📑 OKR concept
What is the difference between OKR and common To Do task management?
Some users may initially see OKRs merely as a project management tool, or even as a system. However, the core focus of OKRs is on results, while task management is more concerned with whether tasks are completed.
Therefore, using OKRs to manage goals can better capture the essence, giving your efforts more direction.
Process-oriented vs. result-oriented
Before you start using OKR, you need to understand what process-oriented and results-oriented mean.
OKR is a framework, but it also includes the most fundamental shift in people's understanding of how to quantify work — from focusing on quantifying their outputs to quantifying the results that those outputs ultimately produce.
Find your vision
Before setting OKRs, you need to find your vision. Most individuals or organizations have their own vision, which serves as your North Star, and all your other goals should align with it.
Your vision may be the ultimate goal you want to achieve in the next 5, 10, or 20 years. Finding your vision will allow you to focus on what you ultimately want to accomplish.
For example, in 1958, NASA had 8 top-level objectives, which included:
● Establishing long-term research on potential advantages that could be obtained
● Addressing issues involved in the use of aviation and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes
By 1961, under Kennedy's leadership, NASA's objectives ultimately became a singular vision: to "send a human to the Moon and bring him safely back to Earth before this decade is out."
Personal vision
For personal vision, Baidu Baike describes it this way:
Personal vision comes from within, it is the thing that truly matters to you, the thing you long to achieve the most in your life. It is a specific outcome, an expected future or image. When you dedicate infinite effort to a goal that you consider to be the highest, it becomes a natural, powerful force that comes from the heart. Material desires; success in work; personal health, freedom, honesty with oneself, and family happiness; contributions to society; contributions to knowledge in a particular field, and so on, are all part of the true desires in people's hearts.
Before setting your personal OKRs, be sure to carefully consider your personal vision and align your goals with that vision.
Examples of visions:
● Providing the best user experience for customers through innovative hardware, software, and services (Apple)
● Enabling humanity to become interplanetary (SpaceX)
● Building the most customer-centric store, selling everything (Amazon)
● Helping all dreamers and ambitious people grow and progress faster (Vis)
● To be able to turn the ideas I discover in life into products for users (a certain industrial designer, Xiao Li)
OKR and KPI
Difference
Let's imagine an analogy: you are driving a car towards your destination (ultimate goal). KPIs are the data you can see on your car's dashboard, such as remaining fuel level, engine temperature, and so on. By monitoring this data, you can avoid situations where your car runs out of fuel or the engine overheats, resulting in an emergency. OKRs, on the other hand, are the roadmap that guides you to the destination. OKRs are temporary; they change based on your specific situation, and once you reach your destination, you will focus on another one.
The analogy above clearly shows that KPIs are your basic health indicators, just like blood pressure, heart rate, weight, etc., that you need to maintain in a healthy state; otherwise, you will get sick. However, merely reaching the health of your KPIs does not allow you to advance towards a further direction or become more excellent; OKRs are the key to helping you stand out from the crowd.
Mutual conversion
As a health indicator, KPIs in companies tend to focus more on daily work — these tasks are often repetitive and physically demanding, such as responding to customer emails; in personal life, KPIs are similar to your habit formation, like how many milliliters of water you should drink each day, or what weight you should maintain.
The conversion between OKRs and KPIs lies in the fact that when you have higher expectations for your KPIs, you can use one or more OKRs to help you improve your KPI levels; once a certain OKR successfully becomes a part of your daily habits, it then transforms into your KPI and continues to be maintained.
For example: if your weight is significantly not in line with your desired standards, you can first set an OKR to help you achieve that goal, and once that goal is achieved, it will become one of your KPIs and continue to be maintained. If it cannot be maintained as a KPI, then you will achieve that goal through multiple cycles of OKRs.
Writing OKRs is a serious thinking process.
As mentioned above, the objectives and key results in the OKR framework are very different from the common To Do applications on the market.
To Do focuses on specific tasks that you need to accomplish, which corresponds to tasks in Vis.
In contrast, objectives and key results are abstract. They require users to spend time and effort summarizing and articulating where they want to go (objectives) and what results they have achieved to prove they have arrived there (key results).
We will elaborate on how to properly establish them in the independent chapter on objectives and key results. What I want to emphasize here is that the more thoroughly considered and reasoned the objectives are, the more likely they are to be achieved; this process is rigorous.
If everyone is well prepared, then let's proceed to the next chapter's explanation.