In response to sharp rise in enterprise results focus and adoption of OKRs for strategy execution, WorkBoard launches comprehensive OKR Journey Center

Redwood City, CA, October 22, 2020 —   WorkBoard Inc. today announced availability of the OKR Journey Center, a one-of-a-kind resource with over 20 company journeys from large enterprises intended to help leaders adopting or improving OKRs in their organization. As companies and their leaders rethink how to drive strategy and execution in a dynamic world, many are adopting this higher-velocity management model for faster iteration on priorities, better alignment across distributed teams, and higher focus on what matters most. WorkBoard pioneered the first OKR Certification program in 2018 and has certified more than 2500 graduates — including 650 in Q3 alone — while helping hundreds of companies drive better results using their methodology; the OKR Journey Center makes this wisdom and experience widely available.

“As leaders rethink how their organizations and the people in them come together for greatest impact, they are increasingly using OKRs to align and accelerate team outcomes. Early OKR adopters were fast-growth startups — now large enterprises realize they also need fast iteration, learning, and agility OKRs can provide,” said WorkBoard CEO and co-founder Deidre Paknad. “Done well, OKRs unlock ambition, unify teams, and quickly drive cohesive results across even the most distributed, complex organizations. The Journey Center will help more organizations avoid time-wasting mishaps and mobilize as fast the best companies do.”

An OKR primer for business leaders

The transition to OKRs can deliver breakthrough alignment and results in just a single quarter, stemming in large part from adopting four important management changes:

• Foster an Outcome Mindset™ by measuring the impact of activity rather than the quantity of it.
• Align on best possible results to unlock ambition and aim for awesome, rather than setting or organizing for the most predictable results.
• Drive results alignment and clarity across every team rather than just at the top of the organization which often represents less than 2% of the total workforce.
• Focus on lateral alignment across teams to drive better results rather than the typical vertical silos that impede the company.

While these are powerful shifts that help large organizations operate with greater agility and ambition, they are often a change in operating habits. To help organizations quickly adopt, adapt, and gain acceleration from OKRs, WorkBoard created a comprehensive OKR Journey Center with dozens of company journeys, launch and program resources, pass-along education tools, and insights for key inflection points along the journey.

This one-of-a-kind resource center is designed to help organizations adopting OKRs and program teams chartered with implementing or enhancing their OKR practice get better results. It includes video narratives from process owners and executives from IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, Workday, Secureworks, GHX, and many others, along with the tools these and other companies use to achieve their best results.

The insights and tactics shared in the OKR Journey Center through audio, video, and written accounts of what to expect — and how to succeed — at each step of the OKR Journey are accelerators as teams:

• Learn — understand what OKRs are, how they work, and how to cultivate other OKR champions to drive momentum.
• Plan — clarify OKR program intentions, establish the program scope, and build a plan that delivers fast impact.
• Launch — create a savvy change and communication plan, coach teams to set high-integrity OKRs the first time around, build in transparency, and create a weekly calibrate/celebrate cadence.
• Drive — institutionalize an OKR program in the behaviors and operational practices of the organization to consistently achieve key results.
• Improve — harness intelligence from a well-functioning OKR process and drive better results quarter on quarter

Embrace the inflection points

The OKR Journey Center also features resources to help organizations harness the potential from three major inflection points as they institutionalize the practice of OKRs:

1. Shifting to an Outcome Mindset™ — Guiding teams through the mindshift shift from measuring activity to focusing on outcomes and results. Empowering teams to define and reach for their best possible.
2. Operationalizing OKRs — creating results rituals that enhance focus and increase accountability, embedding OKRs into the operating flywheel of the organization, and making results the central language of the business.
3. Harmonizing Team OKRs with Individual Performance — avoid confusion on individual growth goals and team contributions to company outcomes by a strong communications plans; explore the cadence differences between managing business results and providing individual coaching, and learn how others manage these two adjacent processes.

OKRs: Where the future of work and the future of leadership converge

Companies embarking on or advancing their OKR practice know the potential is transformative and that now is the time to rethink how teams work, how to lead, and how organizations achieve their best results. Businesses must optimize results with distributed and distracted teams; team members have more obligations at home and less physical connection to the company. Companies of all kinds now need to iterate on strategic priorities on a quarterly, rather than annual, basis and enable distributed team members to work with clear purpose toward cohesive results. The shift to focus on outcomes over hours or output serves both enterprises’ urgent need to optimize results in uncertain times, and employees’ need for higher autonomy and meaning in their work as they face more work-home complexity.

About WorkBoard
WorkBoard is the Enterprise Results Platform unlocking growth and competitive advantage through alignment, focus and transparency using OKRs. Enterprise leaders including Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Samsung, Juniper, Zuora, GHX and more rely on WorkBoard’s platform and methodology to improve their results. With the solution, customers rapidly align on results; deliver enterprise-wide transparency on progress to plan; focus meetings and 1:1s on outcomes; and dynamically team cross-functionally to achieve their best quarter after quarter. WorkBoard is a pioneer in OKR coach certification, helping companies accelerate their success with more than 2,500 certified coaches. WorkBoard is based in Redwood City, Calif. and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, GGV Capital, Workday Ventures and Microsoft’s M12. For more information, visit www.workboard.com or follow the company on Twitter @WorkBoardInc.

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