Taking first OKR setup meeting? Here's a checklist you shouldn't miss

I watch a lot of astronaut movies...Mostly Star Wars. And even Han and Chewie use a checklist. ~ Jon Stewart

Most startups begin with a small team stepping in on number of shoes playing multiple roles. But, the number of employees, departments, tasks, and goals keep changing and becoming challenging over time.

For the agile teams, OKR implementation completely changes an organization’s approach to work. And this can be also be a nightmare for the teams, suddenly stepping out of their comfort zone and embarking on a new work culture. 

However, A proper plan in place and a checklist at hand makes this entire transition process smooth.

The checklist helps everyone learn the essence and power of implementing an OKR framework within the organization. Moreover, it also makes them feel comfortable with the new changes by pointing out key aspects of the same. 

You can easily get everyone aligned with the objectives and get on board with new ideas through a checklist. This helps in facilitating the OKR journey on a wiser note. 

So, without further ado, let’s dive into it. 

The Ultimate OKR Checklist for 2023

1. Preparation Checklist 

A preparation checklist helps in ensuring that your workforce is fully prepared for adopting a whole new framework altogether. 

📌Learning the key terminologies

✅Objectives and Key Results is a goal-management framework        used by companies to define their goals throughout the year                along with measuring the outcomes. 

✅The goals or objectives are descriptions of what the workforce wants to achieve. Objectives are qualitative in nature. 

✅The outcomes or the key results are measures the progress made towards the objectives. Therefore, in order to be most effective, key results should be verifiable, quantitative, time-bound, and specific. 

✅The scale marks individual employees between 0 to 1 indicating whether they have achieve a specific goal for the key result. 

 📌Understanding the OKRs

✅Conducting an introduction meeting with your team to explain the basic concepts like:

• The history behind the OKR framework

• OKR grading system

• Setting the OKRs

✅Helping them understand the essence of OKRs to organization as well as the employees. 

✅Plan an OKR setting up session with the workforce. 

2. Brainstorming Checklist 

A brainstorming checklist helps in figuring out the most crucial part of the OKR framework: the objectives that need to be achieved and the key results that you are expecting. 

 📌Determining the objectives

Brainstorming

✅Gather your team members and organize an objective brain storming session. 

✅Discuss the most important goals that your team and you should achieve yearly, quarterly, and monthly.

✅Ask your team members to draft list of objectives within an hour.

✅Ensure objectives are realistic & not too ambitious. The objectives should be straightforward and simple. 

Selecting the objectives

✅Are the objectives realistic?

✅Are the objectives aligned with the larger company goals? 

✅What’s the importance of these objectives?

✅What are the limitations or resources available for accomplishing the objectives?

✅Can the objectives be measured?

✅How long will it take to achieve the objectives?

✅Can the objectives be scaled at respective levels of importance?

📌Determining the Key Results

Brainstorming

✅Gather your team members and organize a key results                       brainstorming session. 

 ✅Question the team on what measurable results they can see  if they reach the respective objectives. 

✅Ask your team members to draft a list of key results as per the objectives within an hour.

Selecting the KRs (Key Results)

 Once you have the potential key results list from your team  members, ask them the following questions to choose the most suitable key results.

✅Are the key results relevant to the decided objectives?

✅Can the key results motivate the respective employee to achieve their dedicated objective?

✅Are the key results measurable and what’s the metric for                   measuring them?

✅ Do the key results come with assigned owners?

📌OKR Resources

Fetch your list of Industry wise + Role wise OKRs List here
Access here​

📌Track your ambitions

Access the objectives & Key Results

✅Are the set OKRs practical yet ambitious? 

✅Can the OKRs be achieved within the set time frame?

Incorporate a grading system

✅Determine a numerical grading system to measure the KRs.

✅Determine whether the OKRs should be increased or                             decreased to suit the team better. 

📌Next Steps

Align everything with each other

✅Are the OKRs transparent? 
✅Do everyone across the organization have access to the OKRs?
✅Do the objectives have shared or individual ownership?
✅Is everyone aware of the OKR framework within the organization?

Conducting  follow-up meetings

✅Are all the decisions concerning the OKR set-up been made?

✅Do people still have doubts about the OKR framework after it has been explained to them?

3. Action Checklist

An action checklist helps the workforce to evaluate and review their OKRs once they have been put into action. This helps in identifying and addressing any scopes of improvement that can be there.

📌Execution and tracking of OKRs

Managers should keep a track of how their workforce is performing and grade the Key Results achieved by them from time to time. 

✅Check the score of individual employees regularly to understand how much of their objectives they have achieved.

✅Managers should remember that grading helps in detecting warning signs and other shortcomings early. 

✅Provide adequate feedback to individual employees on how they can work better on their performance

📌Knowledge gained and scope of improvement

After every quarter, conduct a QnA session with the team members to understand how much they have learned from using the OKR framework. Here are some questions you can ask them

✅How can everyone do better as team in next year/quarter/month?

✅ What new things did everyone learn in this year/quarter/month?

✅Is everyone aligned with the OKR framework?

✅Are the long-term goals of the company aligned with the OKR          framework?

✅ Is the OKR framework as per the current industry standards? 

Wraping Up

As most organizations are adopting the newfound framework of OKRs, it is common for many to fail in implementing OKRs correctly. 

However, with this detailed OKR checklist, you can devise a proper OK set-up and avoid common mistakes to skyrocket your organization’s goals in the most effortless way.

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