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Close, score, and reflect on OKRs with Viva Goals

Are you ready to close out your Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)? When the time comes to close them, you must evaluate the progress you made towards achieving your goals, determine whether you accomplished them, and decide on areas for improvement. When you close out OKRs, you're opening the door to future education and goal setting.

In this article, we'll discuss:

  • When and how to close your OKRs.
  • How to properly score your OKRs.
  • The importance of a reflection meeting.

Note

Creating, tracking, and closing OKRs is an iterative, organic process. Every quarter that you do this process, you'll become better at it. Always remember to focus on progress, not perfection. It’s more important to reflect on what went right, what didn't go as planned, and what you learned. But then it's time to move on. Don't obsess over a missed goal that didn't go the way you anticipated.

When to close your OKRs and initiatives

In general, you should close OKRs within the last one or two weeks of a time period, such as every quarter. If you’re a team leader or program lead, we recommend that you send a message to remind users to close their OKRs during the last week of the quarter. However, you might wonder, “Is it ok to close out a key result or initiative before the end of a quarter?” The answer is yes.

For example, perhaps you have an initiative to create and share your marketing strategy for an upcoming product launch by the quarter's end. However, in a flash of productivity, you completed it in the first three weeks of the quarter. In that case, it's fine to close that initiative right then, and mark it complete. On the other hand, you might have situations where metrics such as sales figures or website traffic aren't finalized until the last day of the month. For those scenarios, conduct a check at the end of the time period, and then revisit it as soon as the final metrics are available, so you can close the OKR.

Closing OKRs and initiatives

There are two primary steps to perfect when closing your OKRs and initiatives.

Step 1: Close and score your OKRs in Viva Goals

Perform the first step using Viva Goals. The closing process is similar to a check-in process, which involves updating your metrics, choosing a status, and leaving a comment regularly throughout the quarter (usually weekly). However, when you perform the closing process, you're conducting a final check-in for the time period.

In Viva Goals, navigate to the item that you want to close, select More Actions, and then select Close. You then must complete the following steps:

  1. Update the metric. Enter the final metric for the item that you're tracking for that quarter.
  2. Review the status. During a routine check-in, the status should reflect progress (on track, behind, etc.). However, the applicable time period is now over, so Viva Goals should have marked the status as closed. Verify the status indicates it's closed.
  3. Provide a score. Viva Goals automatically calculates a recommended score based on your metric's results. For example, if you reached 70% of your goal, your score would be 0.7 (refer to the subsequent scoring note).
  4. Add a closing note. Your weekly check-in notes provided bite-sized updates to your progress. However, your closing note should provide an overall performance summary with respect to a specific goal. These reflections are critical with respect to writing your OKRs for the next time period. They should include comments on why you chose the score you selected, what things didn't go as planned, and what you could do better to achieve your goal. If necessary, upload attachments for reference.

We recommend closing OKRs in the following order:

  • 0.0-0.4 (red): We failed to make real progress.
  • 0.5-0.6 (yellow): We made progress, but fell short of completion.
  • 0.7-0.9 (green): We delivered.
  • 1.0 (orange): We hit 100%, but did we stretch enough?

You can customize these ranges in the Viva Goals Admin Dashboard under the section Color scale for OKR scores. Remember that OKRs should be ambitious, and your goals should stretch what’s possible so you really move the needle on progress. Occasionally you'll hit 100% of your goals. That's fantastic, and you should celebrate it. However, if you find your OKRs consistently score a 1.0 each quarter, you're probably not making your goals ambitious enough.

Viva Goals automatically calculates a recommended score, but you can adjust it. This provides you with flexibility in how your OKR scores are viewed. For example, if your goal was to launch a new speaker series and host 10 events during the quarter, but you only did seven events, you’d get a score of 0.7. However, if those events exceeded all expectations, with each of them selling out and providing immense value to your audience, you could nudge the score up to 0.8 to reflect that accomplishment.

It's important to note that you should do this only in exceptional circumstances. In most cases, don't use the scoring option to change a key result from 0.4 to 0.5 just to make your score go from red to yellow because you’re embarrassed by the result. Sometimes you’re going to write poor OKRs, choose the wrong metric to pursue, or get overwhelmed with other projects. That's OK. The correct course of action is to let the OKR score reflect the true outcome, detail the circumstances (good or bad) in the notes, and then make adjustments the following quarter.

Step 2: Hold an OKR reflection meeting

The second part of the closing process takes part outside Viva Goals, and serves as a retrospective to the quarter. Admittedly, it’s an easy step to gloss over. Closing your OKRs is straightforward. You enter your final metrics, give yourself a score, and write a brief summary. You might be tempted to skip scheduling another meeting when you can just jump right into the next quarter. However, it's important to set aside time to reflect on the previous quarter’s OKRs. It's actually critical to your program’s success.

During your reflection meeting:

  • Celebrate the big wins. Provide a summary of the major accomplishments for the quarter, making sure to call out significant wins and giving kudos to the individuals that made those happen.

  • Review the outcomes of your OKRs. Each team member should review the OKRs for which they were responsible and discuss the:

    • Highlights: What went well? Discuss the successes in more detail.
    • Lowlights: What didn't go so well? Discuss pain points and challenges encountered.
    • Key learnings: Where's improvement needed? Discuss the lessons learned from the experience that can be applied for future OKRs.

  • Review the structure of your OKRs. Regardless of the results you achieved, it's important to review the quality of your OKRs. You probably wrote them at least three months prior, and you can take your results and determine how closely you aligned with your initial intentions. This type of reflection ensures you keep getting better at writing meaningful OKRs.

    • For example, if you greatly exceeded your numbers, that’s great. However, did you pick a target that was too easy? Consider how you can set more ambitious goals for the next quarter.
    • Conversely, if you underperformed and missed your targets, what happened? Did you fall into the common trap of setting too many key results? Examine how you might be more streamlined and focused during the next time period.

After your reflection meeting:

  • Share your learnings. It's important to impart what you've learned with your team members and others in your organization. For the big wins, consider holding a quarterly “All hands” meetings where kudos can be shared with the company. However, it's equally important to share what you learned and discuss the following:

    • What new activities should you implement?
    • What activities distracted you from your goals? What should you stop doing?
    • What should you continue doing? What worked well?

  • Keep up the momentum. You've celebrated your wins, discussed areas in which you can improve, and shared your results. Now what? Go ahead and proceed with OKR planning and writing for the upcoming time period. We recommend that you share, at a high level, the upcoming quarter’s OKRs, and then let team members review them and come back in a day or so with edits based on learnings from the reflection meeting.

Need more info?

Now that you understand why it's important to reflect on, and close, your OKRs, refer to the step-by-step process for closing and scoring your OKRs in Viva Goals: Close OKRs with Viva Goals.

Recommendations and best practices

Looking to improve your healthy OKR program? Here are recommendations you can perform within Viva Goals:

  1. Close and score your OKRs at the end of each time period

    As you approach the end of a time period, encourage all OKR owners to close out their OKRs and initiatives, including a brief summary. Create and send calendar reminders at the beginning of the year as part of your rhythm of business so you don’t forget.

  2. Hold an OKR reflection meeting

    Groups should set aside time to reflect on their OKRs, which will allow them to write better and better goals moving forward.

  3. Review your OKR analytics

    Analytics are available at the organization and team level within Viva Goals, and display metrics such as number of OKRs closed, OKR efficiency, and OKR focus. Use these analytics to track the success of your program over time.