5 ChatGPT prompts to set effective OKRs

The Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework has become the standard for setting clear and impactful goals. However, crafting meaningful, measurable OKRs that align with your vision can be challenging.

That's because we generally spend 90% of our time at work focused on outputs. Those are the projects, tasks, meetings, etc., that we need to go through to achieve our goals. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that teams have a hard time drafting OKRs that don't look like a replica of their roadmap – that's where most of their attention was until then.

On top of that, you need to have a firm grasp of the difference between OKRs and KPIs, understand the relationship between OKRs and projects, and ensure you have the foundations to build an outcome-driven culture in your organisation.

That's a lot of work.

But thankfully, there's a free assistant out there that can give you a hand. If you're about to set some OKRs, it might be a good idea to open up a ChatGPT session on the side to get some help. Below are 5 simple prompts that can help you craft a robust set of goals for the quarter.

1. Getting a series of OKRs ready-to-go

"What are some relevant OKRs that I can set to [achieve specific goal]?"

The fastest way to get a set of OKRs is to ask ChatGPT for some examples directly. Here's what your prompt should be:

There are always multiple ways to achieve any goal, and this is a quick and easy way to get a set of suggestions. ChatGPT is generally good at giving examples that focus on different aspects of your business, app, or user journey.

For instance, you could increase the number of website conversions by increasing traffic while keeping conversion rates the same, or you could focus your efforts on improving landing pages to get better conversion rates while keeping traffic the same. Those are 2 sides of the same coins.

At the end of the day, it will be up to you to decide, but this is an excellent way to start your OKR drafting session. Another benefit is that it will help people new to OKRs understand what a good, measurable OKR should look like.

2. Getting specific Key Results examples

"What are effective Key Results I should consider if my Objective is to [objective]?"

You might already have decided on a specific Objective. In this case you can ask ChatGPT for some examples of relevant Key Results.

This prompt will result in a series of suggestions along with a short explanation. This prompt can be quite useful when you're setting OKRs in a domain that you're unfamiliar with.

3. Getting a list of metrics for a specific goal

"What are the best success metrics and KPIs for measuring [specific topic]?"

Another way to get some inspiration for your OKRs is to explore the success metrics that are highly correlated with your goal. This is a technique that can also be used to derive OKRs from a set of themes.

You start by asking ChatGPT for the top KPIs and metrics to track for a specific domain or problem, and then you can decide with your team where you want to focus and what kind of improvements you'd like to see.

4. Finding baselines for your KRs

"What are industry benchmarks for [metric]?"

Knowing what metrics to pick is one thing, and knowing what target to set is another. Even if you've been tracking your NPS data, open rates, or application performance for a while, you might be interested in knowing how it compares to your peers.

Use ChatGPT to know the industry benchmarks and adjust your targets accordingly. From my experience, you'll find some limitations in how detailed the responses can be, but you can generally get a range for any common metric.

5. Finding potential initiatives

"What are the most effective initiatives to [achieve specific Key Result]?"

I wouldn't recommend trusting ChatGPT blindly to run your business, but it can be a powerful assistant to generate ideas that can lead to exciting discussions with your team.

If you see a challenging Key Result, it might be a good think to ask ChatGPT for some effective tactics that align with your goal and could help you reach your desired outcome faster.

Better context = better examples

While the prompt above are relatively simple, it can be quite useful to provide additional context to ChatGPT. For instance, retention rates for B2C and B2B platforms are quite different, and so will be the metrics and tactics to focus on.

So, a complete prompt could look like this:

"I'm a [role] for a business that [describe your business]. [OKRs prompt]".

For instance "I'm a growth marketer for a streaming service. What are effective Key Results I should consider if my Objective is to make content a significant source of leads?"

A tool that combines OKRs-tracking and ChatGPT

Tability is an OKRs-tracking platform that also integrates with OpenAI to provide similar capabilities as the prompts listed above, but all while keeping you in the context of your goals. Here are some of the advantages that Tability will bring:

• No need to craft the OKRs prompts: Tability takes care of that for you.
• No copy/pasting: ChatGPT/GPT-3 responses are parsed and already added to the tool.
• Ready-to-track: Tability has advanced goal-tracking features to manage check-ins and see progress on your OKRs during the quarter.
• Built-in reports: write your progress updates once, and Tability will share it with all the stakeholders that need to be informed (and it can turn itself into a keynote too).
• Integration with your tools: Tability can connect to your tools to sync progress data, or embed presentation where your team is already working.

Here are 3 ways you'll be able to leverage AI and Tability to go from vision to OKRs in a matter of seconds.

Generate OKRs by describing your Objective

The first thing that Tability can do is automatically generate a set of OKRs from a simple description of your Objective. The more precise you are with the description of your goal, the better the recommendation will be.

Tability will take care of generating the appropriate prompt in the background and will return the results in the app, ready to be tracked.

Generate initiatives for your Key Results

Tability can also generate a set of initiatives or tasks for each one of your KRs. With a simple click you'll get a set of action items that you can start planning in context.

No need to copy/paste things between ChatGPT and Tability. Tability takes care of the prompt for you, will parse the results, and then add them to the UI where you can start adding deadlines, owners, and more context.

Analyse progress

You can use the coaching capability of Tability to generate an analysis of your progress. Tability will use the description of your Key Result and the progress data to give an assessment of your situation. It will also provide a set of suggestions to help you achieve your goal faste.r

What's next?

You can go further by reading the full post about how to generate OKRs with OpenAI and Tability.

You can also sign up today and use Tability's AI features for free!

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