Creating Objectives

One of the most important aspects of Goal setting on Mesh is the ability to tag them to the Objectives. By way of these Objectives, the leadership team can define their broad-level targets and direction for the company, enabling everyone to have a clear picture of the company’s medium to long-term goals.

Once the admins/ process owners/ managers set the larger company Objectives, it’s easier for everyone else in the company to cascade their Key Results (KRs) under the larger ones.  

And this is where the “Objective Setting” part by the Admins and Managers come in.

On the Mesh dashboard, we've removed the stringency around being at a particular place to create your Objectives. After reading the usage patterns of our users, we have identified 3 different places where users of the Goal module are most likely to reside and have implemented Objective creation capabilities in all the 3 places. These are,

• Through Goal Insights - Since admins and managers spend a lot of their time inside the insights section of the different modules, we've brought the Objective creation and alignment capabilities to Insights, making it easier for the two types of personas when creating/ realigning Objectives and KRs for their teams or custom cohorts. 
• Through the Team Hub - The other area of the dashboard where managers spend a lot of time is the Team Hub. So, whenever they're creating/ realigning Objectives and KRs just for their teams.
• Through Goal Settings - When admins aren't too much concerned about KRs and instead want to just concentrate on Objectives, the Objective Settings screen is where you need to go. Reason being, the option to clone Objectives as well as rename/ replace them from previous cycles is available only inside settings.

Let's look at the three processes in detail.

Through Goal Insights 

Under Goal Insights, once you scroll to the bottom half of the screen, you'll find an "Add New" CTA, clicking which will open up two options - Add New Objective & Add New Key Result.

Clicking on the latter will open the traditional Key Result creation window while hitting on the Add New Objective will open a new window for adding Objectives. 



This is how the Objective creation on Mesh works,

Step 1: Enter the name of your Objective. Next,

Step 2: Select the level where this Objective would reside. This could be one of Company, Department, Team and Individual level.

Step 3: Next select the period [by clicking on the dropdown] for which you want this Objective to be active. The period could be on quarterly, half-yearly or annual basis.

Step 4: Finally, enter a detailed description, which although isn't mandatory, but will help others within the company to understand the Objectives they need to link their KRs to.

But the most exciting part about this is being able to add and realign Objectives from the OKR list, instantaneously, without going anywhere else.

Understanding the OKR list

Following are the things that comprise the OKR list,

1 - This is used to realign the Objectives, sub-Objectives as well as the KRs. We'll look into more        details about how to realign your Objectives and KRs after this.

2 - This is identical to the "+" icon explained above, being used for creating new Objectives &             KRs. Anywhere in the Insights or Team Hub, you'll need to find this icon for creating new                 Objectives & Key Results.

3 - Symbol used to denote an Objective.

4 - Symbol used to denote a Key Result (KR).

5 - This column includes the respective owners of the KRs. Currently, only KRs have owners but          not the Objectives; however, we are soon releasing Objectives ownership as well.

6 - This column, firstly, shows the overall progress made on a particular Objective. Expanding              on any Objective will then also show the progress on individual sub-Objectives and KRs that have been cascaded into the original Objective. The master Objective also showcases the number of cascaded KRs that are on-track, off-track, at-risk or closed.

Realigning Objectives & Key Results

Realignment of OKRs can be done from the Insights section as well as the Team Hub. Here's how the process looks like (we're using the Insights section as an example here),

Step 1: Hover over the Objective or KR that you wish to realign and then click on the realign icon.

Step 2: A new window will open up with the same list of OKRs of which you need to select the one where you need to realign the said Objective or KR, by clicking on the blue tick mark symbol at the right side of the OKRs.

Step 3: Once you click on this, the "realign" button at the bottom will be enabled, clicking which will result in your Objective or KR being aligned.

Below is the GIF for the working of the Realign function.

Ease of Check-ins

The new OKR view in Insights also mean that now, you'll be able to do your KR check-ins from here itself, without having to navigate to the homepage every time. And it's actually rather easy as well.

All you need to know is the KR you wish to check-in on is cascaded to which Objective. Once that's clear, expand on the said Objective and click on your KR. This will open up the check-in panel from the right-hand side and then follow the usual process of checking-in to your KRs.

Through the Team Hub

Precisely like the Insights screen, you can not only add Objectives and KRs from here but also realign those Objectives the way you want.

The only constraint being, since this Team Hub is private to your Team, you'll only be able to see your team specific Objectives, and as a result, can only realign these. Also to be noted is that viewing OKRs is only possible through the List View here as show in the image above.

Through Goal Settings

When admins aren't too much concerned about KRs and instead want to just concentrate on Objectives, the Objective Settings screen is where you need to go. Reason being, the option to clone Objectives as well as rename/ replace them from previous cycles is available only inside settings.

Step 1: On the Mesh dashboard, go to “settings” under “Me” and click on Goals from the left-hand panel.

Step 2: Click on “Create new Objective” at the top right corner and start entering the Objective name, type and description. click on the green checkmark at the right-hand side to complete the process.

Step 3: Once an Objective is created, you can further create sub objectives under each one of them by clicking on the blue arrow, which will open a dropdown with a CTA “+ Create sub objective”.

Step 4: For modifying any Objective/ sub objective, simply click on any of them, edit it and upon completion, again click the green checkmark.

Step 5: For deleting an Objective or sub objective, simply click on the bin icon at the right-hand side of the Objectives/ sub objectives.

This was about creating Objectives. In case you want to read about setting up and managing company-wide Objectives, head over to Objective Setting and Management.