Your Go To Template For An OKR Meeting Agenda

Setting goals, achieving and measuring them are three significant elements that define a company's success. And one fool-proof way to achieve these isthrough OKRs.

OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a popular goal-setting tool that provides a framework that links the company's laid-out objectives to the expected results. It makes tracking progress and achievements at board or team meetings easier.

Its ability to align strategic plans with their corresponding means of execution helps to introduce lucidity in the overall organizational planning. As a result, the company's plans can be easily incorporated into discussions during special board meetings.

Setting and achieving goals using the OKR framework is not all smooth sailing; it's best to have a guide to avoid going off the rails. 

In this article, we'll explore OKRs and their benefits and provide a template to make your OKR meeting agenda more effective.

What Is An OKR Template?

An OKR template is a document, structured framework, or evaluation system that outlines and envisions a company's goals and key results. 

It provides a well-defined mechanism for defining a team's objectives and monitoring results, as well as lucidity to foster a common purpose in the organization and boost employee engagement.

Annual and quarterly board meetings are ways companies keep track of their OKRs; special board meetings dedicated to this purpose are common in organizations. And the success of such meetings depends on a well-structured template for the board meeting agenda.

How To Create An OKR Meeting Agenda

 A good OKR template specifies:

• The individual, team, or company it was created for.
• The time duration for which the OKR applies; annual or quarterly.
• A minimum of 3-5 well-defined objectives
• Measurable key results coupled with each outlined objective.

An OKR meeting agenda should be consistent with the meeting's purpose to ensure that employees are well prepared and all discussions stay on the agenda. 

The best way to achieve this is to use an agenda template to build a relevant and efficient board meeting agenda that captures all that should be discussed. 

Here's an ideal and effective template and guide for your annual or quarterly business review agenda:

1. Prepare Before Your Next OKR Meeting

As the famous quote by Benjamin Franklin says, “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.” So, planning is required, whether it’s a physical or a virtual meeting agenda template.

And creating a standing agenda is a significant aspect of planning; the agenda manager, usually the team lead, is in charge of setting the agenda.

An OKR meeting agenda should contain the following:

• Main themes: The strategic plans and obtainable results defined for the team.
• Talking points: These include progress status, blockers, and learnings.
• Support documents: These include surveys, OKR performance results, and feedback.
• Decisions: The essence of the meeting is to arrive at a decision on initiatives for moving forward.
• Resolutions: The decisions reached at the meeting help to refine the company's workflow towards achieving set objectives.

An OKR meeting is a brief physical or virtual check-in where team leads and members assess progress toward key results. Typically, the goal of an OKR meeting is to discuss each objective's status and provide solutions to blockers hindering progress. 

In addition, OKR meetings serve as learning opportunities where team members can discuss strategies that they can use to accelerate the progress of a major result.

2. Allocate Sufficient Time To Discuss 

When companies create OKRs, they often subdivide them into team OKRs, which are further subdivided into individual OKRs. Hence it's essential to have time for in-depth conversations that ascertain if team members are in tune with their OKRs during meetings.

You can ask questions such as;

• Are you on track to achieving your key results?
• What was the extent of the team's progress last week?

Learn: How to set up Assembly's daily agenda in 5 easy steps

3. Be Open To Modifying Or Changing Goals

It's good practice to attach labels to objectives. E.g.: if an objective isn’t making any progress, and there’s no contingency plan, it's given the label 'at risk'. However, if there's a plan to get back on track, the label 'behind' can be applied. 

Labels like these help to resolve and simplify the OKRs, making it easy to spot blockers requiring urgent attention. So, it’s important to share information in meetings that will enable team members know when to change or modify goals and plans.

4. Review OKRs Learnings From The Previous Week.

A great way of assessing OKR status is to automate the process. Using the right tools, you can align, refine and critically examine OKRs across all company levels.

As much as you are eager to move ahead, it’s essential to include a section to review what was gained at the last OKR meeting in the agenda. The team can always learn from the results of previous actions taken.

 You can ask questions about the following:

• The actions previously carried out that helped to advance progress
• If they can be employed again
• The commitment level of team members toward attaining key results

5. Create An Action Plan And Items For The Week.

Plans are good, but execution is better. Effective plan execution is a function of proper coordination.

As stated earlier, the agenda should include a resolution section where you create an action plan. It's good practice to include it in the board meeting minutes.

In an action plan, you assign different items to team members based on insights from the OKR meeting. These action items constitute the priorities for the coming week and foster team oneness; every team member is up to speed with the ins and outs of strategic plans.

Should OKRs Be Annual Or Quarterly?

This typically depends on the company's cadence. 

Quarterly OKRs are best suited for companies whose industry requires extreme agility and dynamism, while an annual OKR is ideal for organizations operating in stable areas of the economy.

It's also possible for a company to use both forms of OKR. Here, the quarterly OKR should align with the annual OKR of the organization. This alignment allows the quarterly OKRs to be used as success metrics, guaranteeing that all initiatives geared towards achieving the company's objective are fruitful.

A great way to align quarterly OKRs with annual OKRs is by having teams come up with objectives (usually 3-5) that align with the overall company's objective and affix the key results to each quarterly objective.

How Do You Run An OKR Meeting?

In an OKR meeting, you:

• Go over the objectives and key results with your employees.
• Brainstorm with team members on objectives to prioritize in the next quarter or the coming year if using an annual OKR.
• Discuss and decide on metrics for measuring progress toward key results; 3 metrics per objective are recommended.
• Agree with the team on specific values to be assigned to the metrics. This ensures the metrics are effective; key results are bounded by time, quantifiable and ambitious.
• Before closing the meeting, reiterate the objectives and key results that will be the team's focus for the next quarter or coming year.

Incorporating OKRs

There's usually no need to reinvent the wheel regarding productivity and goal-setting. OKRs help to simplify that process.

In the end, having an agenda template for an OKR meeting will help you save time and stress. It'll help you dovetail all of your work into a focused meeting to ensure everything you need to get done is accomplished.

While the template above is just an example, it provides a great structure that can be tweaked for your meeting agendas. It'll enable your meetings to run more efficiently, allowing you to get more done without sacrificing quality.

Assembly is an excellent solution for the seamless adoption and implementation of OKRs. Book a free demo today to learn more!