Cansel Sörgens
Journey to your goals
My Services
My OKR approach is based on Agile values and principles.
💎 I value and promote
- Business Agility through focus and evolving strategy
- Customer Centricity through shift from Output to Outcome
- Aligned Autonomy through shared vision and goals
- Motivation through empowerment & collaboration
- Innovation through psychological safety
🚩 I raise red flag against
- Unlimited OKR
- Output OKR
- Top Down cascaded “Must Do” OKR
- OKR Silos
- OKR for everything and everyone
- Individual OKR
- Linking OKR to compensation or performance
My individualised OKR Coaching Approach
Getting started
At this stage we build the foundation of OKRs with your Upper Management and Leadership Team. In different workshops (1-2 days) we’ll settle a common OKR understanding, find out which problems do you want to solve with OKR. If you already apply OKR, I’ll audit your current OKR system and consult you how to move on to the next level. “Is it going to be shared OKR or team based OKR?” “How do we do the alignment?” “How long is a cycle?” We’ll find answers to these questions and design the OKR Architecture that fit your organisation.
If needed, we’ll organise additional workshops to develop a/o review your vision and strategy that are indispensable for the future of OKR. Also we can have special workshops for your Leadership team to create awareness about their changing role within OKR framework.
OKR Cycle
The first 1-3 OKR Cycles need professional coaching till you learned and institutionalised the OKR Framework.
I moderate and facilitate the workshops and will help you to identify your strategic focus and Annual Goals. After that, in OKR Planning workshops we’ll sit down with the teams and identify the OKR that will move you closer to those strategic goals. During the cycle I’ll help you to set up a check-in ritual and at the end of the cycle we’ll reflect on what happened, what worked well, what not, in order to learn from the past and get better.
OKR Know-How
In order to sustain the OKR program long after I’m gone, I recommend to build in-house knowledge. I offer 2-3 days Training for the future OKR Agents and OKR Process Owners of your organisation, who can support OKR teams and improve the OKR Process. Also, I offer brief OKR Intro Sessions for all employees involved in the OKR process. Once you have a number of OKR Agents, it makes sense to organise workshops regularly with this Community of Practice to address questions, learn from each other and have some advanced practices.
If you are interested and want to know more, please contact me for a 30 min. call.
What differs my approach from others?
🚩 Stop Unlimited OKR: One of the top reasons, why people start with OKR is to stay focused. The best way to set focus is to limit your OKRs (1, 2 or max. 3 Objectives and 3 Key Results per Objective) and the work in process.
🚩 Stop Output OKR: Outcome over Output. Not the things you do (output) are important but the change you create (outcome).
🚩 Stop Top Down cascaded “Must Do” OKR: You want to use the potential of your people, right? That’s why you hired them, because you believe they are the best for the job, right? So, trust and let them do it! While leadership set the strategic focus and align everyone with a shared vision, the teams think of best solutions.
🚩 Stop OKR Silos: Value Stream OKR instead of Org Chart based OKR. Spend your time in creating value instead of long alignment meetings. If you want to create an end-to-end value for your customers and stakeholders you need a cross functional team who works together.
🚩 Stop OKR for everyone and everything: OKR is a framework to execute a strategy, to collect data and pivot accordingly.There are many ways proven to be good to manage repeating work and business as usual, which are way easier to apply than OKR. So why use OKR for daily business? If you want to automatise or improve part of your daily business, so that you have more time for strategic work, then you can write OKR accordingly but not to manage your usual daily business.
🚩 Stop Individual OKR: In which world can one individual in an organisation execute the strategy on their own? So why the need of individual OKR? Besides, in a conflict of priorities, people will choose their own individual goals over team’s goals. If you’re a solo-entrepreneur or go through a personal development than you might have your own OKR, but this is a different story.
🚩 Stop linking OKR to compensation or performance: If you judge or praise a person based on their goal results they’re going to set goals they can definitely reach. It’s called sandbagging. Besides, it is scientifically proven that knowledge workers perform worse when their work is linked to a bonus. All what knowledge workers need is to be motivated intrinsically.
OKR Deployment
- Measure the success of OKR Implementation: First of all ask yourself why you need OKR and which problems you want to solve with OKR? Measure if and how OKR help you. Define what OKR should improve and measure the outcomes of the OKR implementation.
- Invitation Based Change: Implementing OKR in your organisation is a big change that requires shifting current ways of working. I prefer and recommend an invitation based change. I follow the Law of Diffusion of Innovation and start working with early adapters and let it grow organically.
- OKR Architecture: Is it going to be functional (vertical) OKR or Value Stream (horizontal) OKR? The architecture you choose during this stage will influence strongly the success of the OKR implementation. Therefore I strongly recommend to involve an OKR expert who can help you to ask the right questions.
OKR Training
- In-house OKR Trainings: Every organisation has different needs which I consider when I design the in-house OKR trainings.
- Individualised per level & role: The content in my trainings vary depending on the roles and levels of the participants. While the leadership team might need impulses about modern leadership, product owners might need to know how to combine OKR with Scrum. Also it differs if you’re going to support a team as OKR Coach or if you’re going to implement for the whole organisation.
- Online: The location of the organisation or the teams shouldn’t be hindering them to get the best training and coaching possible. With the right set up online trainings can be even more productive. Besides, I believe everyone should have the freedom to choose the environment they feel comfortable in to work and learn. Therefore I offer my trainings, workshops and coaching online.
OKR Coaching
- Manage the system, not the people: Aim of my OKR coaching is to create an environment that enable teams to work on outcomes aligned and autonomously.
- Growth Mindset: I moved 15 times (so far) and started a new life in new cities and countries. I had to leave my comfort zone many times. Only thing that kept me moving was the bigger picture in my mind. When I see that teams think they got stuck I remind them of the bigger picture and help them to move into the learning and growth zones.
- Systemic Coaching: As a coach I won’t tell you what to do but guide you to find out what’s best for you to do. My role is to ask the right questions to open and deepen the conversation in order to activate the creativity of the people to find the best solutions.
OKR Facilitation
- Collaboration & Participative: OKR Events such as OKR Planning , OKR Review, OKR Retros require a culture of collaboration and participation. As a big fan of Liberating Structures I use its principles in my facilitation to enable an environment where everyone (both introverts and extroverts) can collaborate and participate, no matter which hierarchical level they belong to.
- Online Facilitation: Trainings, Workshops, Meetings can be dull. Too many tools and too much time spent in front of a monitor can be overwhelming and tiring. Also they often lack social interactions. I design my trainings and workshops in a way that the participants have more than enough possibilities to interact with each other so that the time we spend in front of the monitor becomes very lively and not exhausting.
- Gamification: Sometimes the most effective way of learning is playing. Simulating the principles of a new method or framework with help of playful elements can have a big impact in long term.
My Portfolio Beyond OKR
OKR is not a silver bullet. Before and after setting OKR there are many aspects that affect your OKR or get affected by OKR. Thanks to my 13 years of work experience I have a portfolio of methods and frameworks I’ve practical experience with to apply depending on the situation.
One of the most relevant part of the OKR puzzle is the vision and strategy. If there is no North Star, the organisation will never be aligned no matter how good you are at OKR. And having your North Star defined won’t help alone because you’ll need a strategy how to get there. Therefore an OKR coach needs to be able to help you with defining your vision and strategy before setting OKR.
- Golden Circle
- Business Model Canvas
- Value Proposition Canvas
- Strategic Roadmap
- (Wardley Mapping)
Did you know that the top 1 reason why startups fail is because there is no market need for the product they develop. As part of OKR’s nature you’ll work in shorter iterations instead of yearly plans which enables an evolving strategy thanks to the shorter feedback loops which are necessary to become customer centric.
- Lean Startup
- Customer Journey
- Value Stream
- OKR & Scrum/Kanban
Leadership plays a huge role in any change and transformation. In the modern age of knowledge workers the role of leadership has changed from telling people what the solution is to projecting what’s there to solve.
- Agile Leadership
- Flight Levels
- Management 3.0
- Team Development
- Kanban Portfolio M.
I believe the organisations of the future will be the ones that are able to adapt themselves to their surroundings like an octopus. In my OKR coaching I help you focus on your business agility as a whole organisation.
- Agile / Lean Change
- Agile HR
- Retrospectives
- Working Out Loud
Participative collaboration require a facilitation that enables an environment where everyone (both introverts and extroverts) can collaborate and participate, no matter which hierarchical level they belong to.
- Liberating Structures
- Remote Workshops
- Gamification
- Open Space
Cansel Sörgens 