Participate in team OKRs.

(2 Min Read) It can have a butterfly effect on your career.

Photo by William Warby on Unsplash

OKRs are a great way to set objectives for the company, organization, teams, and even individuals. OKRs help the entity focus on a problem, solve it, and measure the success. AFAIK every tech company does goal setting via OKRs and if your company doesn’t use OKRs, maybe introduce them to the concept.

In this post, we are going to focus on the effect side of the OKRs.

What happens once the OKRs are set?

What are the effects of the OKRs?

And why everyone in the team should participate in OKRs like their career depends on it.

Effects of the OKRs

OKRs at the company level enables alignment towards specific goals and therefore enables prioritization of resources in pursuit of achieving those goals. This can have a butterfly effect. The company flaps its wings and now engineers are working on different projects than what they planned 6 months ago.

In smaller to mid-size companies, this butterfly effect can make the difference between working on a project that you enjoy and a project that you don’t. A project can last 6 months to a year before a butterfly flaps its wings again. For some, this could mean being presented with the opportunity to get promoted and for others missing it.

Why participate in the OKRs?

Based on the above-listed effects, it becomes crucial for everyone to participate in the OKRs for their team. 

When you participate, you can vote for an OKR to be included, you can suggest projects to achieve the OKR, volunteer to become OKR owner and the project lead, and in some cases influence the trajectory and scope of the team. 

If you don’t participate and be a silent attendee in OKRs meetings, you may not get to choose what you work. Which can lead to working on an unexciting project and its forward consequences. 

OKRs are one of the best opportunities to promote for projects that you want to work on, the tech that you like to learn as a means of those projects, and filling the skill gaps that may be preventing you from getting that promotion.

So if you haven’t already, get involved and start participating in OKRs like your career depends on it.

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If you find this useful, please share it with your colleagues. You may get to work on an amazing project together to achieve an OKR.