Business Objectives & OKR Examples Template

To remain competitive and motivate its employees, a company must regularly set new short, medium, and long-term objectives. Many tools are available to help define priorities, plan objectives, and measure progress.

This is the case with the OKR method (Objectives and Key Results) and KPIs (key performance indicator).

What are the tools to define business objectives?

OKR

In any organization, there are daily tasks that ensure proper functioning, as well as essential tasks necessary to achieve strategic objectives and advance the company. The OKR method helps define and manage your objectives effectively.

The challenge is to determine one or more objectives to achieve each quarter and focus on their completion. These may be general objectives for the company or objectives aimed at a team or department. By using the OKR method, continuous improvement is achieved.

For each objective, you should allocate between two and five key results. In simple terms, objectives give you the direction to follow, and key results show you how to get there. Your objectives should therefore be qualitative and inspiring, while your key results must be measurable.

KPI

Key Performance Indicators are essential metrics for concretely evaluating the progress of an action, the success of a project, or a marketing campaign. They allow you to understand your exact position in achieving your objectives and make appropriate decisions.

KPIs can be used both as a one-time measure to precisely evaluate a situation at a specific moment and continuously to measure the performance of a service or process over the long term. Although it is recommended to define your KPIs before launching the action you want to evaluate, it is always possible to determine KPIs for an ongoing action.

Steps to develop business objectives

The best way to correctly define your company’s objectives is to use the SMART method, an acronym that stands for “intelligent” in English, summarizing the essential characteristics of each objective.

Specific: Your objectives should be specific, that is, precise, simple, and understandable. If they are too vague or complex, your team will be lost and won’t know what to do. To define specific objectives, ask yourself what you want to achieve, when, and how.
Measurable: You need to evaluate and measure your progress to know where you stand in achieving your objectives. Therefore, your objectives must be quantifiable and measurable. To do this, ask yourself how many (clients, time, revenue, etc.), and inquire about how you will track your progress (using KPIs).
Achievable and ambitious: Do you have the means to reach your ambitions? Your objectives should be reasonable enough to motivate your employees to achieve them while being ambitious to push them to exceed themselves. Ask yourself these questions: Are these objectives achievable? Do we have the budget, time, skills, and necessary resources to achieve them?
Realistic: Good objectives are not only ambitious; they must also be realistic and relevant to your situation and your company’s strategy. Is it the right time? Is the current situation favorable? Is it profitable? Does it align with the company’s strategy?
Time-bound: Every objective must have a deadline to ensure employee engagement. This lets them know how long they need to maintain a steady pace and effort. When must this objective be accomplished?

Examples of OKRs and KPIs

OKR

Objective #1: Recruit salespeople to support our growth.

Key Result #1: Receive 200 resumes by September.
Key Result #2: Select 60 candidates for interviews in November.
Key Result #3: Choose 20 people and have them sign their contracts before the end of the year.

Objective #2: Increase sales through the website.

Key Result #1: Increase the number of prospects by 30% each month.
Key Result #2: Retain 50% more customers.
Key Result #3: Launch a new marketing campaign each month.

KPI

Number of new clients
Loyalty rate
Website traffic
Newsletter open rate and click-through rate
Profitability rate
Return on investment (ROI)

Use Cases

Companies define clear short, medium, and long-term objectives to benefit from coherent development while providing meaning to employees’ work. Without a tool to link these objectives to the daily work of your employees, some objectives may be overlooked.

Content of the Model

With the Business Objectives Model, you can plan your objectives, and your employees can track their progress and key results. You can categorize your objectives through task lists to monitor their tracking.

How to Use This Model?

The title of a task list corresponds to an objective. The tasks you create in a list correspond to the key results that will help achieve the objective.

For each key result, you should define one or more responsible persons and clear start and end dates.

The progress of the objective will evolve after the completion of each key result.

You can track the progress of a key result in several ways:

by adding a custom numeric field to update progress
by using subtasks to create milestones (example: 25%, 50%, 75%)
by using the task description to add links to a tracking file or workspace specific to this result

The comment section of each task can be used to communicate the progress on the specific key result.