As the new year has started, some of us might have been busy setting the new year’s goals, but I suppose I am not the type of person who set the greatest goals for the new year. There might be several reasons, for example, I believed that such specific goals could somehow limit my possibilities, but to be frank, maybe I was just a bit lazy.

SYNTRE’s new year has started with 48 hours challenge where we had to develop event content and an organizational plan, targeting those who are unfamiliar with entrepreneurship. The client had clear values and objectives which was a significant help for us to move forward and eventually suggest a solution. This experience taught me the importance of having clear values and aligned objectives with the team members. SYNTRE is a business organization, meaning that we are all here to learn to establish and grow the business, so not all our personal goals and values can be counted, but still, it is essential to contemplate what are our individual goals and values. In this essay, I would like to describe what values are and clarify the difference between values and objectives and introduce OKR basics and how it works.

In the book Stressilient, Akbar discloses what values are and what they are not. If the goals are more like destinations where you reach and achieve them, values are more like a direction. To be more specific, the direction leads you to where you want to be as you are moving forward while remaining motivated and inspired. (Akbar, 102) Values are how we do something, not something we can tick off the list after we have done it. (Akbar, 97) Hence, it is powerful to know your values, consequently having a big picture of where you are heading.

So, how do we identify our values? It might be common that many of us have experiences putting others’ values first instead of our own. But let’s keep in mind that values are what matters to you. What values do you want to bring to your actions? Where do you want to show the values in which areas of your life? The first table is an example of commonly held values that can help you to identify your own. Then, you can think about which areas of life you can express those values.

TABLE 1. List of commonly held values (Akbar, 109)

TABLE 2. Example of Areas of your life: where do you want to show your values (Akbar, 110)

As it was mentioned above, not all of your values can be seen or met in a business organization, but surely some of them can be. And that is why it is important to be aware of your values and where they can be shown in different areas of life. For example, my values that can be seen in SYNTRE were Learning &Knowledge, Reliability, and Courage. And having this process of each everyone contributed to finding SYNTRE’s values: Empathy, Curiosity, Joy, Diversity, and Inclusion.

If Organization’s Values are more of a purpose that states why they exist, the next step would be finding out the objectives. OKR is a useful goal-setting framework that improves employee/member engagement by making alignment between the organization and the people inside.

OKR stands for: Objectives, Key Results, and Key Initiatives. Firstly, Objectives are what you want to accomplish. It is recommended to have 3-5 goals with a mix of things you know you can achieve and challenging ones, as it will create a creative and innovative environment. And there is no need to say objectives should be clear enough and concise for everyone in an organization to understand.

Secondly, what are the key results? Key results are expected outcomes, like success criteria. They should be ambitious but achievable and measurable. Using specific numbers and metrics is helpful. For example, achieving 500 new users. Then, aligned with the objectives, list 3-5 key results for each objective to improve the focus. Lastly, Key Initiatives and projects. These will answer how you get there: what kind of activities and projects would drive you to reach key results.

I think OKR is a useful tool that can be used not only at an organizational level but also for individual objectives.

TABLE 3. Example of my own OKR

Vellore introduces a formula for writing OKR which is: I will OBJECTIVES as measured by KEY RESULTS by doing KEY INITIATIVES. It looks simple but when it comes to an organization level, it wasn’t as simple as formula. In the last Friday Paja, the major discussion was about the goal regarding projects. Why each one of us do the projects, what is our driving force?  We were able to set a goal and get some key initiatives for the project goal, but we still need to spend good amount of time to define key results and other goals.

It has been a long process, but I have no doubt OKR will help us to achieve what we want and move further while we fulfill our values.

Reference list:

Akbar.S.2022.Stressilient: How to Beat Stress and Build Resilience. Fourth Estate

Vellore V. 2022. OKRs for all: making objectives and key results work for your entire organization. New Jersey: Wiley