How to run a remote OKR workshop in 60 min or less + Free Miro template

Are you struggling with team alignment on a product's direction? Do people have different ideas of what goals you have? Defining OKRs is one effective method of fixing this.

The basics

• What is an OKR? OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results and is an effective method to define measurable goals. It’s from the book Measure what matters by John Doerr and the OKR method is most prominently known to be used by Google.

• Time: 60–90 minutes workshop time. About 15 minutes of prep time.

• The recommended amount of participants: 3–10 people. Any more than that and you will struggle with time management.

• Basic workshop structure:

  1. Co-create a large number of Objectives and Key Results

  2. Vote and distill them down to your top 3 most important ones

  3. Define Next steps

• What type of team does it fit? Setting OKRs is just one of many methods of setting goals and aligning teams. In my opinion, this works best for a product and a team that is mature. Newly formed teams and products should consider using methods that are less prescriptive in nature.

• Who should partake: Try to think cross-functional as much as possible. You need to include representatives both from the people that will execute the goals and any leader that is responsible for that execution.
  
  Here’s an example list of people commonly taking part if you set OKRs on a product team level:

  • Product Owner

  • Developers

  • Product or UX Designer

  • Data Analyst (they’re usually very good at coming up with clever Key Results)

Does everyone in your team know what is important?

Not long ago I was a consulting Product Designer for a startup that had been in the market for a couple of years (does that still count as a startup?🤔).

Everyone I worked with there had a laser focus on the user and wanted eagerly to release cool shit to the market.

They were quite agile. 🏃‍♂️💨

But maybe too agile? 💥

The thing was, they sucked at setting goals. There were constant changes to the non-existent road map. Releases were pushed forward at a whim and nobody in the product teams could tell the other what the current most important feature was and what actually mattered the most.

People worked purely based on what they were best at, what they preferred doing that day, or what they guessed the CEO would like best in the next demo.

I love the startup feel. But this was at a point where it caused unnecessary stress to everyone involved, both the teams and their leadership.

I proposed we would try defining some OKRs.

The magic of a clear objective

The Product Owner I worked with had heard about OKRs and thought it was a good idea but was concerned about the effort needed to define them.

Workshops to the rescue!

I designed the workshop I describe in this post and explained to my PO that it wouldn’t take more than an hour to define OKRs.

We ran the workshop and instantly the entire team had clarity into what product objectives we had and which of them mattered the most. Since the team was part of the creation of the OKRs – there was no need to try and explain to someone else after the fact. Everyone that needed to know was part of creating the OKRs.

This drastically improved that feeling of stress. We still felt like a fast, agile startup team. But we had a newfound focus, alignment, and a clear sense of direction.

You can do this too for your team.

Let’s learn how.

Step 0 – Workshop board prep

Disclaimer: I’m going to be assuming you already are somewhat familiar with how to use the digital whiteboard tools Miro. It’s very easy to use and there are lots of how-to guides out there if you are unfamiliar.

Running a remote workshop requires very little preparation when you use templates. You basically just have to fill out the workshop participants’ names in each workshop section so they can find their way around.

First, download the Miro template:

Second, I have highlighted everything you need to update with the help of my most trusted Workshop Assistant and Mood Manager™, Björn the Norwich Terrier. Everywhere you see Björn, update according to his instruction, then remove Björn.

The things you need to prepare:

• Add your focus area on the ideation sections

• Adjust Objective examples to better fit your context (optional, but recommended)

• Add participant’s names on the Objective columns

• Add participant’s names on the Objective voting dots

• Adjust Key Results examples to better fit your context (optional, but recommended)

• Add participant’s names on the Key Results columns

• Add participant’s names on the Key Results voting dots

• Add participant’s names on the Objective columns

Preparing a “Decider”

Some sections of the workshop, require the team to make final decisions about which OKRs to actually go for. These steps are voted on as a group.

However, voting might end up being a tie. That is why it is helpful to have a Decider role that makes a final call.

The Decider is usually a product owner or some sort of Team Lead that manages the product resources (but it could be anyone that the team trusts really).

If the decider is not yourself, make sure to prepare whoever will have that role ahead of the workshop.

You’re now ready to workshop, let’s begin!

Step 1 – Introduction

⏱️ Time: 5 minutes

Start off with introducing the structure and the objective (no pun intended) of the workshop.

For an OKR workshop, it’s helpful to give a quick explanation of what an OKR actually is. A quick way of doing this is by explaining the background and purpose of OKRs and then giving lots of examples of good and bad OKRs.

I have included this in the workshop board introduction, but feel free to edit or completely skip this part.

Step 2 – Ideate Objectives

⏱️ Time: 8 minutes

The first exercise is to ideate and to create a mass of multiple objectives. The mindset is quantity over quality. We will filter out the best ones in the next step.

Before you instruct your participants to begin, show them the focus area (remember to update this!) you want to write objectives about. The focus area will help align

Then walk through some example Objectives to help them get a feel for how to write them.

Show that each participant has their own column and tell them that they are encouraged to create as many objectives as they can and not worry about writing the best objective, just produce plenty.

This exercise is done together, but alone. Meaning everyone will work individually and we will have no discussion. Our sticky notes will do the talking for us.

Ask your team if you have any questions, then set a timer for 8 minutes and get going!

Step 3 – Voting on Objectives

⏱️ Time: 5 minutes

Now you hopefully have a plethora of objectives to choose from. But you can’t go for them all. It’s time to prioritize and make a choice of our top 3. (We’ve chosen 3 as it seems to be the sweet spot but feel free to tweak this to your preference).

We are going to do this prioritization by working together-alone again. And we will be using dot voting.

After everyone has voted, it’s time for the decider to make their final call about which three objectives to choose. The decider may go with the popular vote or override as they see fit.

Voting rules

• Everyone gets three votes each

• You may vote on your own Objectives

• You may put multiple dots, or all three dots, on the same Objective if you want to, or spread them out

Voting guidance

In order to get the best objectives forward and make voting easier – it can be helpful to give the participants some guidance on what is a good objective.

Ask them to look for:

• Objectives that are clear and understandable without further explanation

• Objectives that seem realistic

• Objectives that seem to have clear value for our customers and/or for our organization

Ask if anyone has any questions, then give them 10 minutes on the timer and tell them to vote in silence – no discussion.

Bonus facilitation tip: when multiple stickys say the same things

You will likely see a lot of sticky notes with very similar ideas and phrasings. And your participants might react and ask how they should vote. This is completely normal and it’s just a sign that the team is quite aligned!

Simply ask everyone to vote on the phrasing they like the best.

When voting is done, it will become apparent which ones are more popular. This will help the Decider make a final choice.

Step 4 – Decider vote

⏱️ Time: 5 minutes

The decider gets 3 “star votes” to make a final decision with. In the template, they are covered up to make it clear that the decider has to wait until the team has finished their voting.

The decider is asked to consider the team’s voting but it is also made clear that the decider has the final say and can choose Objectives with few, or no votes if they wish.

This is also a unique part of the workshop where discussion is encouraged. The decider is instructed to ask for input from participants about the different objectives before making their decision.

Give the decider 5 min on the clock to make their decision.

The Decider makes their final call by placing their star vote

Break – moving over the winner Objectives

Now that the decider has made their choice of the top three Objectives. You as the facilitator need to copy over the winner objectives to the next part of the workshop board where we are going to ideate on Key Results.

This is a good opportunity to give your participants a 5-minute break. But make it clear that they have to be back in 5 minutes sharp.

If you are running short on time, just skip the break and quickly copy over the texts while your participants wait.

Simply copy and paste the texts from the winner Objective sticky notes to the Key Results section.

Step 5 – Ideate on Key results

⏱️ Time: 8 minutes

Now that you have defined your Objectives it’s time to create a mass of multiple Key Results.

Just like the Objectives ideation in the beginning, the mindset is quantity over quality. And we will later vote to filter out the best Key Results.

Before you instruct your participants to begin. Make sure to walk through some example Key Results.

This ideation is a little different than the first part. Each Objective now has its own column for participants to share and produce a mass of Key Results for.

Tell them that they are encouraged to create as many Key Results as they can and not worry about writing the best Key Results, just produce plenty.

What’s important here is also to encourage the team members to produce Key Results for all of the Objectives and not get stuck on only one of them.

Ask your team if you have any questions, then set a timer for 8 minutes and get going.

Each Objective should be getting some ideas for Key Results by now.

Step 6 – Voting on Key Results

⏱️ Time: 10 minutes

Time to pick which Key Results best fit the top Objectives using dot voting.

After everyone has voted, we defer to the Decider again to make a final call.

Voting rules

• Everyone gets three votes each per Objective

• You may vote on your own Key Results

• You may put multiple dots, or all dots, on the same Objective if you want to, or spread them out

Voting guidance

In order to choose the best Key Results and make voting easier – it can be helpful to give the participants some guidance on what is a good Key Result.

Ask them to look for:

• A Key Result that includes a measurable milestone, such as “Released by January 25th”

• A Key Result that describes an outcome – not an activity.

• A Key Result that includes some evidence of completion. E.g. change lists, links to docs, notes, and published metrics reports.

Ask if anyone has any questions, then give them 10 minutes on the timer and tell them to vote in silence – no discussion.

Each person has three votes To put under Key Results under each of the three top Objectives

Step 7 – Decider vote

⏱️ Time: 5 minutes

The decider now gets 3 “star votes” per Key Result to make their final call with.

Again, the decider is asked to consider the team’s voting but it is also made clear that the decider has the final say and can choose Key Results with few, or no votes if they wish.

During this part, a discussion is once again encouraged. The decider is instructed to ask for input from participants about the different Key Results before making their decision.

Give the decider 5 min on the clock to make their decision.

Step 8 – Next steps

This is the first step towards realizing the objectives you’ve just chosen.

Now you need to decide on the frequency of how often you want to review the OKRs and their progression. The most common sweet spot seems to be quarterly as that gives you enough time to pass for the objectives to have an honest chance to progress. Some teams might prefer monthly or bi-monthly. It also depends on what key results you defined, some of them might be time committed so that would have to come into play as well.

Once a review cadence is decided, take 5 min to discuss when to schedule the first review session. Send out a calendar invite before the workshop is over and everyone returns to their daily rhythm of tasks.

Discuss when you should run your reviews.

…and schedule it straight away.

Follow-up

Defining clear goals is going to solve many clarity and team alignment issues. But it’s easy to fall back into old ways and forget about them after the workshop.

Give your new OKRs the best chance to succeed by OVERCOMMUNICATING them to your team and organization.

• Bring up your OKRs in every meeting

• Print them out and plaster them around the office

• Pin or bookmark them in your slack/team channels

• Add them to your desktop wallpaper 😄

But most importantly – make sure you go through with the OKR review sessions where you look at progress since last time and update your OKRs accordingly.

Next level improvements

If you already were familiar with OKRs going into this post you probably noticed I have left out a lot of things.

This workshop is designed to get a small team started on trying out OKRs. But it kind of only scratch the surface of how you can work with them across an organization and how to perfect the process.

There are many principles when setting OKRs. For example, you should either go for a committed or an aspirational OKR. Your OKRs shouldn’t be too long. You can score and weigh your OKRs etc.

The Measure What Matters website has the Google playbook for setting OKRs with lots of inspiration when it comes to this.

However, don’t miss the forest for the OKR trees.

Maybe you recognize some of these methods?

• HARD (Heartfelt, Animated, Required, Difficult)

• WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan)

• WIG (Wildly Important Goals)

• SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound)

There are a million ways of setting goals and OKR is just one of them. Don’t worry too much about nailing the perfect OKR. I have worked with so many organizations that get too hung up on processes to the point where they stop being a tool and become a hurdle.

Just focus on creating actual results and let your goals act as a guide, not a prescription.

Now get out there and do stuff. 💪

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Need more help?

• Follow me on LinkedIn where I post a lot of tips on innovation, facilitation, and product design

• Check out some of my other posts on my Substack-blog for more in-depth guides and reflections.

• I also help companies facilitate super-efficient problem solving workshops. Schedule a call with me and we’ll discuss how I might help you.