Now that you understand the methodology behind Objectives and Key Results, you may be wondering how to make them work for your company, specifically for groups, departments, or teams. It can be easy to visualize how company-wide goals look in the OKR model, but seeing how Sales or Customer Support would fit into the bigger picture might be less obvious.
In this article, you will learn...
Why use Objectives in 15Five?
Objectives are the best solution for setting a larger goal/project and tracking its progress over a period of time. Objectives can be company-wide, group-specific, and/or individual based; so even individual performance metrics (think CSAT/Customer Satisfaction or Sales Quotas) can be added in as objectives for people.
Objectives also allow alignment between individual goals and group goals, and between group goals and company goals. This is something to keep in mind if you find your people are more motivated to accomplish their objectives when those objectives have a direct impact on company goals.
Objectives allow people to better track their work, provide updates to those who are following along, and increase transparency between teams (as long as permissions allow.) It is truly a robust feature that can do a lot for your company's collaboration!
Science🔬: Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
If you're looking to bulk import objectives for a group of people, check out this article.
Use cases for Objectives in 15Five
We have had customers at call centers, as well as other Customer Support departments use Objectives as a way to track their CSAT scores, and specifically to track them over time towards an end goal. There are some options on how you could accomplish this using Objectives in 15Five:
You can create a group/department/group type objective with the CSAT score you are striving for or require. The key results can each be something like "Exceed our customer's expectations with a 95% CSAT rate". Each of the group members required to maintain that CSAT score should have their own key result. With each key result being assigned to various group members, they will be able to update them. If you, as the manager, own the objective—you will be able to check progress and report on the objective at any time. This is the simplest approach.
Another option: You could create individual objectives for each group member and name them all something like "X person brings joy to customers with a high CSAT rate". The key result for the objective would be something like "Met 95% CSAT rate" and the metric would be either 0% to 95% or complete/not complete. The main difference with this option is that you could include an aspirational goal, like "Exceeds expectations with 100% CSAT" to encourage that extra push- in this case, your metrics would be 95% to 100%. For the aspirational option, we recommend you use the % complete measurement so that you can see how close they get to that aspirational goal. This option is a great way to start a growth conversation.
Here at 15Five, we have found that tracking CSAT scores is not only great for manager visibility but also enables the Customer Support Representatives to track how well they are doing and feel good about the service they are providing. Bonus Points: Pair an objective like this with the High Fives feature to recognize your people for stellar CSAT reviews!
"Meeting quota" can refer to a Sales Team's numbers that need to be hit, or it can mean the number of dogs groomed at your pet grooming business. 🐶 Both examples are a perfect opportunity to set objectives in 15Five. Again, setting objectives allows for progress to be monitored, and ultimately helps your business track towards the bigger goals. Bonus Points if you align these objectives to your company-wide revenue objectives.
Below is an objective for Seth, who created an objective around hitting his quota out of the park:
In the screenshot above, you can see that Seth also aligned his objective with the company-wide objective titled "Accelerate recurring revenue growth".
Seth not only set a key result regarding his quota but also added in an aspirational key result to double his monthly quota amount. Seth can use the "$" option to easily add in the starting and target quota values. Using these options makes it easier for Seth's manager and teammates to know exactly how far along he is on his quota objective.
You can see above that for Seth's aspirational key result, the key result's starting value was set to 1 million so that 1 million is considered 0% completed for this key result. Anything above 1 million will be >0% and will be in addition to the 100% that has already been achieved on the first key result.
It is also important to note that for Seth's case, anything above 50% is considered "Quota met". If you are choosing to take this route, just make sure to be clear with your team that you understand that an aspirational Objective is not penalized for not reaching a 100% completion rate.
The other option is to use one key result to monitor the overall progress of the quota. So the key result starting value would be $0 and the target value would be $1000000. I would suggest naming this one key result, "Meet $1M in revenue for the quota (Aspirational $2M)". Then the key result would be >100% for anything over $1M. Important to note: The key result being over 100% will not lead to the objective itself being over 100%.
Blog post 🗒: How Leaders Can Create Psychological Safety In The Workplace
Have you ever wondered what your co-worker's objective "Pump up the volume on customer satisfaction" even means? Maybe you have seen an objective titled "Launch Churn Reduction Project" but you have no idea what the Churn Reduction Project is?
On an objective's details page, any person who has visibility into the objective can leave a comment in the activity feed. The objective owner can also use this space to add context to the objective, be it with a description of the reasoning behind why the objective was created. Boom. Random title mystery has been solved.
Tip
Having objective descriptions also opens the door for cross-functional conversations about projects to be held.
There are so many ways to use Objectives to fit your unique business needs. Have a scenario that you are not sure how it would work with Objectives? Reach out to our Support Team and we'll be happy to help!