How Can Feedback Make Your OKRs Better?

by Carly Clyne | May 13, 2022

time icon 4 mins

Like any area of a company’s plans for progression, the concept of how can feedback make your OKRs better? Will always be a key area of focus. Using feedback is essential if you want to ensure your OKRs continue to perform well and work to your advantage. Understanding how current OKRs are performing and integrating, and identifying areas for improvement is an essential aspect of any successful OKR strategy – yet it’s often overlooked.

Here’s why feedback is important in the workplace – and how having an effective strategy for obtaining employee opinions can improve OKRs.

Why is feedback important in the workplace and how can feedback make your OKRs better?

 In business, it’s all too easy to focus on top-level meetings and draw conclusions based on your own impressions and numerical data alone. Yet to get a more realistic idea of what’s going on within your business, obtaining feedback from multiple other sources is crucial. Only then can you know you are truly informed and can formulate strategies effectively to drive your business forward, this is the main reason why feedback can make your OKRs better.

Some benefits of feedback in the workplace include:

If you’re wondering how can feedback make your OKRs better? It’s important to acknowledge that they create valuable learning opportunities: Feedback has an impactful way of shining a light on areas you may not have identified before, but need to address in order to evolve. It allows you to gain different perspectives that you may have been blind to previously. Depending on who you ask, feedback can offer invaluable insights that can define and shape the future of your business – so overlooking it can cost you dearly, especially if you’re looking to re-evaluate and improve OKRs.

A chance to change direction:

 Knowing how can feedback make your OKRs better and by using feedback intelligently, you can really drill down on any current initiatives to re-optimise and re-evaluate. Something that isn’t working so well now could cause major problems down the line – and in the same vein, a strategy that is bringing some positive results could be boosted to supercharge your progress. Constantly checking in can help you move responsively rather than reacting too late to changes and developments within your business. 

Identify where internal change is needed:

As well as helping to redirect growth strategies, feedback has a habit of shining a light on areas we’ve outgrown and how the delivery of strategy might need to change. Are some of your OKRs no longer serving you, or relate more to a past vision that’s since evolved? Ask yourself if employees truly engaged with OKRs and feel they are relevant and productive? Keep moving forward, not backwards and ensure your employees are fully on board by asking for their opinions.

How you can use feedback to improve OKRs

Using feedback looks fairly easy on paper – obtain feedback, then use it accordingly. But effective feedback is underpinned by a well-thought-out strategy that ensures it gets to the heart of your current OKR approach and delivers honest, agile and useful data you can use easily and intelligently.

There are three main types of feedback you can use to determine the effectiveness of your OKR strategy and knowing how feedback can make your OKRs better is a fantastic starting point. 

Employee feedback:

You can choose to survey your entire team, ask a cross-section of employees, or focus on certain pay grades and departments.

Management feedback: Asking management-level team members only for their views and most specifically how OKRs are impacting their own performance and that of the people they are responsible for.

Third-party feedback: From customers, clients, and suppliers – choose a relevant party and tailor your approach accordingly.

Constructing feedback to help improve OKRs

 Although any feedback can be useful when collected and processed in the right way – if you’re going to be using feedback to improve OKRs, you need to consider what you’re asking, why you’re asking it and how you’re asking it in order to receive productive data and guidance. The questions you ask, and in what context, are important – how you frame a question or request for information can significantly shape the feedback you receive, so keep it as constructive and relevant as possible.

 

Some tips include:

Anonymity: Anonymity, in our view, is essential in order to obtain uncorrupted, truly transparent and honest data – especially if you’re asking employees for their opinion. Behind the cloak of anonymity, people feel they can be more candid and upfront with their feedback – which is what your business needs, however uncomfortable (or out of alignment with your own opinions) it might be. If certain markers such as gender, age or ethnicity are important to make data more specific or relevant, these can be worked on without revealing identity.

Be specific: You can only obtain tangible data when you ask specific questions – so don’t be afraid to really drill down and ask straight questions to ensure that the answer will be totally ambiguous.

Ask open questions: Feedback isn’t just a numbers game. Sometimes you need to go beyond simple ‘yes/no’ questions and ask an open question to invite a more detailed answer. Yes, this type of feedback takes some processing – but it reveals valuable insights into just how effective your OKR strategy can be.

 Ready to learn how feedback makes your OKRs better? and harness the power of OKRs for your business? Want to optimise your current OKRs for more sustainable success? Speak to one of our visionary Giants today