Great OKR dashboards will boost execution

Making plans isn't easy. Whether it's finally catching up with your old friend from school or setting goals in business, we often put things off. Before you know it, a year has gone by with little accomplished.

While we're not experts in social theory, we know a thing or two about goal setting. After years of work, we've uncovered the secret to goal-setting and OKRs success — visualisation and tracking. OKR dashboards give you a real-time glimpse of your performance, boosting accountability and transparency. Discover how OKR dashboards work in practice and boost your OKR journey with this guide.

What is an OKR dashboard

Let's peel it back. A dashboard is a place where critical data is displayed in a way that makes it readily accessible and actionable. In a car, your dashboard will show you speed, fuel consumption and occasional defects. The same can be done online — a good dashboard will provide a glimpse of what's going on behind the scenes.

An OKR dashboard is the space in OKR software that displays your goal progress and current workload. It's a starting point, showing you what you need to see at a glance and allowing you to follow through for more comprehensive insights. It's common to see graphs, charts and other data OKR visualisations. As OKRs are updated weekly, the information and visuals in the dashboard change in real-time.

Visualisation is the key — individual contributors can see how their work contributes to the bigger picture, and managers can keep an eye on how close they are to meeting their goals.

How OKR dashboards can help your team

Realising a vision is challenging, especially when you don't have a simple way to track progress. You can absolutely be successful without using dedicated OKRs software, but having clear dashboards to track your goals can make it 100x easier to make your dreams come true.

If you're just getting started with OKRs in Google Sheets, you've probably discovered how hard it is to get your team to buy in. That's because spreadsheets are generic tools that don't interpret the data. As a result, you get little actionable insights from the weekly reporting activity – and it feels much more like an extra chore than something that benefits the team. That's where OKRs software, and specifically dashboards, come in handy.

Here are some other ways OKRs dashboards can benefit your team.

1. Defined focus

On the average workday, office employees juggle their time between admin tasks, miscellaneous work and getting their 'actual' work done. With an OKRs dashboard, it becomes easier to see how tasks contribute toward wider goals. This increases engagement and helps people effectively manage their time, avoid distractions and stay motivated.

2. Progress tracking

With OKR visualisation tools, you have a better understanding of your performance. The OKR dashboard can show you how far you are from achieving your goals in a simple way. You can just glance at a progress chart to understand if you're on track or in a risky situation. Teams are constantly challenged to find new ways to improve and complete tasks more efficiently.

3. Improve transparency

Using OKR dashboards to create transparency based on shared goals will improve collaboration. Your OKRs dashboard can help you see areas that need improvement without having to comb through a dozen of spreadsheets. If your Net Confidence Score or outcomes progress is consistently off-track, you may need to improve productivity or set more realistic goals. You'll see your progress, key metrics and reminders about check-ins. Transparency is levelled up by keeping everything above board.

4. Automated data

Individual and organisational progress against objectives is hard to measure manually. With an OKRs dashboard, you can see real-time data and insights that are easy to digest. You can also customise your dashboard to suit your and your business's needs with filters.

Teamwork

5. Teamwork

Group performance is the backbone of effective OKRs. Using an OKRs dashboard, you can see your team's contributions to outcomes, which promotes collaboration. Teams can also reallocate initiatives if performance gaps prevent a goal from being achieved. In addition, people can provide notes on their own OKR progress and general performance to keep everyone in the loop.

OKR dashboard examples

Here are a few types of dashboards that you can get from Tability.

OKRs plan overview

This dashboard shows will help you understand how an OKR plan is doing. The top of the dashboard will give you insights on progress, confidence, and how much time is left to achieve your goals.

The bottom part of the dashboard gives you an overview of the different Key Results.

Key Result panel

This dashboard is designed to show progress for a specific Key Result. The progress chart will give you a clear understanding of progress over time, making it really easy to see when a team is facing difficulties.

OKR progress distribution

Sometimes it's important to get a snapshot of progress across your entire org. This dashboard will show you how progress and confidence are distributed across the teams.

How to use dashboards to visualise your OKRs

Dashboards are nothing without data. On their own, they're just a collection of well-designed charts and pictures — add some facts and figures, and they create a powerful narrative. Dashboards provide an attractive, visual, data-driven aid for understanding how you're doing with OKRs.

Our OKRs dashboard is a jumping-off board and insights hub all in one place. From monitoring activity to displaying your initiatives, everything's in one easy-to-find place on Tability. Here are some features of Tability's dashboard to help you visualise your goal progress:

• Check-ins: Keep track of progress with weekly check-ins and automated reminders.
• Your initiatives: See what outputs are planned to make progress on your outcomes
• Outcomes chart: Monitor your progress toward meeting your Key Results.
• Net Confidence Score (NCS): Reveal the overall confidence in your OKRs plan with your Net Confidence Score.
• Check-ins streak: Track how many weeks in a row you've updated your OKRs.
• Recent activity: A list of changes, updates and movements across your team.

Try an OKRs dashboard for free

With increased transparency and team buy-in, teams are more productive and better understand their contributions. Try Tability for free to see what an OKR dashboard and software can do for your organisation.