Tool for Collaborative Teams Embracing the OKR Structure: Coda's Unmatched Advantages
Hey there! I'm Jamie, co-founder and Head of Growth at Appetiser Apps—a mobile and web development company based in Melbourne, Australia. We started back in 2016 and have grown from a small local team to over a hundred skilled individuals worldwide.
Our success posed some challenges, though. As our client base expanded, our workload became unsustainable. So, we decided to beef up our recruitment and team size as needed, but it wasn't easy given the remote nature of the app development industry. To speed up the onboarding and training process of our new hires, we knew our systems needed to go completely online.
Our goal-setting methods also needed a revamp. Following a yearly KPI (Key Performance Indicator) framework no longer seemed suitable for our fast-paced growth. We wanted something that would push us harder and encourage more transparency across the entire company. That's when I stumbled upon Objective Key Results (OKRs).
Goal-setting 2.0
OKRs are a step up from KPIs, prompting more meaningful and challenging goal-setting with increased transparency throughout the company.
'Objectives' are high-level targets with 'key results' that measure success and progress. Unlike KPIs, OKRs follow a quarterly structure instead of a yearly one, giving more frequent indicators of growth and performance. These goals are intentionally aggressive and, surprisingly, encouraging failure is part of the equation. In fact, Silicon Valley icon John Doer advocates for this approach—he believes that failure should be celebrated, not feared, as it's a crucial stepping stone towards success.
I couldn't agree more with John; many startups that experience early success tend to become overly cautious, stifling growth and creativity. By embracing the 'dare to fail' philosophy, we could move Appetiser Apps away from complacency and towards consistent growth.
Individual achievements are still celebrated, but everyone from the CEO to the new hire has transparent goals, fostering teamwork, accountability, and camaraderie—especially important for a growing company like ours.
The Need for a Customized Solution
Before officially adopting the OKR framework at Appetiser, we realized the need for a customized management tool. To match our dynamic and growing team, we required software that could be tailored to our unique strategies. We needed something that tracked goals, managed projects, and allowed for seamless task assignment.
After exploring other options, we found Coda to be the perfect choice. Coda is a versatile, customizable suite that molds to our needs, providing the software we required to create, manage, and track our OKRs as we saw fit. Additionally, Coda allows us to learn from our mistakes and failures while striving for lofty goals—just like reaching for the stars to land on the moon.
Our Coda Success Story
Coda has helped us handle the challenges of a growing company and diverse team with ease. Our new onboarding process, onboarding.io, was created within Coda, allowing us to reduce a week-long process to just three days while also boosting efficiency.
This digital process has been essential to our growth, allowing us to expand to 150 employees across three continents. Department-specific documents in Coda help us personalize processes and track progress, leading to increased efficiency and faster project launches—including the launch of 11 apps since COVID-19 restrictions began.
Our roadmap within Coda consolidates all company OKRs, making it easy to present during company-wide standups and track our overall progress. Our revenue growth skyrocketed by an impressive 50% during the first two quarters of 2020, all thanks to the systems we built using Coda.
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In essence, you should find a tool that complements your company's workflow and is agile enough to adapt as your team grows and evolves. While it might be tempting to rely on what big corporations have used, it's crucial for each company to set its goals, create processes specifically geared towards its unique challenges, and establish a framework tailored to its individual needs. And for that, Coda delivers perfectly.
- In the world of business and technology, our app development company, Appetiser Apps, discovered the need for a more challenging and transparent goal-setting method beyond the yearly KPI framework.
- Embracing the Objective Key Results (OKRs) approach, we aim to push ourselves harder, encourage more transparency, and foster teamwork, accountability, and camaraderie—all essential for a growing company like ours.
- To effectively manage our OKRs, we sought a customizable solution and found it in Coda, a versatile software that caters to our dynamic and evolving team, helping us navigate the challenges of a growing company by boosting efficiency and increasing revenue.
