OKR Strategy Session

Strategy Session Format

Introduction
The objective of this session is to have a collective map of what we, as a team, believe
[ORGANISATION] focus should be in [YEAR]; what we all feel we must nail next year and should
put a focus on, and resources into, achieving.

At the end of the session we will have an annual:

● Objective
● Key results
● Roadmap of actions

Alongside a document of all ideas generated during the session.

The process is designed to be:

● Anti groupthink / brainstorm

○ Working alone, and then bringing ideas together
○ Getting the best of all the creativity and brains within the team
● Be a creative process (strategy is a creative process)
● Be inclusive (allow everyone to feel apart of the process)

Concepts:

● Must-do
○ The OKRs that we decide upon are what [ORGANISATION] Must do as opposed to
what they “Should” or “Could” do
○ We’re going to come up with a lot of ideas that are really great and we’ll likely a lot
of them, but this process is deciding what we collectively feel we Must do to achieve
our desired growth
○ Often other ideas generated will form roadmap action points

● Freethinking
○ Everyone's quiet, with 5 minutes to think of new ideas at various stages, adding one
thing per post-it note on marker pens
■ Marker pens enable you to be succinct and clear in your idea due to lack of
space

● Post-it note wall

○ Will act as a record of a communal brain of ideas from the various sections of the
session
● Spot-voting
 ○ Everyone will have x votes, where you can spread your votes out across ideas or put
them all into one
○ You can vote for your own ideas
○ It’s not a democracy, there is a decision maker who will be asked to make decisions
during key points which will shape the next section - everyone is able to contribute
their ideas and views before a decision is made
○ Voting is done in silence
● Goal-oriented roadmap
○ The roadmap/actions are not the objective, they are flexible tasks that are reviewed
regularly and what we believe will enable us to hit the key results
● How might we (HMW)
○ A method of reframing a problem or challenge statement into one that encourages
idea creation and solutions to these challenges
○ Challenges/problems reframed to begin with “How might we...”

Roles:
● Co-Ordinator - [NAME]
○ The coordinator is in charge of timings and ensures the session both runs smoothly
and is inclusive

● Decider - A decided must be nominated from [ORGANISATION]

○ At various points someone has to make a decision to move the session forward, once
the decision is made an explanation will be given and we will move on

Housekeeping:

● No devices (apart from the co-ordinator)

● There will be breaks scheduled

Pre-Work

Section Details
Ask the experts - ● Each attendee to complete the Google Form on:
Google Form ○ What they believe [ORGANISATION]’s objectives and
main focus in [YEAR] should be
○ Think what they believe [ORGANISATION]’s biggest
challenges will be and provide two examples in the form of a
“How might we…” statement
■ i.e. “How might we convince customers to choose
us over our competitors”
Familiarisation with ● If possible, read pre-prepared information on this topic provided
OKRs (Objectives
& Key Results)
Schedule

Section (and Details

timing estimate)

Introduction (10 ● [CO-ORDINATOR] to introduce the session, concepts and the

mins) process
Review of Survey ● Pre-prepared results from the Google Form survey will be presented
Results - Objectives on a post-it note wall to show the key themes that came out of the
& HMW survey
(20 mins) ● Pre-prepared results from the Google Form survey will be presented
on HMW questions
● Period of review for everyone to read the post-it note wall
● Go around the room to get any initial feedback on these key themes
and HMW areas
Objectives - ● After everyone has had a chance to review the outcome of the survey
Freethinking and we’ve review and discussed the HMW section, it’s the chance to
(10 mins) add additional themes and ideas to post-it note wall with this new
understanding
● Everyone's quiet, 5 minutes to think of new ideas, add one thing per
post-it note on marker pens
● Go around the room and ask each person in turn for one of their new
ideas along with a brief explanation.
● New ideas added to the post-it note wall
Spot-Voting ● Everyone will have 5 votes, where you can spread your votes out
(5 mins) across ideas or put them all into one
● You can vote for your own
DECISION & BREAK (10 mins)

Decision ● Decision maker explains their choice of objective theme that they
Explanation feel [ORGANISATION] must do
(5 mins)
Objective ● Create the wording of the [YEAR] annual objective based on the
Formation chosen theme - this should be an inspirational message to get behind
(10 mins) and not measurable

Key Results - ● Based on the objective we need to formulate measurable key results
Freethinking so come the end of [YEAR] we can say if we met the annual
(15 mins) objective
● Everyone's quiet, 5 minutes to think of new ideas, add one thing per
post-it note on marker pens
● Post-it notes added to the post-it note wall and grouped into themes
● Post-it note wall reviewed
Spot-Voting ● Everyone will have 5 votes, where you can spread your votes out
(5 mins) across ideas or put them all into one
● You can vote for your own
 DECISION & BREAK (10 mins)

Goal-oriented ● With our annual objective and key results for how we will measure
roadmap - the success determined, this is the chance to come up with a list of
Freethinking xN (20 possible actions [ORGANISATION] can take to make sure they hit
mins) the objective
● This is the chance to be creative and really think outside the box
● This is repeated for each key result
● Post-it notes added to the post-it note wall under the respective key
result

Wrap up ● Review the outcome of the session; annual objective, key results and
(10 mins) roadmap