Super proud of our work with BEIER GROUP in South Africa helping them define their Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to support their strategy. Thanks to JCURVs Francesca Nardocci CPCC, CPQC for sharing the learnings below 🌟 #okrs #strategy #agility #OKRDiary #transformation
OKR Diaries: Senior Board Member's learning of a South African 🇿🇦 Manufacturing Group. Are OKRs exclusively for companies with a digital product? Or SAAS companies? Hell, no!! I was in Durban last month, working with the BEIER GROUP, an innovative and family-owned group of manufacturing companies, involved in the production of technical textiles and personal protective gear. This group has embraced OKRs almost 2 years ago to align various manufacturing divisions, encompassing environmental filtration products, technical textiles, medical equipment, PVC and PU coated materials, as well as personal protective gear and occupational health services. We do a whole "OKR kick-off week" at the beginning of each 4-month cycle. We start the week with the retrospective session with the Senior Board Members of the Group to evaluate the outcomes of the OKR teams over the last 4 months and what the teams have learned, discovered and what needs to be adjusted to incorporate those learning. Here are the key insights from this senior leadership team: 1. Setting KPI's as Key Results doesn't work. It focusses teams on internal metrics as supposed to the customer behaviour. It also makes the OKR process feel like 'business as usual'. 2. Achieving congruence in a cycle: It is a challenge to generate clarity on what the OKR teams need to actually do. Understanding the Objective and Key results is one thing, knowing however, what the team members must try to work out that really 'moves the KR needle' is another challenge entirely. 3. Keeping alignment between the long-term OKRs and the annual OKR is key. Using the OKR process to constantly gage progress, what is discovered and the impact OKR teams have on the annual OKR and how that impacts and relates to the long-term OKR, is a key activity any leadership team should do regularly. My thanks and gratitude go out to Wolfgang Beier Warren Sachs, Dhesan Chetty, Manuela Beier, Stefan Beier, Rajen Reddy, Dr. Michael Maziya (PhD), Senzo Masengemu CA (SA) Ndlela Mazibuko As a leadership team, what is your learning from a single OKR cycle?