretch goals, pairing OKRs with KPIs' granular measurements might show how much your team is genuinely accomplishing. Learn more about monitoring your short-term goals with .
KPI report
0
KPI
Unit
Status
Monthly actuals
Monthly Target
% to Target
Monthly variance
1
Quarterly sales growth
$
⬆Above target
55,000
50,000
110%
5,000
2
Quarterly sales/new customers
%
⬇ Below target
11
15
73%
-4
3
Quarterly new leads/prospects
#
❓ Unknown
150
250
60%
-100
4
Number of qualified leads
#
⬆Above target
300
175
171%
125
There are no rows in this table
You may also like these OKRs resources:


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