What is an OKR tool?

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An OKR tool is designed to help individuals, teams, and organizations, set, track, and achieve their goals using the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework. The OKR framework is a goal-setting methodology that originated in Intel and has been adopted by many companies worldwide. These OKR tools provide a centralized platform where individuals and teams can create, track, and update their objectives and key results in real-time.‍

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What is the Notion VIP OKR template?

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The Notion VIP OKR template is a pre-built template designed to help leaders and their teams set, track, and manage their OKRs in Notion. This is a paid template and is present on the Notion VIP website.

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The template is customizable, with different sections for objectives, key results, and tasks. You can customize the template to fit your specific needs by editing the sections, and can also change the colors according to branding or personal preferences.

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The Notion VIP OKR template includes several features that make it easy to use and effective for goal-setting, including -

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• A dashboard view that provides a high-level overview of progress towards goals

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• A dedicated page for each objective, where users can track progress, add key results, and assign tasks

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• A built-in progress tracker that updates automatically based on completion of tasks and key results

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• A section for reflections and lessons learned, where users can document their successes and challenges and use them to inform future goals

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How to use the Notion VIP OKR template?

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To use the Notion VIP OKR template, follow these steps:

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1. First, go to the Notion VIP website and download the OKR template. This is a paid template so you need to purchase it on order to use it

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2. Then, open Notion and create a new page for your OKRs.

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3. After creating the page, click on "Import" in the top right corner of the page to import the downloaded template.

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4. From the list, select the desired template file and click "Import."

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5. Now the OKR template will be added to your Notion page.

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After importing the template, you can start customizing it to fit your needs. You can follow these steps to use the template effectively -

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1. Start with defining your objectives: In the "Objectives" section of the template, create objectives you want to achieve. Be specific and measurable in your objective statements. Objectives, if not led by specific actions and duration might set out a wrong picture for your team. In order to avoid confusion, be very specific with the objectives. 

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2. Then, add key results to each objective: In the "Key Results" section of the template, create the key results you want to achieve for each objective. Make sure your key results are measurable and contribute to the overall objective.

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3. Furthermore, assign tasks to team members: In the "Tasks" section of the template, break down your key results by creating tasks that need to be completed to achieve a key result. Assign tasks to team members and set deadlines.

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4. Then, use the progress tracker: The progress tracker in the "Dashboard" section of the template will automatically update as you complete tasks and achieve key results. Use this to monitor progress towards your objectives and make adjustments as per changing needs & requirements.

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5. Reflect on your progress: In the "Reflections" section of the template, document your successes and challenges and use them to inform future goal-setting.

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By following these steps, you can effectively use the Notion VIP OKR template to set and track your goals in Notion.

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Can we also build our own OKR template in Notion?

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Yes, you can build your own OKR (Objectives and Key Results) template in Notion as well. You can follow these steps to create your own OKR template in Notion -

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1. Start with opening Notion and creating a new page.

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2. Then choose the "Table" block type from the options given.

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3. Now, you can work with the existing ones or you can rename the default columns to Objectives, Key Results, Progress, and Status to suit your project needs and work with the traditional OKR framework.

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4. Then, you can also customize the table further by adding more columns that you want to track, such as Owner, Start and End Date, Priority, Comments, etc. for more visibility. These would allow you to have more granular level tracking of the ongoings in the project.

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5. After you have customized the view that suits you & your teams the best, start adding new rows for each Objective and Key Result that you want to track.

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6. After adding all the OKRs, start setting up measurable targets for each Key Result, and track your progress towards it by updating the "Progress" column.

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7. Utilize the "Status" column to indicate whether the Objective or Key Result is on track, behind schedule, or completed.

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8. Additionally, you can also add links to related documents or pages within Notion, or attach files and images to provide additional context. This might be useful for quick reference when multiple people are working on the same project.

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9. Finally, save your template as a page in your Notion workspace so that you can reuse it for future quarters/projects.

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This way, you can create a custom OKR template that is tailored to your needs and you can keep on optimizing it to suit your future needs & priorities.

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Challenges faced by Managers while using Notion as an OKR tool

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1. Requirement of proper training and support: Without proper training and support, team members may struggle to use the Notion OKR template effectively, leading to frustration and lack of engagement. This might result in wasting a lot of business hours in understanding and navigating through the tools to get the simplest of things done inside it.

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2. Inadequate management: Without regular monitoring, tasks can keep on adding up which might lead up to wrong expectations against the tasks assigned. This requires a manual effort for managers or individuals to come to a common ground if the timelines/responsibilities of the task are not mutually agreed upon assigning.

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3. No flexibility to assign tasks beyond project objectives: Leaders of today also focus on employee growth and have certain agendas for their teams to work & improve upon. There’s no option in the Notion OKR tool to improve behavioral skills for example. Only project goals can be assigned & completed within the tool. Managers find it difficult to assign tasks beyond the scope of hard skills & project goals.

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4. Feedback death after goal completion: With every project/goal, multiple feedback-communication happens within the team. But, after the goal is completed, the feedback doesn’t result in any outcome and depends solely on the individual to carry them forward or not.

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The idea of Collaborative Team Development along with OKRs

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The multifaceted approach of getting teams to be productive often results in completing business goals and growing your team in silos. Project management & team management might feel like two separate verticals of leading a team but it's high time we bundle them together and save countless hours spent in quarterly/annual reviews. We work on projects on a daily basis, and one-off reviews at the end of quarters/years can include near-biases & personal opinions often neglecting year-round performance updates. To tackle this problem we have come up with - Collaborative Team Development.

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Collaborative Team Development is a novel approach for leaders, to build, grow, develop, and sustain teams that strive to be the best. All this, while completing your team outcomes linked to crucial business goals. CTD improves team performance, increases employee engagement, enhances decision-making capabilities, and utilizes resources much more efficiently. By fostering a culture of collaboration and teamwork, hybrid leaders create world-class teams which are well-equipped to achieve their goals.

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Here’s how Collaborative Team Development can help your hybrid teams perform & grow better - 

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1. Fosters a sense of belonging to a close-knit team: CTD emphasizes the importance of working together and promoting team growth. By working together towards a common goal, team members can develop a sense of belonging and feel more invested in the success of the project. This can lead to better morale and work satisfaction.

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2. Encourages communication and feedback: CTD can promote a culture of open communication and encourage team members to share their ideas and opinions. This can lead to a more inclusive work environment where everyone feels heard and valued. Additionally, by providing regular feedback, team members can learn from each other and develop new skills.

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3. Allows for greater productivity: CTD can build a culture of high performance. By bringing together a diverse group of individuals seamlessly connected with each other, the team can achieve better results by allocating resources in a much better way than working in silos in distributed setups. 

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4. Builds a habit of continuous improvement: CTD emphasizes the importance of learning and growth happening regularly and not by one-off review cycles. By providing opportunities for skill development and encouraging feedback, the team can continually improve and evolve over time.

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How does OnLoop work?

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A quick snapshot -

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Here’s how OnLoop is different from Notion OKR Tool -

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1. Swift team onboardings: OnLoop is just like a regular app. Share your organization’s joining link and all your team has to do is download the app via that link from App Store or Google Play and done. You can manage the team structure once people join in.

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2. Parent goals divided into - Target, Project, Behavioral & Hard Skill: With OnLoop, you can categorize every goal you make into four categories. Each parent goal comes with its unique milestones. This way everyone knows where to start, where to go, and how to reach there. Welcome to Collaborative Team Development.

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3. Regular progress updates: OnLoop enables you to stay in the loop of every project as teams map their progress in real-time. You can track the progress of each goal against the milestones quickly to know the status of the project and capture your required feedback to improve the outcomes.

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4. Wins & improvements against the goals: OnLoop lets you capture feedback in the moment – so you can share and celebrate wins, and identify ways to improve for yourself and your teammates. Wins & improvements both are important aspects of growing a team. A hybrid world can result in team individuals with low work morale or lost directions while completing tasks. Real-time wins & improvements help keep the team members elevated with the celebration of their achievements and directions into their tasks.

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5. Real-time communications within the goal: Juggling between multiple platforms can be a task in itself and might take some time for context setting. OnLoop helps your team achieve better results by enabling you to communicate requirements/suggestions within that specific goal. This doesn’t let anyone lose sight of what the communication was about. 

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6. Unified timelines of events captured in the project: With OnLoop you & your team can have a unified timeline of milestones completed, wins & improvements captured against the goal to have a bird-eye view of events that happened in achieving the goal.

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7. AI-powered Prism summaries: It often happens that biases cloud the actual review of a person’s capabilities. Tackling this lesser-talked issue, OnLoop enables you to generate Prism summaries on the basis of wins and improvements captured by you to let your team members know how their performance was on a particular project highlighting their superpowers and blindspots. These summaries are based on the compounded captures that you make while working on a project. Not letting the crucial feedback die as you complete the project.

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8. Personalized learning: In this time & age, anyone can learn anything which might lead to information overload. OnLoop takes care of this too. On the basis of summaries, it suggests learning content so that each individual can have access to specific content in order to get better, faster. This helps in cutting down the clutter so that your team knows exactly what to consume in order to grow.

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See why other leaders are choosing OnLoop

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“Onloop helps you write your story so others don't do it for you.”

Jarred Huggle, VP at BeyondMeat

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“OnLoop is proving to be monumentally important in kickstarting conversations that weren't happening. We're also seeing people start to reframe the negativity they associate with 'feedback' into something more positive, viewing it as 'guidance' that they are actively seeing out amongst their peers.”

Ailidh Smylie, MD at Socialize/We Are Social

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“Using OnLoop has helped us shine a light on our strengths by giving us visibility on the whole team’s areas for improvement and achievements. We’ve made leaps forward with our training program to better match our culture, empowering our team forward by owning our development”

Akanksha Goel, CEO at Socialize

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Build a culture of high productivity in your hybrid teams with OnLoop

OnLoop enables you to supercharge your team’s productivity, just like a fitness tracker. Don’t let your feedback die in the individual projects/goals. Compound them to grow your team better, faster & together -

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1. Unleash the power of compounding feedback: OnLoop is built with the thought that feedback should be a regular habit and not one-off quarterly/annual event. Hence, every feedback you capture in OnLoop compounds the previous one. This enables leaders and their employees to spot patterns of recurring wins & improvements; leading to increased work satisfaction, better teamwork, and a culture of high productivity.

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2. Align Employee Outcomes To Business Goals: Onloop enables you to easily break down big company goals into "north star" metrics that individual team members own to drive accountability. This ensures every individual has accountability towards business goals and will create organizational impact upon achieving those.

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3. Eliminate biases with AI-powered Summaries: While writing performance reviews, it often happens that recent events might overshadow they acheivements/improvements for the entire duration of the review cycle. This might result into somewhat accurate but not perfect performance summaries. Also, writing reviews is also an additional task. OnLoop is powered by OpenAI’s latest GPT - 3 which generates accurate and factual summaries of the captured wins and improvements at a single touch.

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4. Level up with Personalized Learning: OnLoop doesn’t stop at the summaries. Based on captures & summaries, it curates and suggests content for you & your team to learn and grow regularly. So, everyone would be having regular suggestions of content personalized to their needs.

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5. Capture wins & improvements as Slack messages: Hybrid teams basically live in Slack for most of their day. With seamless Slack integration, you can capture messages in Slack as wins and improvements. These captures would compound and feed the AI-engine.

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OnLoop is the much-needed upgrade in OKR tools that leaders need.

Our approach to club productivity & growth leads to a win-win situation for both managers and their employees in the hybrid world.

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