Getting resilient and super focused with OKRs, reaching very challenging goals despite the pandemic.
Let me share some insights from one of my clients running their new OKR initiative in 2020 for only three quarters now. I hope it will get others curious on stepping up their strategy execution using OKRs for 2021.
Like many ambitious companies they have a challenging growth strategy, in this case based partly on international expansion and brand building. My client was impacted a lot by the pandemic and the increased uncertainty this year. Entering 2020 they had high growth objectives and at the same time, they wanted to challenge themselves to double profitability!
Here are the main takeaways on what OKR helped them do so far:
Focus on less OKRs “forced” us to get more coordinated and drastically increased focus on a few areas with high value and more challenge. In daily work it shifted how much effort key people continuously put into these focus areas during 2020.
Handle the unforeseen OKRs gave us a framework that made it easier to change focus and targets during 2020 when the business was impacted by the pandemic.
More active strategy execution instead of daily problem solving The CEO was an active OKR champion taking ownership of stepping up strategy execution in the management team. With OKRs on the agenda they managed to get a more active dialogue about strategic progress and new steps, instead of dealing with every day business problems.
The effects! Thanks to the super focus on the most valuable things, together with adapting to the new situation due to the pandemic, the company will still be able to reach the very challenging target to double profitability in 2020.
And still, this is only their first steps using OKRs. There will be room for adapting the OKR method further to become even more useful to their opportunities, improving skills how they write OKRs, how they follow-up and involving more people in the organization to get even more things done of what really matters! But, it is a pretty useful first step…
To know more about how to start using OKRs for 2021, or stepping up your existing OKR initiative, make use of our free OKR workshop helping you to visualize where a next step with OKRs might take you. Or just give us a call! Per Lundqvist, OKR Coach
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