Generally, goals were set by management and cascaded down the hierarchy. The problem with this approach is a lack of connection between goals and daily operation. Unfortunately, 93% of the employees don’t even know the strategy and goals of their organizations.
How can we bridge strategy and execution; hence build an innovative culture in our organizations?
1. For strategy: OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a popular goal management framework that helps companies implement and execute strategies.
Today, large companies like Google, LinkedIn, Spotify, Oracle and more implement OKR methodology within their organization. OKRs are designed to work together for a common goal, as opposed to competing against one another and create alignment regarding what is expected, where do we want to go and how?
There are two basic components of OKRs:
Objectives: the things to be achieved. Which are qualitative and define what you are trying to accomplish.
Key Results: The measures that indicate how you know you will accomplish your Objective. Which are quantitative and measure whether you’ve achieved the set objective(s).
If you want to learn more about OKRs, we encourage you to read our previous blog posts.
2. For execution: Agile makes teams more efficient at getting their work done
The Agile manifesto was created by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber in the 1990s as a new approach designed to meet the demands of the new, competitive and fast-paced landscape of modern product development. Agile was created as an alternative to waterfall development for managing software projects. Agile was originally formalized for software development projects, but it works well for any complex, innovative scope of work
Combination of OKRs and Agile Methodology can be transformative. Agile focuses on managing deliverables and OKR forces creating business outcome.
OKRs are a powerful tool for organizations, teams, and individuals to achieve alignment and focus their goals. Agile methods, on the other hand, focus on how organizations organize to achieve their goals, how it gets completed productively. The OKRs framework brings into practice some of the essential elements missing from Agile. Using OKRs with agile helps us decide what functionalities to develop and help prioritize product backlogs.
With OKRs organizations have explicit criteria: does this feature bring us closer to our Objective. Applying Agile methodology and with OKRs helps organizations to work goal-oriented and achieve their goals.
OKRs can make agile process better
Help team to take a step back, focus on outcome metrics, like about customers, and asking why certain decisions are being made. In when agile setting, teams can become too focused on what they do, task-based work, OKRs define outcomes for features and stories. Teams take a successful process (Agile) and make it even more outcome-driven (OKRs), it results in focusing on doing fewer things better.
Create autonomous teams
Leadership works collaboratively with the team to define the objective and gives motivational direction but allows teams to determine how to achieve the objective. If the teams are allowed to decide how to measure and achieve a goal, they take ownership of the problem, which often results in better outcomes.
Meetings become task-driven, more strategic and a valuable place for collaboration
Both the Agile Methodology and OKRs consider regular meetings. By applying OKRs and Agile methodology together; teams focus on the big picture. If the team is not on track to achieve their KRs, meetings turn into a brainstorming session to put the team back on the right track.
The combination of OKR and Agile methodologies are based on well-defined objectives and key results which are linked to measurable results and actionable tasks. That’s why we design ConectoHub which bridges the execution and strategy.
Let’s look at how organizations can apply OKR and Agile methodology with ConectoHub and focus on what matters:
Company Objectives:
Firstly put objectives describe where your company’s direction.
Team objectives:
Designate team objectives, specific actions and measurable steps your company must take to reach the desired outcome.
Key Results:
Add Key Results to your Objectives. Each Key Result has an owner or owners (if the objective is shared amongst team members) who are accountable for achieving the objective.
Projects, Sprints and Tasks:
Identify the tasks and projects necessary to achieve these results and link your Key Results with ConectoHub projects, daily tasks and sprints. See the progress automatically. Finally, everybody has the answer that “Is this effort aligned with our company’s goals?”
ConectoHub Agile OKR and Work Management System allow teams to work productively and track goal progress automatically according to their business data. By adopting this method, the employees will be engaged in result-oriented things, everybody sees their contribution, and organizations can track the progress instantly.
