Woolman's story is an example of how strategic change and process development can gain significant support from the right tools. In this customer story, Silja Teittinen, Woolman's Head of Ellis SaaS Business, talks about using Topaasia as part of Woolman's OKR cycles.
When Woolman began building its new strategy, it was clear that an effective way was needed to ensure that strategic goals turned into concrete actions in the teams' everyday work. The chosen solution was the OKR model (Objectives and Key Results), which had previously been used in some teams, but without a unified approach. Topaasia offers teams a unified way to turn the OKR model into everyday development actions that suit them.
Renewing the strategy with the OKR model
Last autumn, Woolman began drawing up its new strategy. Reorganising the teams around customer accounts required implementing the strategy at all levels, and it was precisely at this stage that the adoption of the OKR model took on a central role. "We thought the OKR model could be a bottom-up, top-down method suited to our culture. The first OKR cycle was piloted in one of Woolman's business units, where the aim was to ensure that the teams' own objectives and key results were linked to the company's strategy", Silja says.How to run the OKR process systematically across different business areas and teams?
When Woolman expanded the OKR model to all four of its business units, the question arose of how the process could be carried out even more efficiently and systematically. At that point, Topaasia was brought in as a tool that made it possible to implement the strategy in the teams more smoothly. Silja explains how Topaasia helps make the key areas of the strategy concrete, allowing the teams to focus on the essentials and progress more purposefully towards their goals: Instead of starting from a completely blank slate, asking "What should we focus on now?" and holding long discussion sessions about the direction of the strategy and the team's goals, with Topaasia we have adopted ready-made topics, in other words decks, that are based directly on Woolman's strategy and business. Before their own OKR planning, each team was also able to supplement and add their own views to these decks. This way, the first stage of OKR planning does not start entirely from zero: we already have cards containing the most important matters from the strategy's point of view. The teams can update these cards together and choose the topics most relevant to them. The end result is a comprehensive collection of cards and topics that are meaningful and prepared specifically for the needs of each business.Topaasia enables more efficient OKR cycles
Using Topaasia proved to be considerably faster and clearer at Woolman compared with previous methods. In earlier OKR cycles, teams needed extensive strategy briefings and additional Q&A sessions to ensure understanding. According to Silja, Topaasia is much less laborious, but at the same time a clearer and faster way to do strategy work than other approaches. "With Topaasia, strategic topics are handled more efficiently, and the teams got a clear framework for their discussions. Each team was able to supplement and modify the pre-prepared cards in Topaasia themselves, which increases commitment and relevance from the teams' point of view", Silja says, and sums up what she sees as Topaasia's greatest benefit in supporting the OKR model: "Running OKRs with Topaasia steers the company-level OKR discussion of all the teams, and also of the business owners, in the right direction. This helps the teams get straight to the point and choose the most important goals without time being wasted on unnecessary deliberation. Topaasia makes the process smoother and ensures that all choices are strategically meaningful, while the teams retain decision-making power over their own priorities." According to Silja, the whole practical implementation went in four stages, like this: 1) First, together with the CEO, we went through the strategy again and picked out all the company-level goals. There we chose things whose implementation comes about in such a way that no one is at least one hundred percent responsible for it. There is always something that requires development between teams or business areas, or that has no directly responsible team. 2) We played the first round with that deck together with the business owners of all the teams. From it, we chose the most important themes drawn from the topics related to all four businesses and from the strategy, the things that should be developed at company level at Woolman. Topics emerged that would need to be developed so that cooperation between several teams and business areas, as well as everyday routine work, would run more smoothly. These became the topics of Woolman's company-level OKRs. 3) After the first round, we formed corresponding game decks for each business area. The CEO, myself and each business owner held a separate meeting in which we went through the deck's topics from the strategy for each business, and the business owners added cards that are now current topics. 4) In that way, we made each business its own deck, which is the deck the teams play with. So we built Woolman's company-level deck and a deck of its own for each business. In addition, the sales team and HR also got their own game decks.Results and lessons learned
Topaasia helped Woolman create a unified way of running the OKR model in all teams, while ensuring that the teams' choices were in line with the company's strategic goals. This reduced sprawl and enabled the teams to focus on the right things. The process brought flexibility and clarity, and at the same time the teams effectively learned how to use the new OKR model."In Woolman's case, Topaasia proved to be a tool that makes strategic choices clearer and ensures that choices are made systematically and for the right reasons. This leads to better results and more effective teamwork." -Silja TeittinenSilja feels that Topaasia significantly helps in choosing the right topics for the OKR process, which is critical, as wrong choices can lead to months of ineffective work. It brings a unified way of working to all teams and ensures that goals are in line with the company's strategy. Topaasia clarifies team discussions, speeds up topic selection and steers teams towards concrete goals. "In addition, it supports the adoption of the OKR model, which is especially important if the teams are still practising the use of this way of working", Silja sums up. Woolman's experience shows that Topaasia is an excellent tool for companies that want to implement the OKR model effectively and consistently. According to Silja, when adopting Topaasia it is important to ensure that the decks contain topics relevant to the teams and that the teams have the opportunity to add their own topics to the deck. It is also good for the teams to understand the background of the strategy. It is worth starting the process as a pilot and developing it based on the teams' experiences. This approach guarantees that the process becomes flexible and well suited to the company.
Thank you Silja and Woolman!
Want to hear more? Book a Topaasia demo from the calendar Read about BocoIP's experiences of using Topaasia in support of OKRs Try Topaasia free for 30 days Woolman