Stephen Wunker shares an article that explores team alignment and employee management as the new remote and hybrid work options become an expected norm in the business world.
With remote and hybrid work options apparently here to stay, how are companies balancing their employees’ desires for greater autonomy with the need to maintain cohesion and alignment?
A growing number are turning to OKR software, a tool for managing the increasingly popular ‘Objectives and Key Results’ goal-setting framework. It’s no coincidence, we argue, that the rising interest in OKRs and the explosive growth of the OKR software market have coincided with the global, permanent shift towards remote and hybrid work. That transition has generated new Jobs to be Done for employees and their managers that OKRs are well-suited to address.
The Meteoric Rise of OKRs and OKR Software
Today, OKRs are having their moment. First developed in the 1970s by Intel’s Andrew Grove and popularized by John Doerr’s best-seller ‘Measure What Matters’, OKRs have gained momentum over the last fifteen years to become something of a “Silicon Valley-standard”: Google, Facebook, Netflix, LinkedIn, and Twitter have all adopted the methodology.
Basic in form, but with the potential to transform how organizations strategize, OKRs can help leaders think more holistically about their companies’ top-level goals. They offer a structured way for non-tech companies to adopt the organizational transparency and employee autonomy that define the Bay Area’s corporate culture.
The framework also forms the basis of one of the hottest corners of the SaaS industry: the booming, 1.5 billion USD OKR software market. OKR software platforms help businesses build and track their strategic objectives, visualize how the daily work of departments and teams connects to certain key results, and pull reports on how parts of the organization are progressing towards their goals. They represent a leap forward in OKR management and look space-aged compared to tracking OKRs on pen and paper, on spreadsheets, or through non-dedicated software. “Our platform makes the framework effective at scale,” says Ari Zelmanow, VP of UX Research, Insights, and Analytics at one of the market leaders, Gtmhub, “You can’t manage the OKRs of entire organizations on a spreadsheet without creating some serious headaches, and risks.
Key points include:
- Employee “Jobs to be Done” in the New Working World
- Using OKRs to Drive Alignment and Autonomy
- Uncovering the Jobs to be Done for your workforce
Read the full article, OKRs, Jobs To Be Done, And The Changing World Of Work, on NewMarketsAdvisors.com.
