Having propelled companies like Intel, Netflix and Amazon to success, OKRs are the gold standard in goal setting, particularly for tech startups and scaleups. They have the potential to transform your team’s overall performance, but only if they’re done right. Take a look at the high-performing teams in this space and you’ll find they have something in common - they all use OKR SAAS tools to create, track and report on their objectives and key results. 

The truth is, without prompts, reminders and the ability to visualise your progress, it’s easy to get stuck with OKRs, at employee, management and leadership levels. For most teams in tech, pen and paper methods, spreadsheets, and non-dedicated software just don’t provide enough support. 

That’s why, today, we’re talking through some of the ways in which OKR software can help you and your teams master OKRs, once and for all. Whether you’re brand new to the framework, or you’ve tried and failed at implementing it in the past, our list will help you understand the potential of adopting OKRs hand-in-hand with a dedicated software platform. So let’s dive in! 

Why Use Digital Tools for Goal-Setting? What the Research Tells Us

Research shows that when we create a goal, we’ve got a 10% chance of achieving it. When we plan our steps to achieving the goal through a framework like OKRs (objectives and key results), this rises to 50%, and when we make a commitment to someone like a manager or group of teammates, it rises again to 65%. And when we commit to a regular accountability check-in with someone like a manager, it shoots all the way to 95% (1). In short, everyone on your teams can benefit from these rituals. 

The best digital goal-setting platforms help your people reach that 95% probability by supporting; 

• Personal OKR setting and tracking
• Team OKR dashboards for managers 
• Goal-focused 1:1 Meetings

They also help employees chart a course for success by splitting large objectives into manageable steps, and easily measure their own contribution to the team and company’s success. They give everyone on the team visibility of company goals, and integrate goals into daily conversations, so they’re always top of mind.

9 Reasons Why High-Performing Teams Choose OKR SAAS Tools 

Digital OKR tools help your teams avoid the pitfalls associated with goal setting. We'll share some of the most common ones here;

• OKRs are set before a solid company strategy is in place
• People don’t understand what they’re working towards
• People don’t understand what they need to do to accomplish their goals 
• People don’t understand how their work influences the company’s success
• People get distracted by the wrong projects
• People don’t reach their potential because their objectives are too easy
• People don’t create OKRs at all
• People set OKRs and forget about them

Thankfully, digital OKR tools like Frankli can help with all of the above.

1. They Help your People Write Better OKRs

There’s a lot at stake when it comes to writing OKRs, so we really can’t afford to get it wrong. The best OKR software tools guide you through the process, step-by-step, offering suggestions along the way.

In Frankli, we provide a library of OKR templates for all kinds of teams, to make the process less intimidating and ensure your OKRs are specific, measurable, time-bound, ambitious, achievable, and aligned to company goals. The stepped process prompts you to think about goal prioritisation and alignment as you’re creating them. 

2. They Make Objectives Seem More Achievable

The OKR framework is all about breaking big goals into smaller, manageable pieces through key results, and some digital OKR tools allow you to break them down even further.

In Frankli, we have a dedicated space for Tasks, the smaller pieces of strategic work that help us achieve our key results. With deadlines and reminders to keep us on track, Tasks ensure we know exactly what we need to do today in order to achieve our objective for the quarter.

3. They’re Quick to Adopt

Some teams like to use non-dedicated software to track goals, but there’s one huge downside to these systems - they require you to manually set up a space for viewing and tracking goals, which can be time-consuming and delay your teams in getting started.

Dedicated OKR SAAS tools help you hit the ground running by automatically generating custom goal dashboards for you and your team members. 

4. They Give People a Visual Representation of their Progress

Data is crucial for tracking progress on our goals. But for many, data really only comes to life when it’s presented in a graph or a chart, and when the information is displayed in a dedicated, uncluttered space.

Data visualisation, in terms of your own goal progress and when reviewing team or company goals, helps us absorb information more quickly, and allows us to action insights from the data in real-time by highlighting key opportunities for improvement.

5. They Help People Hold Better Goal-Focussed 1:1 Meetings

The best OKR SAAS tools integrate goal and 1:1 meeting features, so goal progress is always covered in detail during weekly, monthly or fortnightly performance check-ins.

‍Frankli automates the scheduling of 1:1 meetings using notifications and calendar integrations to ensure employees and managers are having those all-important check-ins. It provides research-based talking point templates so managers can focus on the questions that prompt the most valuable answers. And it reports data on the employee’s goals within the 1:1 Meeting space, so there’s no need to switch platforms or tabs during the conversation.

6. They Bring Goals into Everyday Conversations

While it’s important to check in on your goals weekly, we should also take advantage of daily opportunities to familiarise ourselves with our progress. The best goal-setting tools aid this by integrating goals with other features.

In Frankli, progress on your goals is reported on your personal dashboard, so it’s the first thing you see every time you log into the system. You receive useful notifications on goal, key result and task deadlines, and information on goal progress is accessible when completing performance reviews and in 1:1 meetings, so it’s always top of mind.

7. They Save you Time

Reporting on goals can be hugely time-consuming, so a platform that automatically generates reports on your team or company’s goals can be really useful.

In Frankli, you can access and export data on team or company-wide goals in just a couple of clicks, quickly identifying where your people are at, and where goals are currently off-track. 

8. They Support Remote and Hybrid Teams

Remote employees tend not to get as much air time with their managers as in-office workers, which poses a huge challenge when it comes to goal-setting.

Based on the research we shared above, a platform that prompts us to follow through on goal check-ins, and enables asynchronous collaboration on goal-setting and tracking is invaluable for dispersed teams.

9. They Help People Stay Aligned

When we track goal progress through spreadsheets and non-dedicated goal platforms, we tend to only focus on our own goals, and forget about everyone else’s. The best OKR software on the market helps you avoid this by aligning goals across the company.

With the Goals space in Frankli, you don’t ever have to go looking for this information - each week when you update the progress on your own goals, you’ll see the latest information one the wider team or company goals that your goals are aligned to.

Find out how Frankli’s OKR goal tools can help you transform your team’s performance.

1. The ASTD Handbook of Measuring and Evaluating Training.

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