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11. Ensuring Execution of Strategy | Link Technology to Your Long-Term Business Goals: How to Use Technology to Mobilize Your…

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Praz, Link Technology to Your Long-Term Business Goals
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8208-3_11

11. Ensuring Execution of Strategy

Praz1
(1) Bangalore, Karnataka, India
While you spend more time in strategy planning meetings creating solu-
tions for all the business problems, it becomes really important to find a
platform that can help you execute those strategies. OKR tools can facili-
tate smooth execution of such strategies because team and leadership ob-
jectives are aligned through regular check-ins and retro reviews of the
past objectives.

OKR Tools

Over the past few years, OKR tools have started gaining prominence as
SaaS platforms. While startups with about 10 members can manage OKRs
on spreadsheets, the complexity of getting different teams aligned and re-
porting in a consumable and real-time format is better managed by OKR
platforms (e.g. fitbots.com).

Before you select a platform to help you manage OKRs, look for some
important aspects:

Is the platform simple and intuitive for teams to adopt?

Can you track objectives, key results, and milestones with initiatives?
Does the tool foster a culture of conversations, feedback, and
appreciation?
Can teams collaborate either through the platform or by tagging each
other for help and support?
Do leadership reviews happen with high-quality alignment boards?

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Does the tool have reporting capabilities? For example, how many
OKRs are associated with an individual, or can you do a team OKR re-
view with one click?

Some OKR tools that are integrated with on-demand coaching to help
your teams sustain and manage OKRs. The tool that we used was Fitbots,
available at https://fitbots.com/. (Disclaimer: the content for the
strategy chapters in this book was largely contributed by the CEO of
Fitbots.)

Check-in Meetings

Sustaining OKRs requires check points at different levels.

Team-level pod check-ins: Pods are a bunch of people identified from

different teams who are driving specific projects.
Leadership level check-ins: These include reviewing the teams across
multiple pods on progress of the objectives. To see if there are blockers
and to address them.
Re-alignment: This is a significant OKR ritual that happens at the end
of every quarter. Teams and leadership get together to discuss their
progress and learnings of the entire quarter to better strategize for the
next quarter.

What really happens during check-in meetings, leadership reviews, and end-
of-quarter reviews? Figure 11-1, Figure 11-2, and Figure 11-3 explain the
process in more detail.

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Figure 11-1 Weekly POD check-in questions

Figure 11-2 Biweekly leadership meeting questions

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Figure 11-3 Ninety-day retro reboot questions

Summary

OKR platforms help to simplify the complexity of cross-team alignments

and provide project/objective updates in real time to the concerned stake-
holders. Weekly check-ins by the pod and leadership team can help em-
ployees understand the overall progress and figure out any gaps/blockers
in the fulfillment of the company’s business objectives.

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