OKRs sit in the strategic ecosystem and need to focus on outcomes, but cooking OKRs can be very challenging for some where often work is talked about – whether it’s features, tasks, spikes, etc. This is only natural as humans strive to make connections and join dots and whilst it’s essential for objectives and key results to depict outcomes, capturing and exploring initiatives that encompass the work is sometimes key. For this reason, I often expand the initialism to the pneumonic OKRA (Objectives, Key Results & Actions) to encompass these all important actions
Actions are simply ideas – ideas that need researching & (in)validating by the team and convey what we’ll try in service of making progress towards the outcome (key result). They communicate the direction of play through a more tactical lens where other teams & the wider org can seek out collaborative opportunities. These actions can come in different shapes and sizes that promote options around prioritisation and planning. A team can collate any number of actions but it is important to understand that they are not a plan and certainly not a commitment.
Actions fall under a number of guises where terms like initiatives, key initiatives, key actions, etc but all are used in service of depicting things the team could try / experiment with a view to making progress toward the outcome. Just like the word key in key results, if you opt for key actions/key initiatives then the actions that a team calls out will be those that are important or significant to making progress towards the goal.
Bets
Consider treating actions as bets. Framing actions/initiatives as bets forces teams to consider the investment that they will make against the potential return they will receive. Bets carry risk and responsible betting is to balance opportunity with risk and only to bet what you can afford to lose.
