The Importance of Alignment in OKR

One of the most important features of OKR is that it is an alignment tool. Alignment plays a critical role in the OKR system. By aligning your goals at the individual, team and organizational level, you ensure that the entire organization collectively works for the same vision and strategy. Although the goals are in line with the abilities of the employees, if they do not help the team or company reach the goal, they will not contribute to development in the full sense.

The benefits of alignment in OKR;

Improves the Communication

As OKRs are transparent and accessible to everyone, employees are aware of the goals of other teams or individuals in the organization. Encourages them to work with teammates and keep in touch with each other to make sure efforts are aligned. It allows employees to contribute in a harmonious way to common goals as a part of the whole.

For example, the Planning and Production Departments often have to work together. The purpose of the Planning Department is to convey to the Production Department how much and when the product should be produced. If departments know each other's goals, their chances of working together on the path to realization increase exponentially.

Understanding the Big Picture

It helps the employee to realize his goals in accordance with the organizational goals by serving the Company Strategies, to see the big picture and to understand what purpose his individual contribution serves in the big picture.

It allows them to see that they are also effective in the success of the company. The contribution level, whatever its size, is designed to achieve a higher purpose.

For example, in the activities carried out to increase the Company's Talent Management and Brand awareness, when ensuring that 500 university students follow the page on the Linkedin page given as KR to the to the employee who is responsible for talent acquisition, it will contribute to the achievement of the Talent Management Team's goal. This team goal is also in line with the Company's strategy of Acquiring Talent and Increasing Brand Awareness. While this employee realizes his goal, he will be aware of the fact that he contributes to the goal of the team, he is a part of and the strategy of the company, and will be aware of its effect on success.

Increasing the Productivity

When each employee knows clearly the team goals and their own goals and carries out their work in an aligned way, there will be no repetition or blockage of the work. It has been observed that in systems where communication and alignment are lacking, the same task is repeated by different people, or the lack of communication slows down the process and causes it to bounce. A harmonious and aligned target management process will increase efficiency and enable faster and more effective achievement of targets.

For example If a Salesperson from the Sales Department is responsible for recruiting and scheduling meetings with 30 leads per month, someone else may hold those meetings and try to convert them into customers..

Alignment vs Cascading the goals from top to bottom

The cascading method, in which the top manager transfers the goals set to the employee level, is contrary to the bottom-up or parallel alignment methodology of OKR. Top-down association of goals only; It follows a top-down approach where each level of management must follow the goals their superiors set for them.

This method allows you to work towards completing your manager's goals, which of course is not inspiring as your goals are not directly aligned with team or company goals. OKR, on the other hand, allows individuals and teams to create their own goals based on their abilities. Alignment works in such a way that individual goals are adjusted to match team goals and contribute to company goals, linking the work of individuals and teams to create an integrated operating model that provides continuous learning opportunities for the entire organization.

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