How adopting OKRs can help CFOs through a recession

Dive Brief:

Setting trackable objective key results (OKRs) can help organizations through a potential looming recession, according to Jenny Herald, vice president of product evangelism of Gtmhub — a strategy execution platform.
OKRs, a goal setting methodology, can be used in conjunction with key performance indicators (KPIs) in order to drive growth.
“KPIs are health metrics and at the end of the day you want to make sure your KPIs are healthy,” Herald said in an interview. “When KPIs are unhealthy you can use OKRs to bring them back to life and when they are healthy you can use OKRs to take them to the next level.”

Dive Insight:

Setting OKRs within an executive team and then rolling them out successfully can set a precedent that will in turn seep through the rest of the organization.

When it comes to OKRs, “less is more,” said Herald. One common mistake that Herald sees organizations making is setting enterprise-wide OKRs. “You want to start and pilot with your strongest team, so that you can prove out that this is going to work for the organization,” said Herald

OKRs and KPIs can be used in conjunction with each other in order to help guide organizations through times of economic uncertainty. “It really boils down to an exercise in focus,” said Herald. “The best thing [a] CFO can do is to bring a sense of certainty to the organization, and the way to do that with OKRs is to say, ‘here's what we need to achieve everybody. We know what's going on out there. But if we can achieve these things, we think that we will succeed in the market.’”

Keeping goals trackable and attainable will keep organizations aligned, focused and accountable, said Herald. Another key aspect to setting achievable OKRs, according to Herald, is allocating actual resources and people toward them. “If you assume that it's going to kind of organically take root, then that's not going to be great,” she said.

CFOs across different industries have reported to Herald that the best thing they did was not treat OKRs as a pet or a side project.

Aside from investing money into OKR projects, Herald said that allocating resources can also just mean utilizing the right people. “CFOs need to think about having someone who can champion this process,” she said.