Objectives and Key Result to foster strategic and goal-oriented collaboration in agile finance innovation labs
Introduction
Different goals and results which are not aligned to the companies' and teams' strategic objectives, as well as key results, are a high obstacle to efficient collaboration in agile finance innovation areas. Objectives and key results (OKR) can help to foster the work together and boost the outcome for customer satisfaction.
The practice: Short explained
OKR is separated into two elements:
- Objectives: An objective is a goal that can be sorted in the organization and/or team purpose. This means e.g. that the objective is aligned to the organization's or team's vision and strategy.
- Key Results: A key result is a measurable result that is necessary to reach an objective. Usually, an objective has two to five key results. I used usually three to four key results to deploy the work/results in smaller chunks.
OKR can be e.g. used at/from the beginning of a new team to arrange team objectives and reasonable key results for the upcoming quarter. An OKR weekly can be used to monitor as a team the progress towards reaching its objectives. At the end of each quarter, there is a bigger reflection on the results and retrospectives can help to foster transparency as well as inspect and adapt the way of working together.
Why did I decide to use this practice?
My team had problems bringing up valuable results regarding the strategic companies' goals. The management expectations were totally different in the last two quarters and the team's motivation was low — the alignment between the company and management had to be strengthened.
How do I recognize negative emotions? What adjustments did I make in my facilitation regarding it?
In my team, I made every week a survey about the motivation level from 0 to 10. One week, their motivation level dropped from 8 to 5 so I raised this topic in a retrospective. There we were speaking openly about the reasons and I as a facilitator introduced the retrospective format from the book Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great.
How did I use this practice?
Two weeks after I started an OKR workshop with my team and two management representatives of my business finance innovation unit. The workshop was four hours long. The team and management were brainstorming and arranging objectives for the team which was aligned to the company's strategy. The team was creating its own measurable key results to reach the objectives. Example:
- Objective: Maximize the customer satisfaction of our developed finance innovation community platform
- Key Results: (1) Reduce finance innovation community platform membership churn from 15% to 4% (2) Increase Net Promoter Score from 6.0 to 9.0 of maximum 10 (3) Improve average weekly visits per active user from 30 to 90 (4) Improve engagement from 20% to 55%
How was the dynamic to define objectives and key results?
I learned that online whiteboards can be very helpful in a remote OKR workshop. The management presented at first the overall strategy and company objectives, which were also visualized on the online whiteboard. My team and the management worked with sticky notes to place their thoughts and ideas for our matching team objectives as well as matching key results. Important was also that we had a common commitment on the new OKR of our team so that alignment from my team to the company objectives as well as the management alignment to the team objectives was ensured. I was a facilitator who was able to help to cluster the sticky notes keep the time in a suitable way and show the timebox. It was a great level of energy during the workshop and everybody gave the feedback, that they felt that this collaborative way of arranging aligned and measurable results for our team will boost our productivity for the upcoming month.
What happened after the workshop?
We had after the workshop every week a common team comes together to get transparency about our current done or in progress objectives and key results. This enabled us to inspect and adapt our forecasted key results so that we reach our objectives for the next three months. Also, we had every two weeks a retrospective in our team to reflect (if necessary) on our way of working and the team's mood.
My learnings as a facilitator
For me was important to understand the company's strategy so that I was able to facilitate the brainstorming phase and follow (even at a basic level) the discussions of the team members and management. Of course, more important was for me “to read the room” and recognize negative and positive emotions during the four hours workshop so that I can adjust my facilitation in a suitable way.
Important was also the documentation of the created objectives and key results for the next quarter, which can be used also to monitor the team's progress so that the inspection and adapt process was fostered. Like this, the team members had a common and consolidated view of their arranged OKR, and I as a facilitator was able to handle the OKR weekly meetings towards the end of the quarter.
How did this help increase team motivation?
My team’s alignment to the company goals as well as the individual’s alignment to the team goals was significantly increased from 6 to 9 of 10 points. This alignment fostered our team’s energy level as well as my motivation as a facilitator. We felt every day how the focus on the specific key results to the arranged objectives increased the way of working together as well as our communication and collaboration
How did this help the team and the organization?
Besides the announced team motivation and alignment, also their overall productivity was improved. The new way of working with OKR helped to improve the team's own monitoring of their work as well as the business outcomes like customer satisfaction. The team felt and saw, that the customers were much happier and the usage rate of the platform was much higher. The company recognized a significant increase in demand and earnings for the platform because the reached objectives were exactly the strategically right ones.
What did the team learn?
The team was giving in the upcoming retrospectives the feedback, that the clear objectives and measurable key results were helpful to focus, commit and show courage to reach our team goals and the company's goals. Like this, also the way of working was easier to be reflected on because we were able to see how changes in our way of working were also influencing the reaching of our objectives and key results.
What would I change about my facilitation? What would I do differently?
In the next workshop, I will always invite some customers to plan together with the team and management on relevant ideas and objectives for them. I wanna suggest this to my team because during our first OKR workshop we recognized some questions which we had to clarify afterward with our customers. Next time we will have the possibility to participate with the customers during our OKR sessions in the context of the objectives, which are relevant for them to get direct valuable feedback regarding their relevance and clarity.
What experiments can I think of doing with the implementation of this practice?
I wanna suggest this practice also to other teams and start an experiment to run an OKR workshop for one of my customers. There will be also the goal to foster alignment and a high result-oriented focus and stronger collaboration with our company so that I can act more and more as an OKR facilitator in the customer's environment.
