What are Initiatives?

Purpose of Initiatives

Initiatives are the tasks that need to be completed in order to accomplish your key results. Initiatives come in the final hierarchy of OKRs. We know that Objectives are the goals that we want to accomplish, Key results are the measurable results or outcomes we expect to consider the progress of the objective. But outcomes don't happen by themselves. Certain tasks/to-dos must be done to bring desired outcomes. These tasks are the initiatives. The OKR concept is incomplete without Initiatives. Thus many sources append initiatives to OKRs and refer to them as OKRIs. Yet, the Initiatives are only there to account for the tasks to be done for the key results but they do not add to the objective progress.

Difference between Initiatives and Key Results

Let's see a simple example to get a better understanding.

Consider an objective 'Improve internal employee job satisfaction '. In order to achieve this goal, one key result could be to 'conduct 3 Fun Fridays per month '. In order to conduct 3 fun Fridays, there will be many tasks to be done like 'Arranging events', 'Collecting participants', 'Buying Gifts'. These would be the initiatives.

Adding Initiatives in culture.easy

You can only add initiatives to the Objectives that you are owner of. To add an initiative

• From OKR's find the Objective you want to add an initiative to

• Click on Add Initiative from the buttons present below the OKR

• A text box appears. Fill your initiative there

• Click Save