Running a Successful OKR Setting Workshop
Chapter Highlights
• Three stages of setting OKRs
• Facilitation techniques
• Setting remote OKRs
I still remember my first OKR setting workshops of my own team. In the back of the conference room, I heard one of my team members talk to his colleague sitting next to him: “This stuff is easy, you describe a goal and slam some metrics in. How hard can this be?”
A few hours later, we were still discussing, arguing, and debating what the objectives should be for this quarter. It all felt chaotic, somehow this goal-setting meeting got out of control, and people randomly suggested objectives, following their gut feelings. We were deep down in discussions about semantics, the objective format, and how to make it more inspirational. Defining the KRs was even harder. We couldn’t decide on the best measures for our objective. After four hours, the meeting ended and was to be continued the next day.
What we were missing was a structured way to set and agree on our OKRs. A format that we could finish in time with good results.
Setting OKRs by yourself is already tough, but imagine setting good OKRs in a group. Throughout the years, I’ve learned and experimented with multiple techniques and formats. When you have a good structure, setting OKRs in a group can be fun, bring surprising insights and generate creative and inspirational OKRs. Given the incredible effectiveness and consistent results of this workshop format, I was able to help set great OKRs with hundreds of teams.
Setting OKRs works the same at all levels of the organization and for all types of OKR levels (company, department, team, etc.). Although I will focus on team OKRs here, the principles of the described workshop can thus be applied to other levels and types of OKRs, too. The only important difference is the starting point, or context (see Figure 7.1). As explained in Chapter 5, Cascading, the context of team OKRs is usually the annual or quarterly company OKRs.
Let’s assume that the leadership team of your company has already set and aligned the quarterly company OKRs based on the strategy of the company. The next stage is announcing the company OKRs to the whole organization so that teams can define their own. After the announcement of company OKRs, the senior team leaders (e.g., the engineering manager together with the product manager) create candidate Objectives for each team and bring these to the OKR setting workshop to discuss with the teams (see Chapter 5). Some companies prefer to let each team develop their own OKRs in close collaboration with their leaders. Which approach works best for your teams depends on their team maturity and your own leadership skills and preferences. Regardless of which style you choose, you need to actively coach and manage the teams. OKRs are about better management, not less management.
Figure 7.1 The OKR setting workshop
After you defined a final Objective together with the team, it is up to the team to decide how to measure progress toward the Objective and set the baseline (X) and target (Y) for each KR. Of course, as a leader, you can bring your experience and skills to help them defining good measures, or even propose your candidate measure.
Company OKRs are also set during an OKR setting workshop, but we will focus on team OKRs only in this chapter.
The OKR setting (or goal setting) workshop is the first in the OKR cycle. Its purpose is to create draft OKRs, aligned with one of the company’s KRs for the next OKR cycle. The key is that teams, together with their leader(s), define OKRs that influence the KRs of the level above. In this chapter, we look at when and how you should run this workshop and who should participate.
The OKR Setting Workshop
When
Either straight after the announcement of the company’s OKRs or one week before the start of the new quarter.
Duration
For the first workshop, schedule 4.5 hours. As you get better at setting OKRs, you’ll need less time. Teams that have been using OKRs for some time often need no more than two hours for this workshop.
Prep Work
Preparation is key. Let all team members know beforehand the purpose of the session, for example, by sending a calendar invite with a description of the workshop.
There are two approaches to prepare for this workshop that I’ve seen working:
1. Before the OKR settings workshop starts, the (senior) leader creates candidate Objectives for each (product) team, aligned with the Company KRs, the (product) strategy, and other leaders. Defining good candidate Objectives for your teams requires time and good strategic planning. Don’t rush this preparation phase and make sure you have enough room in your calendar to work on it. Some leaders spent weeks for this activity. Sometimes, it makes sense to also develop candidate measures for the KRs. The leaders will bring the candidate Objectives to the workshop. The leader can choose to attend the OKR setting workshop in person (preferred) or, if they serve many teams, they can present the candidate Objectives for each team during an all-hands session prior to this workshop.
2. This option is only for senior product teams. Let everyone in the team know beforehand what the purpose of the session is. Ask them to prepare by thinking about and jotting down how their team can influence the company KRs and, specifically, what might be a good team objective to achieve this. If you are working in a larger company, a team might only influence the department or regional KRs. Decide in advance to which KRs you are going to contribute. Try to focus on one company KR, only choose two if you can really hit two birds with one stone.
Who
All team members should attend, plus the leader(s) that created the candidate Objective. If your company has one, invite an OKR coach, especially the first time, to challenge and guide the teams. Ideally, you also want a skilled group facilitator to guide the process. The facilitator doesn’t need to have experience with OKRs to guide the workshop, but this experience certainly does help when people have questions related to OKRs and the process.
The workshop has two or three stages and a break:
1. (optional) Identify the appropriate company KRs that fit the individual teams best (30–60 minutes).
2. Define or refine the objective (30–60 minutes). BREAK (15–30 minutes)
3. Define the KRs (30–120 minutes).
Stage 1: Identify the Appropriate Company KRs
This stage is optional for team OKRs. If the leader did bring a candidate Objective to the workshop, you can skip this stage. In all other cases, the leader and the team can discuss which company KR should be impacted.
1. Set the stage by quickly running through the company OKRs. It is useful for the leader to refresh everyone’s memory on the company OKRs and explain one more time the intent behind them.
2. The leader discusses with the team which company KR(s) they believe they can best support and influence.
Once you’ve agreed which company KR the team can best influence, it’s time to develop the Objective.
Stage 2: Define or Refine the Objective
If the leader brought a candidate Objective to this session, then the intent and reason for selecting this Objective needs to be explained to the team, together with the possible impact on the company KRs. In addition, the leader should explain any strategic context the team should be aware of. After the explanation by the leader, the team has a chance to ask questions and challenge the Objective. They should also check on the feasibility of the Objective. In case the Objective is very ambitious (a moonshot), the leader should express the reasons behind stretching the team and that 100 percent achievement is not required. If the team “accepts” the leader’s Objective, you’re done and you can proceed to the next stage. In case the team doesn’t accept your Objective, you can refine the existing one, create a new one or follow the steps below.
In case the leader did not bring any team Objective, or if the workshop is about crafting a company OKR, ensure you complete stage one and follow these steps:
1. As you asked everyone to start thinking about a good Objective, you now list and discuss their ideas. Maybe you also want to generate new ideas for Objectives. You can try a technique called free-listing (see boxed text in the following) to generate a list of objectives that can influence the company KR.
2. Now the tough part: Decide on the best objective for the quarter (it could be a mix or variant of the ideas listed or something new). First, let everybody present a one-minute pitch of their Objective, then select the best one. A useful technique here could be affinity mapping and dot-voting. Remember, your goal is to select one Objective. You might want to store some good candidate Objectives that fell off the bandwagon for next quarters.
3. Use the guidelines from Chapter 3 to check whether the objective is good and will be effective. Is it inspirational? Will it challenge the status quo? Make the necessary adjustments.
4. Double check with all participants if the Objective is doable within the quarter. If the Objective is a stretch one, then, of course, it will be less doable than one that you commit to for 100 percent. The leader should have a conversation with all team members to discuss how attainable the Objective is within the 90 days. Good OKRs have a 50/50 percent of achievement (Wodtke 2016, 147), unless you are just starting off.
5. List any dependencies you might have on other teams or departments. If so, then make sure you have conversations with them. Schedule meetings accordingly or make sure they participate in the alignment workshop (see Chapter 8).
Although the creation of the Objective is a collaborative process between the leader and the team members, it’s not a democracy. The leader always has the final say in the Objective. As a leader you have the right to veto. In some cases, the outcome of the previous steps might lead to an inappropriate/unsatisfying Objective. This often happens if the team is new to the process. The leader can then ask the team to refine or select another Objective.
Stage 3: Define the KRs
1. Having defined the Objective that will impact the company KR for that quarter, now brainstorm a list of measures for the Objective. Sometimes, the leader that created the draft Objective also has some ideas on how to measure progress toward the Objective which can be brought to the table as well. You can use the free-listing technique in combination with the magic questions and techniques from Chapters 3 and 4. If you are an operational team, can you think about the lead measures?
2. Select the top three or four measures. Again, you can use affinity mapping and dot-voting to select the best measures.
3. Agree on the baseline (X) and target (Y) for each measure and convert them into KRs. Check out the guidelines and tips in Chapter 3 on setting good KRs. If you currently don’t have the data for these measures, you should exclude them. You shouldn’t spend weeks to get the first results in. Decide if collecting the data manually might be an option.
4. Double check with all participants if the KRs are doable within the quarter. Are they stretched? What are the chances you will make them within 90 days?
Free Listing, Affinity Mapping, and Dot-Voting
Techniques that I frequently use in OKR setting workshops are free-listing, affinity mapping, and dot-voting. If you have been in an Agile Retrospective before, this might be familiar to you. Free-listing is a technique for gathering data about a specific domain. Affinity mapping is a technique to group results from a free-listing exercise.
Finally, dot-voting is a prioritization technique. Combined, they can be very powerful to select an objective or set measures:
1. Ask all participants to write down on a sticky note what they believe to be the most important objective for the next quarter (for objectives, you can also gather input from all employees in the company). Just one objective per sticky note.
2. Group similar sticky notes together. For example, you could group objectives in the following categories: objective, task, motto/slogan, measure, or wish. Ignore all the non-Objectives for now. The others could be great ideas to move the needle on your OKRs later on. Alternatively, group them based on the perspectives from the Balance Scorecard: customer, financial, process, people, and product.
3. Dot-vote. Give each participant three “votes” in the form of marker dots. Ask all participants to stand up and create a (virtual) circle. Walking clockwise, every participant sets one marker dot on any group of stickies. Repeat this three times. You may vote on your own objective. Consider using an app for anonymous voting to avoid people voting strategically.
4. The group objectives with the highest number of votes wins.
You can repeat this to select measures for your objective as well. Then, select a top three or four. These will be the input for your KRs. Remember that you need to try to pair KRs, so ideally you select one or two quantitative and one or two qualitative KRs.
There are other techniques to gather data and set priorities in a group. Feel free to experiment with them and decide what works best for your team.
Facilitation Techniques
There are a lot of formats available to keep people engaged and motivated throughout a workshop. Also there are several tools to discover good objectives and KRs. Following, I’ve listed some techniques that I have used and come to appreciate over the course of my career. Feel free to add in your own techniques.
• Increase participant engagement: Liberating Structures (Lipmanowicz and McCandless 2014).
• Decisions making and prioritization: Dot-voting, Lean Prioritization (2x2 matrix), MoSCoW method (Clegg and Barker 1994), Kano Model (Kano et al. 1994), Eisenhower Method, RICE method, and ICE model. The website gamestorming.com is a great resource for finding out workshop formats to keep people engaged.
• Information gathering: Free-listing, space saturate, and group (affinity mapping).
• Metrics discovery: User experience and elicitation techniques. For example: Impact Mapping (Adzic 2012), outcome mapping (Earl et al. 2001), current reality tree (Dettmer 1997), and the techniques discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, like Because & Why.
• Process bottleneck discovery: with Lean techniques like Value Stream Mapping (Martin and Osterling 2013) and root cause analysis (Wilson 1994) to spot waste and bottlenecks in processes.
If these techniques don’t ring a bell, you might find it helpful to do some additional research into them. Some of these techniques aren’t described in books or research papers, but are described extensively online.
Remote OKR Setting
When you work with online teams or a mix of onsite and online teams, you need to do the OKR setting workshops remotely. There are great online tools available to facilitate OKR setting workshops. When you facilitate online OKR workshops, it is very important that everybody can contribute. Make sure everybody has a high-quality Internet connection, a webcam, and a headset. There are online whiteboards available where you can simulate a physical workspace. I’ve positive experience with online collaboration tools such as Miro, Mural, or Google’s Jamboard, but any tool with a similar feature set will do the job.
Maybe you’re not using OKRs at work yet, but you do probably “work” with certain teams in your private life. So, let’s improvise:
1. Identify a team. This could be your family, a small group of friends with whom you do a specific sport or hobby, some people you always wanted to go on holiday with, and so on.
2. Arrange a “workshop” time and venue (e.g., the kitchen table, in a cafe, and on Zoom).
3. At the goal-setting meeting, start by explaining:
a. OKRs: this is a good exercise for checking how familiar you have come with OKRs.
b. The purpose of this “workshop”: to decide on a common goal (e.g., how to plan more quality time together as a family, a fun run the group could do together, and your proposal to go on holiday together).
4. Lead the workshop broadly, as described in this chapter. Obviously, you can do things much less formally where appropriate. Don’t worry, your session will still involve many of the key components and processes that a workshop at your work would.
5. At the end, ensure you have your agreed objective and KRs and have identified who is responsible for each task.
The result of this workshop is a draft of your team OKRs. Some teams use the time left to generate some initial ideas about how to move the needle of their KRs. In Part 3 of this book, we will explore what tools teams can use to move the needle in more detail. For now, don’t commit to the ideas just yet, because things might change after the alignment workshop.