As was previously mentioned in our LinkedIn post, we were busy preparing for a 2-day OKR workshop in Bangkok, Thailand. It went very well. Thanks to the participants who attended the class; the event really enriched our appreciation and understanding of OKR. It was a pleasure.
We were delighted to learn that individuals and companies have shown interests toward OKR. In fact, most of them had heard about OKR before, while some already started to adopt the OKR practice as part of their execution discipline. The differences they had in regards to their knowledge and experience about OKR made the conversation and discussion interesting. During the Q&A sessions, they were seen discussing among themselves: what worked and didn’t work when implementing OKR and figuring out other alternatives to a better OKR adoption.
Having a multitude of people from different backgrounds and positions was another reason why the workshop was engaging to the participants. There are those from the telecommunication industry, healthcare, energy, real estate, and financial technology. Some are C-level executives, while others are directors, heads, and managers. They asked different questions; each wanted to know how OKR can be applied to their situation. Because there’s no one size fits all, we had to give a variety of examples and use cases to make sure each one of them can relate to OKR and the adoption practice. Exchanging and discussing new ideas with them certainly helped us to understand OKR better. The learning process is two-way.
We covered a wide range of topics in 2 sessions:
- OKR Primer — the A to Z about OKR: the definition and how to set and write Objective and Key Results, steps to create OKR cadence, case studies, and common mistakes.
- A 12-week OKR Implementation and Evaluation Guides — a more in-depth guideline to start the OKR adoption practice: tools to manage your cadence, the checklist of benefit to evaluate whether you’re on the right track after 12 weeks of adoption, and how to utilize your OKR scores to guide your 1:1s.
We also facilitated a set of hands-on exercises to help the participants apply the workshop material in a more realistic setting. This also provided us a chance to clarify some concepts to a few individuals who brought their own company-specific examples. The participants were encouraged to discuss in groups and one to share her answer to everyone, so the whole class learned together.
At the end of the workshop, we asked the participants to answer several questions on the scale of 1 to 10.
How satisfied are you with the delivery for both presentations? (“Delivery” means how the presenters explained each topic during the presentation)
All responses were 7 or above: 80% satisfied and 20% very satisfied.
How satisfied are you with the content for both presentations? (“Content” refers to the conceptual knowledge along with the examples that were presented)
We had 20% very satisfied; 60% satisfied; and the lowest score of 4 (one respondent)
How likely are you to recommend us as OKR coach to your colleagues?
We had 20% in the very likely category; 66% likely; and the lowest score is 5 (one respondent).
A couple of open-ended questions at the end of the questionnaire perhaps gave us a hint why we had a small number of respondents answered below 6. For example:
- One participant who works as an Engineer wanted Engineering-specific examples; not Business.
- More content that is directly related to the audience’s industry — this is a great idea, but might be difficult to pull off considering the various industries the participants come from.
Another interesting finding is the majority of the audience (90%) loved the explanation of outcome vs. task planning. We thought the highlight of the exercise would be setting and writing the Objective and Key Results, but the outcome vs. task planning was definitely the one that made an impression on the audience. Some said they loved this particular exercise because it made them aware of the importance of strategic thinking: mapping out the outcomes one by one — from what is possible in this period to the subsequent outcomes after that — helps them to prepare and plan their work accordingly.
A shout out to RISE for coordinating the event and for having us there! Thank you for their warm hospitality and generosity. It was also great meeting all the participants who turned out to be OKR enthusiasts like us. Here’s hoping for another round of workshop or talk about OKR in the future. Until next time!
