There are a lot of avenues you can explore in order to grow your business. Of course, before any other steps are taken, it’s crucial to have plans in place. A great way to go about this is the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) method. This plays a huge role in the process of setting goals so that genuine results come out. It’s also an excellent tool for a business being able to set financial goals.
Objectives and Key Results
OKRs as a framework is essentially meant for goal-setting, helping teams and companies alike move towards lofty organizational growth. This is something that does not fall along the typical lines of usual activity. In those cases, KPIs and the like are the necessary frameworks to look into.
OKRs generally come in for innovation projects, change, and growth.
Teams gain all-important purposes from OKRs, and they also help a lot with strategic alignment being promoted. OKRs act as an excellent way to boost the growth of a business. The very framework is meant to fit any organization’s needs, no matter what industry or department and size they’re in. Company levels in terms of setting goals don’t affect OKRs at all either, since no matter what your priorities are, adaptation is possible.
Financial Goals
OKRs works very well for finance teams. When both Objectives and Key Results are being set, it’s crucial for these to be kept in mind:
- An owner/lead should exist for each Objective and Key Result
- Clear objective, written if it was achieved already with an explanation behind the motivation
- Steps of progression or measures instead of ‘whys’
Collaboration
The process of creation of OKRs involves a lot of collaboration. Buy-in and engagement are necessary to get from the process in the beginning. Set a time to get together with your finance team in order to start things off with a brainstorming session. That way, the team has clear ownership of set goals as well as accountability for the defined key results.
One of the biggest traits of OKRs involves empowerment, which means the crafting process can trigger the finance team to make their own OKRs. That way, they will also be able to call on other team members from other areas of the organization. In turn, the priorities initially set can be pursued even more. A cross-functional collaboration will then get going, signifying a team-up between the best people for every project in question.
Let’s look into an example of financial OKRs being pursued within a company or organization:
Objective: Make the external audit a non-event for our finance practice.
Lead: John
Key Result 1: Reduce contract-documentation gaps found in audit sampling from 22% of contracts to under 5%.
Lead: Jenny
Key Result 2: Reduce audit cycle time from 4 weeks to 2 weeks.
Lead: Joanne
Key Result 3: Reduce open audit findings carried over from prior cycles from 14 to 0.
(“Log all contracts in the right folder” was originally written here as a Key Result. It’s a task, not a measure of change — the Key Result is the audit-finding rate that the filing is meant to move.)
Lead: Joanne
Conclusion
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are a great framework for any company or organization, no matter the size or industry. When it comes to financial goals, it can make things clearer and promote creative collaboration across departments. Additionally, it plays a great role in boosting visibility.
Keen to start your OKR journey with your teams sooner rather than later? We have some programs and training that can help!
We have an 8-week OKR Quick Start Program that will help your teams drive radical value for your customers and business.
Free Introduction to Facilitating OKR for Teams– Basic training to get you started on your OKR journey
and other coaching programs to help businesses in Australia thrive and stay ahead of the competition.
Reach out to SKILLFIRE today!
