This model helps you draft well-articulated and effective strategic and tactical objectives, that serve as a starting point for organizational OKRs. Why OKRs? because they’re proved to be the go-to navigational tool for businesses as they swerve and move towards their destiny. Additionally, OKRs are meant to help organizations remain focused, agile, transparent and serve as a communication medium to inform, engage, and motivate its employees.

What do we start with when creating OKRs?

The answer is strategy! This assumes that businesses, irrespective of their stage, type, performance, industry, geography etc. want to grow, remain relevant, stay
competitive and successfully attract, serve, and retain its customers. By applying the EPIC Strategy Model™, leaders can make strategic decisions that not
only stand the test of time but also leave space for iterative tactics.

How to use this model:

Step 1:

Start by framing the Deliberate direction that the organization wants to move towards. This captures the appetite for growth. These could help leaders recognize
the length and breadth of their ambition. Will they have moonshots, roofshots or a combination of both? What are their long-term plans? Will they go public, will they target valuation, revenues, technological advances, expansion etc.? Will they grow organically or inorganically? What goals need to be set now to fulfill their
organization’s purpose and mission? Which of these ambitions need to be made public? You can use other models such as the Ansoff or the BCG Matrix can help you define this further.

Step 2:
Then start listing all the External triggers which are usually the headwinds and tailwinds that can impact their business both positively and negatively. Macro factors such as prices, economic un/certainties, regulations, policies, technological changes, competition (both big and emerging) can either ease up business or make it difficult. These triggers cannot be controlled, but they influence long-term and short-term business decisions. What among them are signals for action and what’s noise, that they can just monitor? Consider using a SWOT, PESTLE model or a Competitive Matrix to help get more insights in this area.

Step 3:
Start listing all the Internal drivers which can alleviate or come in the way of longterm and short-term success. These could include costs, culture, leadership, systems, tech debt, capabilities, product basket, brand strength, structures, innovation, speed, and constraints. You can then rate each of these factors in terms of controllability, impact, and relevance. You can use focus groups, employee performance data and internal surveys to assess these parameters.

Step 4:
Then frame the Emergent directions that an organization must consider. Its important to consider that the vector for these growth areas are shorter and provide
immediate results. These could be based on emerging trends, competitive pressure or big customer-driven moves. These are all options that an organization can pick and choose from with the hope that they can either help an organization survive or better, help influence bigger bets. These directions emerge more frequently than deliberate directions. And hence its important to organize these options based on opportunity that will not distract you from long term goals but help you manage exigent circumstances.

Once you have assembled all this information, the next step is to choose what in the EPIC Strategy Model™ needs to be populated and by how much.

Here are some guidelines:

1. Explore: These are deliberate, well laid out decisions that a business makes that serves as a promise to its customers and stakeholders. It’s recommended to evaluate and set limits for these at an annual cadence while they probably serve even longer goals. The objectives framed from these strategies are either moonshots or roofshots and require the entire organization to contribute towards. E.g., Establishing a new customer category, defining a new product or service offering, expanding towards new markets, succeeding in new businesses etc.

2. Pivot: These are emergent, immediate, and responsive decisions that businesses make that give them incremental and, in many cases, competitive advantages. These are set and reviewed on a shorter frequency. They may either be later placed as part of a longer (Explore strategy) if successful and or just managed or shunted once they have served its purpose. These too can be moonshots or roofshots with the caveat that these are experimental (pilots) in nature. E.g., Launching a niche product, testing a new opportunity, leveraging a latest tech, being aggressive with a product etc.

3. Improve: These are continuous improvement measures that organizations perform to bring better efficiency and to respond to emergent needs. These too are set and reviewed in shorter cadences. They include substantial advancements in organizational culture, performance, technological edge, innovation capabilities and ease of working. E.g., Improving employee engagement, adding new capabilities, implementing new software, enhancing productivity (ala Kaizen) etc.

4. Construct: These are mostly enablers to the explore strategic themes. They help organizations transform not only their ways of working but help in securing their future goals. They are new ways of working that need to be constructed from scratch. They could include adopting industry best practices or long-term scaling projects, culture change journeys, restructuring, business transformation projects, digital transformation endeavors, brand or rebranding exercises are some examples of these strategic decisions.

Some Tips:

It’s not necessary to have OKRs in each of these 4 areas since that’s dependent on organization capabilities and appetite discussed earlier.
It’s possible that Improve and Construct tactics serve as enabling or child OKRs to the Explore and Pivot strategic OKRs.
Construct your KRs and related initiatives after you have crafted the Objective statement, not the other way around.
Involve departments, cross functional teams, and sub teams to write OKRs after the business leaders have explained the rationale behind these strategic OKRs. You could use the EPIC Strategy Model™ to do that.

OKRs help organizations succeed! Period! But its the collective enthusiasm and energy of the people that help in making OKRs happen. This energy is dependent on how well the movers and shakers understand business strategy.