Panasonic Industrial Devices Europe GmbH, headquartered in Lüneburg, Germany, has supplied devices and solutions for applications in the automotive, industrial, and energy sectors for over 25 years. Factories for medium and high-volume production are located in Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
As a comprehensive solution provider, the company offers various services, including research, technical and conceptual support, development, design, and production from a single source. The product portfolio includes standard products and individual solutions.
Challenges and Change Requests
The main change request was to transform abstract ideas and beautiful words in strategy into real actions. Our team knew that often, even the most beautiful strategies presented on slides remain only on paper, far from reality. Therefore, our main goal was to turn the strategy into a clear, specific, and measurable list of objectives. Objectives that would demonstrate to everyone in the company what the company aims to achieve, in what timeframe, and how it will measure it. Objectives that could be linked to key initiatives and projects, thereby building a bridge between tactics and strategy.
There were also two additional requests. Firstly, the creation of the so-called OKR cycle, which would define, align, track, and evaluate OKRs periodically. And secondly, to set up tools for managing OKRs.
As a tool for managing OKRs, the company chose Oboard, which integrates with Jira and allows for easy linking of initiatives and projects to relevant key results and objectives.
Why choose OKR?
Explore why the OKR goal-setting framework was selected to address these requests. Currently, OKR is one of the most popular goal-setting frameworks globally, and this is precisely due to qualities such as:
- Clarity and Focus in Goal Formulation: OKR enables clear and focused goal formulation, allowing companies to set ambitious yet realistic goals with measurable key indicators.
- Enhanced Employee Engagement and Motivation: OKR contributes to increased employee engagement and motivation, as employees have the opportunity to see how their core projects are linked to strategic goals and how they impact the overall success of the company.
- Improved Transparency and Communication: OKR fosters better transparency and communication within the company. Since strategic goals are accessible to everyone and are measurable, employees can also track progress.
How did we work on implementing OKR?
First, it was essential to align on what OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is, how OKR differs from KPI, and what is crucial in building a goal-setting culture. We started with a series of workshops for the Top Management Team. During these workshops, decisions were made for the future goal-setting culture in the company. For example, setting a rule on the number of goals and key results, so there is a focus; on defining key results aimed at outcomes (value) rather than outputs (quantity). The implementation of OKR was planned at the top team level and the managers of key departments. The initial goal was to work through the OKR process at the top management level, allowing leaders to become role models in the goal-setting culture and consider future expansion at the team level.
After the training, we focused on formulating long-term strategic goals through OKRs. It was crucial to adhere to decisions about outcomes, find the right formulation of goals and the best key results, discuss why these goals, and not others, are important now, discuss the level of ambition, and check consistency with strategic directions.
Once we formulated the strategy as long-term OKRs, we began working on the toolkit. The Oboard tool greatly simplified our task, providing an easy and effective way to add and display goals for different strategic directions, teams, and timeframes, and defining responsible parties for each key result. Oboard also allowed the creation of dashboards to track progress and integration with Confluence, where a page with all information about working with OKR in the company was created. Oboard also allowed attaching initiatives to the corresponding key results, thus building a bridge between tactics and strategy.
Results
Our collaboration has led to significant developments in the goal-setting culture, including:
- Definition of the company's strategic long-term goals (for 3 years and 1 year) in the OKR format.
- Increased understanding of the OKR framework through the training for top management and key employees.
- Configuration of the Oboard tool, which simplified the management, evaluation, and monitoring of OKRs. This tool also helps connect tactical tasks in Jira and strategic goals.
- Implement the OKR cycle for effective tracking and evaluation of OKRs in the upcoming quarters.
What's Next / Conclusions
The company's president informed employees that the OKR methodology has become the primary approach in goal setting and reflecting strategic plans. The leadership team sets an example for others by demonstrating a serious commitment to OKRs. During weekly board meetings, they analyze progress toward strategic goals and decide how to address issues in the "red zone." Currently, the company is undergoing significant changes in business directions, and OKRs help them better understand what needs to be changed and how they will measure success.
We are confident that the company will successfully implement its strategy in action, and soon the entire team will be using OKRs. OKRs specifically assist in transitioning from words to real actions!
