Creating orientation for managers with OKR

Solution

The use of OKR brought the desired breakthrough in leadership in several iterations: providing orientation and at the same time sharing responsibility more broadly. With the help of the OKR, every member of the management team can decide whether emerging topics are relevant or not.

Prerequisites had to be created for this: 

• The department's strategy and overarching goals had to be clear in order to set meaningful objectives. This was ensured by the head of department together with the most important commissioning departments;
• In order to identify possible objectives, fields of action had to be identified within the strategy. The wibas Agile Coach ensured this by means of a maturity model filled in by the team, from which the fields of action were derived;
• OKR had to be understood and accepted as a process and method. This was ensured by two of the managers who attended an OKR training course and trained their colleagues;
• OKR had to be practiced. The team ensured this together with the wibas Agile Coach: with each OKR cycle, the method was sharpened, i.e. work with OKR was more precise and comprehensive. This meant that nobody was overwhelmed at the beginning and the individual experiences could be used to improve each quarter;
• The transparency created had to be wanted and endured. The wibas Agile Coach ensured this with team building and confidence-building measures, coaching and practicing useful communication and conflict patterns.
  

Our contribution - impact and positive effects

The introduction of OKR has had the following effects in this team: 

1. Every member of the management team knows the topics that are currently important and being pursued in the department;
2. Each team member knows their own contribution (and that of others) to the objectives;
3. The joint work as a management team is clearly focused on the objectives. 
4. It is clear to each team member how much time is spent on topics to be worked on together and how much time remains for topics to be pursued individually. 
5. This means that even a team that is too large for agile conditions can carry out joint and targeted management work. 
6. The agenda of the department meetings follows the objectives;

The department enjoys a good reputation internally because it delivers results in the form of executable software and because the orientation and clarity of purpose emanating from the management supports the operational teams in their independent work.