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HolidayCheck’s DOs and DONT’s for OKR beginners
DOs
Promote OKRs: If talking about strategies, goals or work initiatives, the leadership team
should always refer to company OKRs. Particularly when talking about products or services,
referring back to OKRs ensures that the conversation does not focus on features, but on
customer value.
Train OKR Champs: HolidayCheck’s OKR Champs (aka OKR Masters/Coaches) support teams
in succeeding with OKRs. They are trained and usually certified volunteers, distributed across
the organization. They act as support centers, coaches, process guards and facilitators.
Use confidence levels: Weekly updated and reviewed confidence levels (an evaluation of OKR
owners, if a goal still can be achieved) continuously help assessing the current goal
achievement status. They are an important metric for project success and significantly
improve communication.
Communicate re sponsibilities: To effectively run an OKR process, it is important that every
employee understands their role and what is expected from them in every phase. Be clear
about responsibilities (and accountability) from the start. Make use of OKR roles e.g. OKR
Owner.
Share knowledge and updates: Broadcast relevant changes of the OKR process company-
wide and instruct your leadership team accordingly. If team leads cannot update their team
and answer questions, people quickly feel left behind and engagement decreases. In addition,
you can send out invites for OKR office hours where OKR Champs are available for questions.
HolidayCheck’s DOs and DON’Ts for OKR beginners
DON’Ts
Connect incentives and short term goals: Before implementing OKRs, HolidayCheck
significantly reduced all individual incentive programs. Instead, the organization started
developing a new performance and feedback system that focuses on more influenceable
factors of employee productivity and development.
Try to micromanage: Try not to micromanage with OKRs. There should be no tasks lists or
product features in the OKR system, only goals that refer to customer and business value.
OKRs are designed to enable effective autonomous work, not to delegate or control teams.
Mix up transparency and supervision: Understand the purpose of transparency.
Transparency is key for successful collaboration and alignment across functional silos.
Misusing it for more supervision and control only harms the necessary development of trust.
Have false expectations: Expect some setbacks in the beginning and embrace challenges.
OKRs help companies to transform into more agile organizations that thrive in increasingly
complex environments. This demands continuous development and iterations, which can be
challenging and takes time.
Leave people alone with assumptions instead of knowledge: Train colleagues adequately.
You can make use of dedicated trainings like e.g. Workpath‘s Masterclass. People without any
OKR experiences should participate in an onboarding training where OKRs examples and the
basic principles of agile collaboration are explained. More experienced colleagues can receive
a brief presentation of current OKRs in order to quickly start working with the framework. In
addition, the company can provide helpful content, offer regular FAQ sessions and a wiki to
answer questions that come up in the process.
Additional resources
You are interested in further Workpath formats? Find out more about our training, events and other
helpful material.
TRAINING EVENTS GUIDES
DOs AND DON’Ts – OKRs at HolidayCheck
June 2020
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