Unlocking the Treasures (or sometimes, Monsters): Business OKRs and Reviews Methodology
In this blog, I’ll be covering in detail the OKR and review methodology used at Hevo. Having set up and run multiple teams with different goals, members, and skillsets and having gained a perspective on how to effectively monitor progress, I’ll be sharing Hevo’s secret recipe when it comes to team and OKRs management. We’ll discuss everything from review cadence, review documents, and the ideology behind progress tracking and reporting within the business functions. We have also customized and tweaked the standard OKR process to suit our unique requirements and added some effective hacks along the way. Read on to know the what, the why, and the how of it.
What are OKRs?
Basics first: OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results, are an efficient way to track goals, increase engagement and measure progress in a team. Objectives are clear and actionable goals that are decided upon, and key results are the way to achieve these objectives. They are smaller benchmarks that are generally action-oriented and short-term. The idea is that achieving these results would result in achieving the larger objective. There are usually a few key results, around 3–5, which are clearly defined to achieve the objective of a particular team. Within this framework, organizations may approach it in the way that works best for them.
How are OKRs set up at Hevo?
Within Hevo’s Business team, Marketing, Sales, and Hiring functions have their well-defined quarterly goals. In order to ensure we achieve these and keep measuring progress every week, we follow a robust WBR process.
Teams across Hevo use a standard document, called a Weekly Review document, which acts as the central location to measure all OKRs for every team. This document is used as the basis for weekly review meetings. It is also an excellent way of documenting the direction of the team. Some of the key sections of the Weekly Review document are:
- Metrics Reporting for OKRs: This section goes through the main objectives which have been achieved since the previous review meeting, highlighted against the monthly or yearly target. It focuses solely on reportable numbers, for example; targeted leads, achieved leads, and percentage increase in leads.
- Activities and Accomplishments from the last week: This section talks about the key results which have been accomplished since the last weekly review meeting. It provides an insight into the progress in terms of activities. For example, the number of content pieces published, conducting site audits, the number of potential partners reached, etc.
- Activities and Targets planned for next week: The activities and key results that are planned for the next week are written down in this section.
- What is going well and what is not going well?: As the name suggests, this is a section that can highlight insights into the positive or negative direction of the key results, so the negative ones can be acted upon and the positive results can be analyzed and maximized.
- Reference Links: Any relevant links such as detailed reports, individual-level OKR sheets, learnings/best practices/checklists, etc. which are not aligned with any of the above sections or are too granular, but would be valuable to understand the team’s functioning in depth are included here.
- Items to be actioned up/ DRI/ Time: This section is populated during the meeting discussion to record any new activities to be taken up which may not be part of the existing charter. For example, if we don’t see an increase in conversions as per the plan, then we would need to conduct a root-cause analysis as to why that happened. Based on the discussion, any immediate action items are noted down here, including the directly responsible individual and the expected time of completion. This section is revisited at the beginning of next week’s review meeting.
This entire document is an interactive one that is populated 24 hours before the scheduled Weekly Review meeting. In this way, any questions or comments can be added and addressed in the document itself during those 24 hours by any participants as well as the reviewer. This means that everyone in the review meeting would have gone through and had the updates before getting into the actual meeting. Everyone would already be on the same page when they enter the meeting that would save time that would otherwise go into gathering the updates. Thus, the duration of the meeting focuses purely on discussions about unblocking issues, how to meet future goals, brainstorming new ideas, etc., rather than the participants spending time on reading and understanding information.
How is the OKR approach at Hevo unique?
Here, we discuss some unique ways and hacks that work really well for us at Hevo while running WBRs for different teams.
- Pre-planning the Review Discussion
As discussed in the above section, the Weekly Review has two sections — the pre-planning phase and the meeting phase. The pre-planning phase involves populating the interactive Weekly Review document, and discussions on the document itself regarding any gaps in the document or if the reviewer needs more detailed insight on any aspect. In this way, each participant goes into the meeting well-prepared and knowledgeable on every point to be discussed in the meeting, which yields greater time for strategic discussions. This is a method that saves time and ensures that people are not stuck in long meetings which involve general updates or information swapping. It is a much more flexible and efficient format.
2. Separation of Activities and Goals
In many organizations, there may be a conflation of activities with goals or a conflation of objectives with key results. This is a common mistake and one that causes teams to focus on suboptimal objectives. While KRs are extremely important and a way to have specific activities to work on, they can not replace the goals or objectives that they are based on. The goals must be inspirational, long-term, and specific, and the activities must be based on these. For example, the objective/goal of the inside sales team can be the number of new customer conversions and incremental revenue, whereas the activities would be hitting the target number of reach outs through emails/calls and unblocking any issues the leads have. If the goals are not the primary point of discussion in the reviews, it is very easy for teams to feel productive and efficient by working on a lot of activities, while they lose sight of their real goals, and move in a tangential direction without even realizing it.
3. Setting up Cascading Goals
This implies the distribution of goals in each level of the organization so that the activities of individuals can add up to achieving the overall team’s goal. If a team has a particular goal, and if each member of the team contributes an equal amount, then the goal must be divided to reflect that. This may not always be the case. The team leader ensures that the goal is divided among the team members in a cascading manner based on the roles and skill set they possess, in such a way that the total effort would lead the team to the goal. Along with the activities, the goals or objectives of the team also naturally flow in a cascading and streamlined manner.
4. Rapid Experimentation
Today, all companies need to be fast-paced in experimenting with multiple plans and scenarios and evaluating which are working the best towards achieving their goals. Smaller companies/teams are still in a phase of building their processes and understanding what works best for them. We are no different. This format of OKRs and Review Methodology greatly helps with rapid experimentation, as it keeps teams in an agile problem-solving mindset. Activities are evaluated on a weekly basis and any problems or achievements can be discussed as soon as they arise, even before the meeting at the end of the week. More time is spent on strategy and building a base that allows rapid change and experimentation.
5. Using the Language of Data
A very integral part of the internal team and review communications at Hevo is using the language of data. Any point in the Weekly Review document or presentation is always quantified by numbers, percentages, or any other specific metrics which can allow very directed thoughts and actions. Vague statements like “very good growth” or “significant improvement” are avoided as much as possible, and specific pointers are used such as “X% month-on-month growth” or “Y% improvement”.
In this way, the team at Hevo is constantly working towards real goals, be it through scaling existing efforts, new initiatives, or team ramp-ups. This WBR methodology has proven to be a great way for the teams to be on top of their efforts and keep them motivated to push their boundaries in terms of how effective they can be.
Please share your thoughts on the WBR process at Hevo — happy to receive feedback and learn more. Do you have a process or chop that helps your team hit the targets every time? Let us know in the comments.
