After a leadership change, successful vision casting and clear focus areas, the dynamic IT Master team needed to ensure there was consistent progress towards their most important goals. Ultimately, they wanted to empower leaders to execute on the ambition. To help the team achieve this, our team helped translate their high-level strategy into comprehensive OKRs. Every quarter, we spent time reflecting on key elements of the past quarter and resetting their OKRs for the next quarter. In addition, we utilised the time to align on the language and benefits of OKRs and inspire the team to achieve more through shifting mindsets from an output to outcome-based thinking. We also upskilled and trained an OKR Champion to oversee the overall process. While a lot of progress was made, a lot more is required to achieve their ambition. The team has been left with a solid weekly meeting rhythm to keep each other accountable to their respective actions and initiatives.
“Successful businesses have a disproportionate focus on the elements that will move the dial. Having an OKR practitioner on board provides an unemotional lens to create this focus, to bring clarity, and to enhance the narrative, the “why” behind the decisions that are being made.”
STANTON PILLAY, CEO AT IT MASTER
CLIENT
DATE
2021
DURATION
Nine months
INDUSTRY
Technology
IT Master leadership team is dynamic, entrepreneurial and ambitious team with great growth aspirations. They experienced a tough season during 2020 and leading up to it, but after a leadership change, successful vision casting and clear focus areas, they were able to come out of it, leave the past behind and focus on the growth awaiting them.
With this renewed energy, they wanted to ensure that there is alignment in the team, that there is consistent progress on their most important goals, and that there is clarity on what is being pursued.
Step Advisory, through our OKR brand, was contacted to assist in facilitating the OKRs and the strategy for the leadership team over a 9-month period.
The team had a clear purpose, ambition and strategy. The next step was to translate the high-level strategy into consumable and comprehensible goals – the OKRs.
We spent a day each quarter with the leadership team, in face-to-face sessions, with the objective to set OKRs for the next quarter. These sessions were utilised to firstly reflect on the past quarter. Reflections were done on their financial performance, their key metrics, their celebration areas and their performance on OKRs.
It was crucial to align on the OKR language, the benefits of it and the ways in which it can be utilised to move the company forward. Secondly, session were used to inspire the team to achieve more through shifting mindsets – describing the outcomes-based methodologies, the benefits of clear focus areas, their ability to influence the organisation through leadership, and much more.
We also journeyed with an individual in the leadership team appointed to look after the OKR methodology, upskilling them to become an internal OKR champion. OKRs were tracked and monitored on a simple Excel based tool which we designed for the IT Master team.
Lastly, we facilitated an annual 3-day strategy session to review the ongoing relevance of the strategy and translated that strategy into annual and quarterly OKRs.
Progress was seen during the year, but a lot more is required to achieve their 2023 ambition. We left the team with direction for the 2023 financial year, with a set of annual OKRs, as well as quarterly OKRs for Q1 and a good sense of the OKRs for the other quarters – which would have to be locked down at the start of each quarter.
A good meeting rhythm has been implemented, with the leadership team meeting every week to discuss OKRs using a simple Excel-based tool. Initiatives and actions are planned for each OKR – often, stopping at Key Results is not enough, we have to think through the initiatives to progress that OKR as well. A weekly meeting rhythm is used for the team to keep each other accountable to their actions and initiatives.
