Two years with the "on one page" tool in Elaway
The value of everyone in Elaway knowing where we plan to go, how we plan to get there, and how we measure progress is high. In Elaway, we have been using the “on one page” management planning tool for almost two years, and I firmly believe that this is the main contributing factor to the fact that when we surveyed our colleagues, we scored 4.41 out of 5 on the question “I understand the company`s business goals.” I have never seen such high scores on similar surveys in companies I have worked in previously.
How the “on one-page” tool is built and why I love it
When we built this model, we did not reinvent the wheel, but we took the bits and pieces we know work for short-term planning and long-term planning and combined them into one. So, the model is more or less a hybrid of a traditional OKR (objectives and key results) setup with a Hoshin model on top, finished with a sprinkle of Schibsted, Otovo, and Alan Mulally planning best practices.
The main benefits of the “on one page”:
It forces the management group to summarize all its plans. The model forces the management group to summarize long (2-3 years), medium (12 months), and short-term (3-6 months) plans onto one page. Making it easy to digest, understand, and align with. Let’s say that marketing plans its next six months’ OKRs. It’s easy for marketing to understand if what they are planning is helping the company reach its 12-month OKRs.
Its forces measurement. The model forces measurement of progress on all plans, given that you are not allowed to add visions, goals, or objectives that are not measurable. That leads to fewer buzzwords and more precise language that is easy to understand.
It forces consistent management communication. When communicating plans in Elaway, we look at the same document repeatedly. That means that our colleagues do not have to spend time decoding the model, and they always know where to look to understand whether we are progressing.
Example of how the tool would look in Netflix in 2012:
What we have learned so far using it for 24 months in Elaway
Right now (January 2024), we are planning H1 2024. We will continue using the “on one page” tool but implement the following learnings.
Repetition works, but it needs to be shuffled.
Every second week, the extended management group in Elaway meets to understand if we are progressing toward our goals and objectives. Every meeting started with the CEO reading through our long-term plans and strategy. Repetition works, and all members of the extended management group now know these parts by heart. But something such as repeatedly hearing the same message with the same voice gets tiring, so we have started shuffling the responsibility of reading the long-term plans out loud. Small change, but effective.
Be clear, not clever - Use understandable language and be as short as possible.
Every second week, half of the questions in the extended management group have been related to “What does this objective/key result” actually mean? That tells us we must use clear and understandable language in the model. If an outsider cannot read and understand an objective without asking questions, it is unclear and understandable enough.
Critical OKRs only
If an objective is not critical to the company's success in the next 6-12 months, it should not be part of the “on one-page” management planning model. At the management level, critical is all that matters, and that helps management keep focus on what matters.
Key Results should all be proxy key results.
When setting key results to achieve progress on an objective, you should look for the proxy key results, meaning finding the one key result that pushes all other relevant metrics towards the overall goal.
Key Results should be as isolated as possible.
Several times during the last 12 months, some managers have ended up in situations where decisions made by their peers have affected their key results. When that happens, the manager loses control over their domain, which is never good.
Key result “targets” can be a “running average” but never a snapshot unless it’s a cumulative target.
The shorter the “running average,” the more challenging. It could look like you are progressing towards the objective one month; you are way off the next month. Ensure your target is as far from a “snapshot” of the situation.
Planning the next period always takes longer than planned.
In Elaway, we have tended to set one month to plan for the next 6-12 months. Experience so far tells us that we need to start earlier. Mainly because in a scaleup like Elaway, the organization changes so much in six months that the people involved in planning and the teams and departments affected are very different from the last time we planned. Hence, we must consider training management colleagues and the general planning fallacy.
Want to try the “on one page” tool?
Ping me on Linkedin or send me an e-mail, and I'll send you the “on one page” tool template.
