"The strategies that made you successful in the past will, at some point, reach their limit. Don't let your previous choices set your future ceiling. The willingness to try new ideas allows you to keep advancing." — James Clear
As an OKR coach, I was asked this a lot. “My company has been making money every year. It’s profitable. Why would I need to implement OKR?”
That’s a valid question. I respect that point of view.
To implement OKR, or not to implement, is a choice.
And if you decide to implement OKR, I hope you are clear that OKR is a solution for your team to work together. It is not a solution for profitability or P/L (profit/loss) problem.
If you have a P/L problem, you need a P/L solution. For example, find a way to lower the cost to produce your product.
If you don’t have a P/L problem, you don’t need a P/L solution. Congratulations, that’s one less problem.
If you have a people-working-in-silos problem, OKR is a good solution. If you want your employees to quickly adjust their tactics due to market changes, OKR is a good solution.
(Many of our clients reported OKR helped them navigate the pandemic-induced changes in 2020 and 2021.)
Say, your profitable company wants to create a new product line. Nobody exactly knows how to build and market it yet, let alone make it profitable. OKR is a good fit for this. You want everybody involved in the project to focus on the task at hand. You want them to align with one another e.g. the Product and Marketing persons to coordinate well for the product launch. You don’t want them to work in a silo, where each department focuses on their siloed KPI.
OKR aligns multiple teams to work together. A team that works well together is a good ingredient to bring success to your company. And, that success can mean profit.
The question isn’t whether you need OKR when your company is already profitable.
The question is whether you need your team to work well to make or keep your company profitable.
If yes, then consider OKR.
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