What Is OKR Certification? Is It Worth it?

Does your company offer effective training and career advancement opportunities? Are they yielding positive outcomes? Despite significant investment in employee training, traditional methods have proven ineffective in developing necessary skills. This holds true for OKR certification courses as well

75% of the managers say they are disappointed with their organization’s Learning and Development. 

Learning the OKR framework is not much different than learning how to communicate well in team meetings. OKR certification courses, books, and lectures are useless if the team does not implement the learnings in their everyday work.

Leaders have to understand the people’s needs well and provide training accordingly. People learn something when they are willing to learn. Create an environment that inspires them to learn more. Let’s see how you can utilize the OKR certification courses.

What are OKR certification courses?

OKR certification courses are lessons and coaching that aim to teach individuals and teams about the OKR framework. Many companies that provide OKR management software and consulting offer these lessons and coaching.

These lessons generally contain the following:

• History and basic concepts
• Why should companies use them?
• How do they help organizations achieve more?
• How does the usual process of implementing it go?
• Best practices to follow while using this framework.

How to choose the right OKR certification course?

The best program out there is the one that enables you to learn this methodology through practice. Research and find a course that involves the team creating and implementing OKRs. Use business-specific strategies and projects to execute what you learn from the coaching. One-way teaching, like online certification courses, is not that helpful. Employees don’t usually put online lessons in their calendars, especially work-related ones. 

A better way is to train managers in your organization. It’s quite feasible to give one-to-one coaching to a few people in the organization. You can call these managers – OKR Champions or Shepherds. These leaders should believe in this framework and must take the initiative to implement them effectively in their teams. They have the authority and means to train their team members.

Pros and cons of the OKR certification courses

You may request your team to complete some online courses, but many employees don’t start them. People who start the course struggle to finish them, and those who complete them gradually forget them. There is no better education than actually doing the work. Try to motivate people to make it their part of the work.

Pros

Helps in clearing concepts

These OKR certification courses cannot teach you everything about this framework, but they can introduce you to all the related concepts. You can look at the templates and how other companies have used them. 

Helps managers to become OKR champions and coaches

These lessons may not be effective in training all your employees. There are certain passionate people in every organization. These employees take the initiative to learn more efficient ways of working.

These OKR certification courses can give them an overview of the bigger picture, and they can go on to learn the deeper aspects of the OKRs through real-life usage. 

Some employees and managers can take the course and get certified to become OKR Champions. These people are coaches who want to train their teams with the same.

Flexible learning

No one can deny the flexibility of online courses. More and more employees are realizing the importance of flexible lessons. Employees can enroll in these OKR certification courses to gain some actionable takeaways and enhance their performance.

Cons

Internal coaches are needed

Online OKR certification courses, as mentioned earlier, are ineffective ways to coach employees. When you provide your team with work-related but actionable directions, they are more likely to execute them.

You can practice the OKRs successfully in your organization by training OKR Champions. This is a pretty effective way to train employees at all levels of the organization.

Lack of exposure to real-world usage

Any online course that does not include real-world execution is forgetful. Employees are pretty busy with their BAU and work initiatives. They don’t do it wholeheartedly when they cannot relate to something they are told to learn. People forget the lessons when they don’t apply them in their lives. You don’t need a research paper for that.

OKR certification courses have not evolved well

The world is still new to this framework. Companies like Google have been using and advocating them, but it still needs to reach larger companies worldwide. Moreover, there are fewer OKR coaches worldwide, and they are not much accessible. 

The best way to utilize the OKR framework is to actually implement it and test it in your organization.

We at JOP can help you get started with this framework by providing a simple, interactive platform and personalized guidance. Talk to our OKR experts to learn more.

FAQs

What are some OKR certifications & coaching providers?

• Get JOP (Joy of Performing)
• OKR International
• Measure What Matters – Coursera
• Work path
• OKR Institute

What is the peer learning method?

The peer learning method is a very interactive and effective way to learn practical things. You take help from each other, request and give feedback continuously.

You can learn OKRs effectively by the peer learning method. It’s a team effort to make OKRs successful