Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

What Are OKRs?

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a results-oriented framework that supports teams and organizations in achieving measurable outcomes. OKRs promote clarity, collaboration across teams, and focused attention on the highest priorities. Teams align on objectives to meet their strategic goals and key results that showcase the desired outcomes. Through short cycles, often quarterly, the team makes progress toward specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) outcomes. Establishing only 2-3 objectives per cycle allows the team to clarify its priorities and center its focus on making progress on those key results.

In 2023, the Government Operations Agency led a pilot effort to implement OKRs in State government. The resources shared here include tools to build an OKRs program based on the pilot experience and lessons learned.

CalLearns Training

Registration is for a team of 2 to 4 participants from a single department. Departments may enroll multiple teams based on availability. If you want to add multiple teams from a single department, please email training@calhr.ca.gov to see if a closed session may work out for you.

This highly interactive course spans 2 days. The first day builds practical skills for facilitating the creation of clear, concise, and impactful OKRs. They then have a few weeks to take-back and apply the skills to draft OKRs for their respective organizations. On the second day, they bring draft OKRs back to compare and refine their skills, and then expand on tracking, reporting, and integrating OKRs into their department’s management systems. Working as a team for their respective departments helps them learn, apply, and support each other when implementing OKRs within their organizations. In class, participants will work both within their department team and across teams from other departments to learn different contexts and ways to scale OKRs.

CalHR and GovOps have partnered with “Unleashing Leaders” to provide OKRs training.

Course Schedule FY 24-25

Day 1	Day 2	Price (Per Dept.)	Request Enrollment	Last Day to Enroll
1/14/2025	2/11/2025	$1,375	Request to Enroll	1/7/2025
2/13/2025	3/13/2025	$1,375	Request to Enroll	2/6/2025

Resources

The following resources are tailored to California State Government entities and support the development of an OKRs program. The OKRs Playbook for California State Government provides detailed guidance for establishing an OKRs program and includes links to the resources below. For more information or if you have any questions please contact INFO@UnleashingLeaders.com.