The OKR
Quickstart Programme
Since discovering OKRs in 2015, I’ve worked with thousands of people in hundreds of teams across dozens of organisations. Based on this experience, I’ve developed the OKR Quickstart programme: the fastest, and most effective way I’ve found to get multiple teams up and running with OKRs and experiencing the power of multi-team alignment and negotiation.
The programme takes place via 3 highly interactive, hands-on remote workshops of about 2 hours each, spread over 2-4 weeks with an additional 2 hours of ad hoc coaching during the quarter. It empowers and equips a group of 10-30 “OKR Ambassadors” across 2-5 well-established and high-performing teams with everything they need to thrive with OKRs including fully facilitated setting, alignment, and check-in sessions, templates, and a healthy dose of training on OKR mindset and core principles. It combines highly interactive training sessions with professional facilitation of key OKR ceremonies.
What people are saying
"I'm kicking myself for not doing this sooner."
"The team is consistently telling me how the OKR process has changed how we work at the company. This has been by far one of the best investments our team has made all year. Thank you for all your support."
"It has been great to focus the company and move us forward... Thanks again for your work. We are very pleased with the results."
"The implementation of OKRs has had a huge impact on the successful growth of the business."
"OKRs were new to us as a business, but through Peter's invaluable support and expertise we have successfully embedded an impactful goal setting framework that has enabled all of our team members to align behind a shared objective."
"This was the best 20 person conference call I’ve ever attended. "
"Peter's OKR training and coaching has had a really positive impact here at PlotBox; from his initial support in introducing OKRs to his online training which provided our employees with a very useful refresher and instilled confidence in actually using OKRs in their own teams day to day. The training was very comprehensive, effective and enjoyable, distilling difficult concepts into easy-to-grasp bitesize chunks. Highly recommended!"
"I appreciate all of your support as we advanced our measurements and OKRs! You were a great partner and advisor!"
"This is literally the first time I've seen people get excited about objectives!"
"Highly recommended, Peter Kappus is a legend in demystifying OKRs and making them accessible."
"I've really appreciated your postive, inclusive, proactive approach to problem solving and improving delivery, it's been really helpful... You've also always been open and available for informal discussions - that kind of support is important."
Overview
Participants will:
- Learn the foundational concepts and mindset behind OKRs
- Understand the structure and characteristics of strong OKRs
- Be able to articulate the value of OKRs over traditional goals
- Draft OKRs for each team in a fully facilitated OKR setting workshop
- Align OKRs across multiple teams using a fully facilitated, 2 hour “OKR Festival”
- Learn and practice performing effective weekly check-ins
- Learn how to close OKRs at the end of the quarter and how to capture and share important lessons
We do this via 3 remote workshops of about 2 hours each spread over 2-4 weeks – guided by your team’s availability and pace – plus an additional 2 hours of ongoing coaching to spend during the quarter for hands-on check-in help, additional Q&A, and more.
What’s inside?
- 3 interactive, hands-on, remote workshops of about 2 hours each
- 2 hours of additional ad hoc coaching and working sessions during the quarter
- 1 hour of preparation calls, pre-work, and general admin
- Reusable OKR drafting templates and slides to run your own workshops
- Perpetual free access to my basic OKR tracking tools for both Google Sheets
- Step-by-step guides for facilitating workshops & check-ins
Detailed Agenda
Sessions have been optimised for remote learning. They make extensive use of collaboration tools such as Miro, and Google Workspace, they are filled with engaging, interactive elements, quizzes, and breakout-discussions designed to enhance retention, and leverage domain knowledge held by the teams.
Session 1: Key concepts & setting OKRs
We’ll briefly learn about the origins of OKRs at Intel and the basic structure and language that OKRs use, how they differ from traditional goals and how they give your organisation a powerful framework for difficult conversations. But the real learning happens when we get hands-on so we’ll spend the remaining 90 minutes of the first workshop using my “OKR Map” technique to set powerful OKRs within individual teams in a way that’s fun, inclusive, and engaging. By the end of this workshop, each team will have a set of draft OKRs.
- OKR origins and precursors
- What are OKRs? What do they look like?
- Exploring the OKR mindset and core principles
- OKRs vs traditional goals, etc.
- Adopting OKRs within a traditional framework of vision, mission, and initiatives
- OKRs & KPIs
- Focusing on outcomes vs outputs
- Drafting OKRs with my “OKR Mapping” method
- ~90 minutes of hands-on practice setting real OKRs with multiple teams
Session 2: Aligning OKRs across teams
Once we’ve set some OKRs within our teams, it’s time to look outside the teams and begin aligning them across the organisation. We’ll discuss the dangers of rigid top-down cascading and how to align them using a market-based. Then we’ll get hands-on and invite teams to present their draft OKRs to their peers in a mini “OKR Festival” to find areas of alignment and conflict, to iron out misunderstanding, negotiate dependencies, and begin moving OKRs between teams and layers of your organisation. By the end of this workshop OKRs will be more aligned and teams will understand how they can work together to deliver the most important outcomes.
- How OKR alignment can supercharge your organisation
- Avoiding rigid top-down “cascading” in favor of market-based OKR alignment
- A facilitated ~90 minute OKR Festival" to present, refine, and align OKRs
Session 3: Checking-in and closing OKRs
Now that we’ve set and aligned our OKRs, it’s time to learn and practice the most important part of the OKR process: consistently checking in. We’ll talk briefly about the importance of using regular check-ins to connect our day-to-day tactical work to the delivery of our most important strategic outcomes. We’ll explore how measuring confidence over progress strengthens our shared understanding of reality and how OKR check-ins can strengthen our OKRs. Then we’ll use my OKR tracking templates to perform some actual check-ins with our real OKRs until we’re comfortable with the process. Finally, we’ll discuss and practice techniques for closing OKRs at the end of the quarter to reset the process and enable continuous learning.
- Hosting efficient and valuable OKR check-ins
- Using check-ins to improve OKR quality
- Using confidence (not just progress) to steer actions
- Using “What? So what? Now what?” to facilitate tough conversations
- Using my templates and tools to capture and share results
- Hands-on practice running mock check-ins together
- How to grade & close OKRs at the end of the period
2 hours of additional ad-hoc coaching
Between or after the workshops, teams will have 2 hours of additional support to:
- Facilitate additional check-ins
- Host additional Q&A sessions
- Address specific challenges/opportunities
- Set up or customise your existing OKR tooling
- Additional coaching hours can be arranged for an additional fee
Time can be used for remote coaching and facilitation as you see fit in blocks as small as 30 minutes for groups of up to 5 people (not full-scale workshops) and must be used within 90 days of starting the engagement.
Bonus materials
- A reusable OKR Map template for Miro or Mural
- Setup of my simple OKR Tracking sheet in Google Sheets - Free to use forever!
- Step-by-step guides for facilitating workshops & check-ins
- Reusable OKR drafting templates and slides to run your own workshops
The OKR Masterclass
For groups who want a rapid introduction to the concepts and techniques but without the in-depth facilitation and support of the Quickstart Programme, the Executive OKR Masterclass is a single 60-90 minute remote session that provides foundational OKR principles and concepts along with specific practical exercises to learn my most effective techniques for setting, aligning, checking in and closing OKRs in teams.
It’s ideal for organisations who want to quickly expose large numbers of people to OKR best practices and give them the tools they need to be successful on their own with OKRs.
The OKR Masterclass includes the following:
- A series of short activities to explore the following:
- Why OKRs?
- Shortcomings with traditional goals
- Qualities of truly useful goals?
- A brief introduction to OKRs including background & history
- Examples & anatomy of OKRs (Objectives, key results, initiatives)
- Aspects and examples of good objectives
- Aspects and examples of good key results
- The relationship between OKRs & initiatives
- OKRs, KPIs & health metrics
- Drafting OKRs in teams using my “OKR Mapping” method
- Cascading OKRs – or not: applying a market based approach to alignment across teams and groups
- Introducing the “OKR Festival” to enable the team to align, negotiate and quality check their OKRs
- Are they aspirational enough? SMART enough KRs? Within your control?
- Running effective check-ins
- Closing OKRs: scoring & capturing lessons learned; enabling continuous improvement
- Up to 30 minutes of Structured Q&A
Attendees will also receive my Miro templates for running their own OKR Drafting sessions and access to my Google Sheet OKR Tracker for checking in on OKRs during the quarter.
The OKR Masterclass includes instructions and brief examples of my OKR workshop methods but does NOT actually run the key OKR setting, aligning, and check-in workshops – those take several hours each to do effectively. If you would like fully facilitated workshops for your teams, consider the deeper OKR Quickstart Programme.
About Peter Kappus
As an engineer and organisational coach for over 20 years, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the world’s leading digital organisations to help teams improve their delivery culture, work better together, and enjoy the process along the way. I’ve worked in industries including investment banking, hedge-funds, governments, bio-technology, media, pharmaceuticals (drug discovery), and legal services.
Past clients include the UK Government Digital Service (GDS), Meta (Facebook), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking, Wikimedia Foundation, a global investment fund, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the BBC (Design + Engineering including the iPlayer group), Genomics England, BNP Paribas, Exscientia, and dozens of start-ups and scale-ups undergoing explosive growth.
Since 2019 I’ve been a frequent collaborator with the team at What Matters – John Doerr’s foundation for promoting the use of OKRs to accelerate global innovation.
I can’t wait to work with your organisation!
Ready to sign up?
Terrific! Here’s how to get started and what to expect:
- Determine the cohort of around 20 people spread across 2-4 high-performing teams. Need help deciding? Let’s talk!
- When you’re ready, click the button below to send me:
- 1-2 potential dates & times for the first session
- A list of teams, team member names and email addresses for the first cohort (up to 20 people)
- Your organisation’s official name and mailing address
- Let me know if you’d like to pay via credit card or bank transfer
- Any other questions or information you’d like to share
Need to pay in USD? Need a quote to create a purchase order? Just ask!
After confirming the date & time, the participants, and payment, I’ll reserve the time and send out a detailed invitation to the participants with a zoom link.