Navigate Capital Inflation or Recession in 3 Steps Using OKRs
5 min read

Navigate Capital Inflation or Recession in 3 Steps Using OKRs

Navigate Capital Inflation or Recession in 3 Steps Using OKRs

When we blame recessions on outside forces and point fingers at wars or crypto collapse or politicians or oil/gas industries in tough times, we take the easy route. The truth is that it is up to us to move our business forward, no matter what challenges we face. The best companies battled the most challenging times with a singular focus. 

You may have gone through many economic cycles to date, and have come out on top — most of the time. But if you’re here, it's because you're concerned that you aren't adequately prepared for the next downturn.

When it comes to managing growth, a few things are as important as setting up the mechanisms that alert you to trouble early on — and give you the power to do something about it.

Step 1: Build Balanced Strategic OKRs

The best strategic plan balances the conservation of existing income bases with a clear direction to new growth. This is often termed a “sustainable, value-driven and market-leading growth strategy” in brochures and annual reports. That sounds splendid, but how do you do it?

You aren’t alone if you find yourself constantly trying to juggle marketing, cash flow management, and expansion. To make the most of your inbound marketing efforts, customer retention is paramount. Without this key element in place, you’re doomed to fail before you even get started. Read on to learn how you can increase your customer retention rate with these strategic tips for managing your small business.

OKR example_OKR templates

3 Practical Tips For Your Small Business

  • Do not do it alone. Involve the customers, investors, and team, because the collective wisdom of the crowd is greater.
  • Your role as a leader is to analyze risk, weigh options with the best data at hand and make decisions to act on.
  • Experiment, measure, and execute. These are decision-making metrics. 

Step 2: Get the Magic Formula of OKRs Right

85% - COMMIT, 15% - ASPIRATIONAL

Just setting big OKRs and writing them down isn't going to magically make them happen! It's more about achieving a series of achievable team OKRs. 

Is it true that the secret to success is discipline? It's a question most would ask but only a few would know the answer. Well, having some meaningful OKRs for yourself, your team, or your organization isn't enough. You also have to be extremely disciplined and plan your actions around these goals.

A great way to get this right is - 85% of all OKRs should be COMMIT, implying that they must be met at all costs.

Step 3: Collaborate, Co-operate and Be Agile 

Having an agile execution in teams where people work together towards a common set of OKRs and perform small iterative experiments to learn, small wins come together to deliver an actual and concrete value to your customers is a beautiful thing, isn't it? Before we get there, however, you have to take small steps and create an environment where you can be agile.

Agile is all about its key principles like continuous feedback, close collaboration, and self-organizing teams. But even agile isn't free of the efforts of collaboration, cooperation, and flexibility. Setting up your organization (more importantly, your people) in a way that supports these principles is the first step to becoming a successful company that iterates constantly and collaborates with users, customers, employees, and other stakeholders. It's all about a culture of learning how to do this together! 

Here’s something that is so much easier to say this but very difficult to do, 

“When times are tough - DO NOT SET INDIVIDUAL OKRS, SET ONLY TEAM OKRS. It's the only way to promote collaboration and a  sense of building an accomplishment and belonging.”  

Conclusion 

We all want to be successful, but, how can we achieve it? What should we do to reach our OKRs? Simply put, it requires hard work and discipline. It requires doing things that you don't want to do. It requires pushing yourself further than you think is possible. That sounds kind of awful, doesn't it?

At Fitbots OKRs, we help organizations unleash their superpower by helping teams track OKRs, predict outcomes, and course-correct with some of these tips. For example, shared OKRs and Focus OKRs are built-in making it easy to implement and scale with OKRs.

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About The Author

Kashi is the Co-founder and CTO of Fitbots. Kashi has coached over 700+ teams on OKRs with the focus on helping founders and teams achieve more with OKRs. His niche focuses on the future of work by bringing technology to life.

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