All companies have targets, and they all have different ways of establishing what kind of ambitious objectives they want to reach.
Sales teams set specific goals based on forecasting results, data, and historical guidelines. Business leaders set goals for employee performance based on engagement levels and productivity. Even individuals set their own specific way of establishing new targets.
When it comes to choosing between OKRs vs smart goals, it’s easy to get confused. After all, both are measurable and engaging ways of pushing people toward specific outcomes. Here’s what you need to know about the difference between OKRs and smart goals.
To understand the difference between OKRs vs Smart Goals, the first thing you’ll need to do is define both concepts. The term “OKR” in the business world stands for “Objectives and Key Results”. Setting OKRs is a collaborative strategy for establishing specific targets in a company.
OKRs are designed to be challenging. They constantly push employees to achieve new objectives, keep staff motivated, and boost internal inspiration. They’re also inherently collaborative. OKRs are set by all members of a team, rather than being chosen by business leaders.
The core components of an OKR are the “objective” and the “key results”. The objective highlights the target you want to achieve, such as “Improving customer relationships”, while the key results look at how you’re going to measure whether you’ve achieved your target. For instance, in the case of improving customer relationships, you might measure customer satisfaction scores and retention.
SMART Goals are another form of goal-setting methodology, which involves setting targets that demonstrate five key characteristics. SMART goals should be:
For instance, a SMART goal related to lead generation might be: We want to increase the number of leads we generate for our sale event by 20%, within the next 3 months.
So, what’s the difference between Smart goals vs OKRs? Both are goal-setting techniques focused on driving teams toward specific outcomes, but there are some core differences between the two methodologies. Most notably:
While Smart Goals and OKRs are a little different, they don’t have to be completely separate. Rather than using an OKR as an alternative to Smart goals, companies and business leaders can choose to combine the two. To do this, all you need to do is ask yourself some questions when defining your OKR. For instance:
For instance, a smart OKR might be: “We want to increase the number of prospects we bring to our site by 20%, monitoring traffic numbers and repeat visitors from all avenues. We hope to achieve this goal in the next 3 months.”
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