Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über www.dnb.de abrufbar.

© 2021 Martin J. Leopold

Herstellung und Verlag: BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany

ISBN: 978-3-7526-6340-2

Table of Contents

• PREFACE - THE ADVANTAGES OF OKR
• CHALLENGES OF A MODERN WORLD
• AGILITY - THE ANSWER TO A COMPLEX WORLD?
  • Individuals and interactions more than processes and tools
  • Functioning software more than comprehensive documentation
  • Cooperation with the customer more than contract negotiation
  • Responding to change more than following a plan
  • Agile understanding of leadership
• WHAT IS OKR?
• THE OKR FRAMEWORK PROCESS
• OBJECTIVE AND KEY RESULTS
  • Objectives
  • Key Results
• MISSION STATEMENT AND MIDTERM GOALS (MOALS )
• "THE GOLDEN CIRCLE"
• OKR AND THE TEAM
• THE OKR MASTER / FACILITATOR / COACH
• EVENTS IN THE OKR PROCESS
  • OKR-Planning
  • OKR Weekly
  • OKR Review
  • OKR Retrospective
• IMPLEMENT OKR
  • The corporate culture
  • The framework
  • The team
  • Change Management
• INCORRECT APPLICATIONS OF OKR
• LITERATURE LIST

PREFACE - THE ADVANTAGES OF OKR

Companies and organizations deal with OKR for very different reasons. What is of great importance to one company may be of secondary importance to another. It is of crucial importance to understand where OKR can make a contribution and where it may also be used incorrectly or not in a target-oriented manner.

This book is intended to support its readers in gaining an impression of what OKRs - i.e. "Objective and Key Results" - actually mean, what the prerequisites and framework conditions are, what elements the framework consists of, how OKRs can be used optimally and where they may not be useful.

The use of OKR has a positive impact in terms of three fundamental components of any company's success:

• OKR has a positive impact on the alignment and implementation of corporate strategies.
• OKR has a positive effect on employee identification and intrinsic motivation.
• OKR is an ideal approach to defining goals and successfully adjusting them as needed in an increasingly changing and complex world.

The implementation of corporate strategies is a challenge for many companies because, on the one hand, it is difficult to break them down into what the individual employees and divisions can do, and if they can, then the individual goals are often very well known individually, but synergy formation of several employees or even divisions towards one goal is often hardly successful. An actual alignment of the team(s) towards a common corporate goal and the corresponding use of synergies, but also the regular verification of the goals, their achievement and the reaction at the right decision-making level are major advantages in the use of OKRs.

A second important reason is the involvement of employees. With OKRs, employees change from being affected parties, who have to implement strategies, to participants, who get involved in the implementation of goals and in their cooperation achieve goals that are greater than the sum of the individual contributions of the employees.

The third important aspect is that today we increasingly live and work in a VUCA world, i.e. a world characterized by change, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The resulting complexity cannot be summarized with a complex structure of causal relationships, which leads to the emergence of completely new approaches with regard to strategy finding and implementation as well as their adaptation based on changes in the outside (or our perception of it). This is purposefully and successfully applied through the use of OKR even at international global players like Google.

This book is intended as an introduction to the topic. It is intended to give you a quick overview of OKR and thus provide the basis for delving further into the topic if required or for having an experienced consulting firm show you possible steps and advantages of using it in your organization or company.

I wish you many new insights and an interesting read

The author

CHALLENGES OF A MODERN WORLD

Many companies today still work according to principles and process models from past centuries and with management and organizational approaches from the times of the emperor. In recent years and decades, thousands of companies in Europe have failed with these approaches.

Companies today find themselves in a VUKA world. VUKA stands for volatility (fluctuation, change), uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (ambiguity), which characterize the world today. Fast development cycles are supported by a high degree of mechanization and support through automation and informatics. Today, there is no longer any need to procure the corresponding infrastructure and technology - which for a long time held back smaller companies with fewer financial resources in particular - but instead corresponding services can be obtained from the Internet at attractive and usage-based rates and are thus accessible to providers and market participants almost worldwide.

In today's world, these challenges with long strategy and development cycles and processes that often take from months to years to complete, lead almost immediately to a situation where responsiveness and thus competitiveness are called into question.

In many companies there is a great deal of uncertainty when it comes to developing a strategy that can be implemented in such a rapidly changing world, and often the subsequent implementation in day-to-day business is also a major challenge.

In addition to the strategic and tactical challenges in the current economic environment, communication is also becoming increasingly challenging. This starts with the fact that suppliers are sometimes located in different time zones than their customers, or employees in companies are sometimes located globally, may know