When we set objectives, we need to know what will define a successful outcome. It’s obvious to us that an objective such as “increase sales” is meaningless without knowing how much we need to increase sales by in order to be able to say that we achieved the objective. This is why we associate a set of key results with each objective. Key results let us state the desired outcome in a quantitive way, e.g. “Increase sales of product A by $40k per month”. Whilst it is sufficient to define the progress towards each key result as simply a confidence level of achieving the desired outcome, it is sometimes more convenient and more meaningful to state the exact quantitive value of whatever metric we are measuring.

Today we are announcing a new feature in Workteam that let’s us do exactly that. Previously, Workteam would allow you to track objective outcomes by specifying a confidence level associated with a key result. So, for instance, if a key result was defined as “Increase monthly revenue for Product A from $120k per month to $160k per month” and we had reached $140k of MRR, we might state the progress as a 50% confidence level, giving an estimate of how likely we believe it would be to achieve the full outcome.

With the latest deployment of Workteam, you now have more control over specifying each key result and the associated outcomes of the objective. Taking the example above, you will now instead create a currency-type key result and provide a starting value of $120k and a target value of $160k.

Before, you would update each key result, either directly or in a weekly check-in, by adjusting a slider to give a value between 0% and 100%, reflecting your confidence of achieving the key result. Now, instead, you can enter the exact monthly revenue value and Workteam will calculate the progress.

updating-key-results-via-a-checkin

Sometimes, the target value you provide might be less than the starting value. For instance, if the key result was to lower monthly expenses from, say, $50k to $30k. In this instance, Workteam would calculate an increasing progress as the figure you enter for monthly expenses decreases.

Workteam can handle a variety of key result types. These are as follows:

Key Result Type

Description

Confidence

A confidence key result lets you represent how sure you are of achieving the outcome. Confidence key results start at 70% by default, but you can change this by entering a different value into the Starting Value field.

Percentage

A percentage key result lets you track any kind of percentage-based outcome. For instance, your key result might track increase in conversion from a current level of 10% to a target level of 40%. You would represent this by entering 10 into the Starting Value field and 40 into the Target Value field.

Currency

A currency key result lets you track currency-related outcomes. For instance you might want a key result, which represents a desired increase in quarterly revenue from $2.5m to $3m. You can do this by entering 2.5m into the Starting Value field, 3m into the Target Value field and by choosing ‘$’ from the Units drop down.

Units

A units key result lets you track outcomes in any named value. For instance, you might want a key result, which aims to deliver 50 sales demos in a particular quarter. You would represent this by entering 0 into the Starting Value field, 50 into the Target Value field and by entering ‘sales demos’ into the Units field.

Boolean

A boolean key result lets you represent an outcome either happening or not happening. For instance, you might want to represent an outcome of hiring a new sales person. This will either happen or not happen by the end of the goal period and may be nicely represented by a boolean key result.

Sub Objective

Turns a key result into a sub objective that may be assigned to another user. The progress of this key result depends on the progress of any key results that are associated with the sub objective by the assignee.

To learn more, book a free demo of Workteam OKR at https://workte.am/request-live-demo.html.

 

 

Simon Bates is CEO of Workteam, an HR Employee Management System for businesses of all sizes with a focus on growing employee engagement. Visit http://workte.am to find out how it can benefit your organization.