OKR planning workshop is designed to improve your team’s effectiveness and efficiency in work. However, planning one for the first time requires much effort. Fret not; after the maiden OKR planning workshop, it becomes easier to organize subsequent ones, and soon enough, you won’t imagine running your organization without them.
This ultimate step-by-step OKR workshop framework covers everything you need to know about OKR workshop planning. We’ve broken it down into different categories, depending on your company’s setting, to help you facilitate an OKR workshop seamlessly.
What is An OKR Workshop?
An OKR workshop is a large-scale, all-hands-on-deck session with the sole goal of evaluating previous OKRs and developing new ones. To optimize the effectiveness of this goal-setting strategy, you will need to facilitate informative, productive, and engaging meetings for the whole organization. OKRs are the ultimate facilitator of laser-focus project planning and execution, and they can adapt to your aspirations so that they always align with your objectives.
They correspond well with the notion of effective self-organization. So, they may be utilized by individuals, small groups, and large organizations.
Why Should You Run An OKR Workshop?
Here are the primary reasons you should run an OKR workshop:
- OKR Workshop Helps To Increase Employee Commitment
According to a survey by Gallup, 85% of employees are not engaged in their work. If these individuals showed up and worked hard, there wouldn’t be any problems. But businesses are losing about $7 trillion because of this lost productivity. The stats from this survey shows that employee buy-in is important and this is a great lesson company must learn.
More importantly, employees need to know how their daily work fits into the company’s bigger goals. These OKR workshops allow you to address important issues about employee engagement. Your employees need to know how much you value and appreciate their efforts. This will give them a sense of belonging, help them give their best, and contribute to the company’s larger goals. OKR Workshops help teams concentrate on the most important tasks
In a poll conducted in 2021, employees said hectic work took up nearly 58 percent of their days. Getting your team back on track can be quite challenging once this cycle takes hold.
Teams must concentrate on the larger picture during OKR sessions. Get everyone’s agreement on the main priorities so that individuals and teams may plan and carry out tasks that further the organization’s goals.
- OKR Workshop Boosts General Productivity
According to recent surveys, a typical office worker is only productive for an average of two hours and twenty-three minutes per day. Mostly, employees are busy checking various social media sites on their phones. Setting a goal could help individuals refocus and be more effective and productive at work.
By focusing their efforts and maximizing their performance, employees who have set precise goals are better able to prioritize what is important and increase their performance and productivity.Â
How To Run An OKR Workshop?
You can successfully run an OKR workshop with our step-by-step guide even if you have never done it before. We broke it into components to help you comprehend it easily.
- Before The Workshop
To come up with any solid plan, you will most likely spend time verifying the strategy, establishing the project scope, and setting some short-term metrics Similarly, your OKR workshop will have company-wide implications, so prepare for the meeting. Here is a step-by-step “preparation” guide:
- Executives need to be clear about the company’s vision and goals
Most likely, the company’s annual long-term strategy was presented at the start of the year, outlining the areas to which they planned to devote resources and providing an overview of the year’s priorities.
Therefore, ensure your executive team is aware, before your workshop, that the predetermined yearly strategy is still in effect. Therefore, if the vision has changed or the company’s goal needs to be adjusted, you can clear that up before the meeting to save time and avoid confusion.
- Engage in conversation with employees
When making the schedule for your OKR workshop, don’t forget to get input from team members from each department. You will want to know what the team thinks about this session. After all, they are doing the day-to-day work that will help them reach those long-term goals.
Make sure you give each team a chance to review their OKRs from the last quarter on their own. You can ask the following questions:
- What issues did we try to solve?
- What did we find out?
- What worked?
- How could we make this better, or how would we do it differently?
- What lingering issues do we still have?
By doing so, they may come to the session prepared with information that will help others understand what has transpired and give a broader perspective from which to make recommendations for the future.
- Compile the available information and prepare a report
Now that you’ve talked to the leadership team and asked the staff for their honest opinions, you can look at the current quarter’s company data and decide how you want to present it.
- Make an agenda for the meeting
Without a clearly defined agenda, OKR meetings can be very overwhelming. Sometimes, meetings need to be extended because of heated disagreements and debates. However, if you have an agenda that details the topics you wish to cover, you can reduce interruptions to the minimum. Send a copy of the agenda to everyone who will be at the meeting a week before the official date. It will give people a chance to think about what they want to say.
- During The OKR Workshop
It’s now time for the OKR workshop. How do you facilitate each session? Fret not. With the following steps, you can successfully run an OKR workshop.
- Create an ideal setting and the right atmosphere
The ideal setting allows your employees to be at their best. As was said earlier, these OKR establishing and planning workshops can run anywhere from one to two hours, depending, of course, on the size of your firm. Hence, convenience is of the utmost importance. Comfort is key, so make sure you’re in a good place.
Everyone must be on time & schedule. You might even include 10 minutes in the beginning for settling in and chit-chatting. Offer snacks, coffee, and ice-breaker games to prepare the group for a productive conversation.
- Begin with a review
Once everyone is comfortable, have each group share their thoughts on the retrospective template. Have the team leader present the team’s accomplishments and lessons learned. After you’re done, give others a chance to speak up, ask questions, and contribute their thoughts.
Each team must follow the same procedure while discussing their findings. Ensure to display something on the screen so that everyone can see the team’s objectives and intended primary results.
- Show the big picture
It’s time to present the Company Objective to the teams after gathering their input, so do it now. Give them a preview of your planned course for the next quarter and ask them what they think about it.
Your leadership team might want to change how you work with customers. Perhaps you’re concentrating on brand positioning and marketing. Maybe you want to bring out two new products in the next quarter. What do your employees think? Are they well-equipped? Are there points from their reviews that need to be addressed?
If you’re not the leader, you can ask the CEO or someone else on the executive team to take charge. Since there will probably be a lot to talk about, you want senior management to hear all of the viewpoints. This is the part that usually takes the most time to talk about since it sets the priorities for the next quarter.
- Develop organizational key results
From this last section, you may have discovered that a Company Objective that seemed like a good idea when you were making it didn’t hold up when it was put to the test. Perhaps a simple change in wording might have done wonders for the Objective.
Now that you’ve decided on the team’s course of action for the immediate future, put your thoughts on paper! Team members should work in small groups to come up with ideas for their Team OKRs. These should be in line with the company goal that has been agreed upon. This part might take some time, but if you have a worksheet to help you create ideas, it will make things much easier. Consider this a brainstorming session. Everyone should be excited and full of energy as they think about their new goals and how to reach them.
- Submit work in progress and go over major findings
The OKR framework is very effective because OKRs are connected to action plans and metrics. The ideation template includes the following elements:
- Detailed Description of the Goal
- The Anticipated Results
- Priority levels based on how they affect revenue
- Work hours for each member of the team
- Details about the execution, such as projects and next steps
Teams will share this information with others in the company to get feedback immediately on their first ideas. Does anyone have a suggestion for a measure that might be followed to get the desired result? Does the Marketing team want to help or work with Customer Success to reach one of the Key Results? Now is the time to give and get ideas!
- Write down your first goals and expected outcomes
At the end of the workshop, each team or department should have a working OKR that they can use to set goals for the next quarter.
People might want to take a break, aren’t sure how to word their goal, or want to meet with their team again to agree on the best ways to measure their key results. No matter what, having something on paper is a great result of this session.
Tips For Having a Good OKR Workshop
The following tips will help you in organizing better and more effective OKR workshops.
- Use OKR Software
You may have observed a bottleneck in your organization’s workflow as a result of the many layers of responsibility, authority, and accountability present there. Keeping track of OKRs takes a lot of work. And while you could get the job done with spreadsheets, you can make the process easier by using software to standardize and track your OKRs. When you have a dedicated OKR software solution, it’s much easier to run these meetings & keep track of everything.Â
Huminos is a powerful yet easy-to-use tool that helps you track your progress and achieve your goals. With features that cater to all your needs, Huminos makes it easy for you to create and manage your OKRs.
The following is a list of significant Huminos features that you may find useful:
- OKR linking and alignment
- Check-ins
- Reflection and reviews
- Free unlimited Templates
- OKR coaching (for paid users)
- Calibrations and pulse
- Follow-up
The fact that the session is over and everyone understands their roles and duties is only the beginning! Each day, workers accomplish more of the Company OKR than they did the day before. And as circumstances change, OKRs can seem impossible to accomplish.
Fortunately, there is a straightforward approach to prevent problems from occurring: keeping up with the process and creating a mechanism for regular check-ins and follow-ups. During your weekly check-ins, if you are a team leader overseeing individuals who are working towards their key results, don’t miss the chance to highlight the progress being achieved. These simple check-ins allow you to ask:
- What do you have planned for the next week?
- What steps have been taken toward the team goal?
- What challenges do you face?
By tying weekly plans, progress, and problems back to the quarterly goal, you will be able to focus better, be more efficient, and get more done overall.
- Give Yourself Room To Grow
If there is one thing that distinguishes OKR workshops from other forms of work meetings, it is that OKR sessions are often far more collaborative than other types of meetings held in the workplace.
It is important to hear everyone out, but it may be excruciating when you’re already swamped with work and a rising pile of client questions. Your meeting will go more smoothly if you give yourself extra time to complete your tasks than you anticipate you would require.
Remember that the focus here is on establishing the most effective OKRs and taking the company to new heights by fostering a welcoming, transparent atmosphere. Maintain a calm demeanour, clear your schedules, and enjoy the process.
Conclusion
It is not easy to build a successful business. Keeping everyone productive can be even more difficult. OKRs provide you and your team with a unified structure through which to pursue innovation and significant accomplishments. One tool you will utilize to accomplish this is the OKR workshop.
However, the effectiveness of your OKRs is entirely dependent on your capacity to monitor their progress. From status updates to collaboration features and monitoring, we have created our software to assist businesses in achieving their objectives. Huminos has several easy-to-configure OKR tools that will help your team aspire to impactful outcomes and align themselves, even if they are working remotely. Accomplish more with Huminos today.
