Any Grove, a Hungarian American businessman, engineer, and CEO of Intel Corporation created the OKR framework.

It ties in closely with the smart goals framework. We set goals that are specific, achievable, realistic, measurable, and timely. These are still valid when setting goals.

However, OKR takes it one step further.

John’s explains why effective goals come in two pieces.

• Objectives – Describe where you want to be and need to be big, audacious, and embody your ambitions and passions.  It needs to connect to your “WHY”.
• Key Results – Describe how we are going to achieve the objective.  It becomes our measurable roadmap ahead of us.

Writing an outcome we want to achieve is the easy part. Saying I want to be a business analyst is easy to write and state.  The hard part is how we are going to do it.

"Ideas are easy. Execution is everything", according to John Doerr.

Think about the new years resolutions you made at the end of last year. How easy it was to get 3 to 5 things you wanted to change.  How far are you now? Have you done anything concrete to achieve them? Do you even know what your first step is?

Most people will not have moved the needle on any of their goals.  This is the start of understanding why we set our goals incorrectly.

Setting the objective tells us what we want, or where we will be when we achieve the goal. However, it does not tell us the action and when it will be done.

Consider the following example.

"I want to get my first business analysis role by the end of 2021".

From a SMART perspective, it ticks all the boxes:

Specific - I want a business analysis role

Measurable - Yes, I will have this job within 2021

Achievable - for me it is because I have experience and qualifications

Realistic  - Yes for the same reasons as Achievable

Timebound - Yes, I have set a due date for the end of 2021

However, how am I going to achieve that?

This is where we need to set key results. The action and the when that action will happen.  Typically I would set 2-3 key results. More about how we do this later in this blog.

There is a reason why companies like Netflix, Allbirds, Google, and even Bono have been successful in achieving their strategic goals and objectives.

They all understand that the key results are related to the objective or goal they are trying to achieve.

In the TED talk, link below, you will be introduced to Jini from Nunu.  Jini's sole reason for the creation of Nunu and the work the organisation does is based off  her experience as a 12-year-old immigrant helping her parents find affordable healthcare. She also has a younger brother, who has autism and finding affordable healthcare for him was high on her priorities. It is her reason to exist.

In 1990, at age nine, Jini helped to enroll Kimong in Medicaid, protecting her family from debilitating debt.

This drives all of her decisions and goals for Nunu.

Jini, through following her passion and linking everything she does to her passion, now runs an organisation that provides medical data solutions for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.

And so, another mistake of goal setting is not bringing the passion and emotions into our goals that brings motivation for achieving them.

David Desteno, author of Emotional Success, has the following to say about gaining success in our goals.

"Willpower and grit aren't the best route to persevering at our goals and achieving success; the key is emotion."

When I work with coaching clients, whether it is setting career goals or personal goals, one of the exercises we do is to look forward. To the end point. Feel the emotions, hear the sounds, what are things you smell, what are the things people say to congratulate you on your achievement.  Then we start to set the key results by looking back and visualising the actions we can take.  This internalises the feelings and passion of the goal you are trying to achieve.

So enough of listening to me.  Below is the link to the video at TED Talk by John Doerr. Have a listen, then look at my 4 point plan I use with my coaching clients to set goals with key results that vastly improves their success.

Step 1: Find your emotional hook

What matters most to you right now?

Start by asking yourself the following five questions:

• What are the most important things that I need to get done?
• What consumes my thoughts - more than likely your passion lies somewhere in those thoughts
• What do I need to start doing or changing?
• What does success look like?
• Why do I exist? What is my purpose?

This gives you an idea of the passions that drive you.

Try completing the sentence “I am here to_________________” is a good way to refine your why.

Step 2: Brainstorm a couple of goals that link to your identified passions

Refine them down to 2-3. Even one if it is a big one. But never more than 3. More than 3 and you start to overwhelm yourself.

Think 30-90 days ahead. What do you want in the next 30,60 and 90 days?

Make sure they connect back to your big WHY above?

For example, if my goal is learning how to run a half marathon but I have no passion or desire for running, then maybe it is the wrong goal?

Check that your goals are:

Meaningful – does it give you directions to where you want to be and connect to your WHY?

Audacious – will it bring about a significant change in your life?

Inspiring – does it empower you and is it easy to remember?

Step 3 : Define the Key Results for each of your goals

Finally, think about the effective results. An effective result supports the goal. It should illustrate how you are going to know you achieve the goal. A key result should clearly state what needs to be done and when.

Inspiring but not so audacious that you have no way of achieving it (Think about the realistic in SMART goals).

You need to be able to verify when success has been achieved (think about measurable in SMART goals)

Step 4 : By when will those key results be completed?

This helps you bring clarity by assessing progress and measuring how far you are.

You need to be able to assess your progress (think about Timebound in SMART goals).

We have all been taught the SMART goal method for setting our goals.

SMART is great for clarity and being specific about what we want. The problem with the SMART system is that it doesn't link it to our emotions, through our passions and "why". Secondly, it doesn't link them directly to an action or a key result.

Yes, most coaches and strategists work through exercises to flesh out the actions as a separate exercise. However, when it comes to writing the goal, we don't incorporate the action, the why into how we write them.

When you look at your written goal, it needs to inspire you with the passion/"why" you identified (In NLP coaching we ask the client to feel this, sense how it looks, how it sounds so that they can tap into the emotion of the goal), and immediately show what you should be doing with the action.

Here is an example of how my vision board would look with a goal I might set.