OKRs: wrap-up, plan and Win!
It’s the World Cup Final, end of regular time, and neither team has been able to score a goal. Exhausted, but focused, each team gets together in a huddle with their coach….
- What goes on in those 5 to 10 minutes before the extra time starts?
- How can the coach deliver effective feedback to the team and to specific players in such a short amount of time?
- Most importantly, how can the entire team build a new plan for the most important 30 minutes of their lives, based on the last 90 plus minutes?
- Well, they can and do! Even accepting the fact that there can only be one winner.
However, the real question is: how can you do this in your own company with your employees? The answer is OKRs
The final whistle: time to wrapping up and scoring
Every match has that final minute where anything can happen: a penalty kick, a counter-attack, even a goal! This is execution at its finest, with no room for mistakes and a focus on one single goal. However, every match will come to an end. Regardless of whether the match ended in a win, loss, or draw, they will still have to get together and review their performance with a wrap-up.
The wrap-up cycle
The scoring
The Huddle
Remember the initial question of what happens in a 10-minute huddle during a world cup final?
Well, there’s a lot of talking, initially from the person calling the shots, but later it happens between the players. Managers have to communicate effectively: their feedback should focus on providing specific suggestions to deliver a change, talk about positive things performed during the period, and be very specific to every person. Now, this is an opportunity to share and build as a team in order to be more productive in the next period. This requires guidance from management to avoid pointing fingers at particular individuals and to help everyone understand the perspective of their teammates.
Focus and Commit to Priorities
The World Cup Final has 30 minutes of extra time left and the victory is just a goal away. What’s the plan?
Well, the coach has an idea which the players will build on in the huddle. It turns out that this question is normally asked by team members to managers all over the world at the end of a quarter. Management must start by reviewing the progress of the company OKRs and from there, discuss the strategy and tactical action that will be taken during the quarter with the team. A good practice is to leverage the knowledge that the team has on what happened last period and apply the learned lessons.
Align and Connect for Teamwork
Now it’s time to set the new OKRs for the period. Management has to rely on the owner of each objective to define each key result and the most adequate measure of progress. Share this plan with everyone else, then execute it. Planning is important and will be successful during Execution if everyone understands where to focus their efforts and really work on what matters. Axy OKR helps you make the plan public and understandable to the entire organization.
You can do this at your company!
As you have read, wrapping up and planning is possible in a short period of time for small teams (10 people max). A huddle is a good example as you can do it in a single morning. Set your team for an initial 2-hour session where you:
- Rreview the completed OKRs
- Score the objectives and complete a self-assessment on the performance
- Ask for feedback (individual or openly with peers)
- Review the company level OKRs progress.
Take a 30-minute break, grab a bite, and a drink. After that, in another 2-hour session:
- Review the company goal progress
- Talk about the strategic and tactical action for the new period
- Set the top-level objectives for the period ask each objective owner to define the key results
- Share the execution of the new plan with the team and anyone involved in it
- Activate the period and the OKRs.
You can do everything in Axy OKR so at the end of the meeting, you’ll have your new OKRs set up for a great result in the new period.
If you have a large team, individual daily sessions are recommended. This will allow your team to have a meaningful end to the period and a planning session where everyone has an opportunity to contribute. A good source of information is Audacious, the newsletter from Whatmatters.com. In one of their latest posts, Ryan Panchadsaram explains the importance of the last Quarter, where proper wrap-up and planning are key to success. (Subscribe to Audacious by clicking here)
