In this quick guide I'm going to deep dive into the OKR Mid-Cycle Review Process. This is one of the most critical team meetings for the quarter as it is your opportunity to celebrate wins, remove your biggest blocker and create a detailed plan to close strong.
The mid-cycle review is a vital part of keeping your OKR (Objectives and Key Results) on track. It basically a half time session in sports. It provides a time for the team to step out of the match, and let's them reflect on what’s working, what isn’t, and what steps they're going to take to finish the match strong.
The OKR Mid-Cycle is your opportunity to review how the OKR is going. You're taking time to pause, assess, and recalibrate your efforts to ensure the team is tightly aligned. Not just on the OKR itself, but also the actual intent of the OKR. You'd be surprised how often people loose sight of what the OKR is intending to actually do. By regularly reflecting on and adjusting your OKRs, you maintain the momentum needed to drive performance and success. This ongoing process ensures your objectives remain relevant and challenging, promoting continuous improvement and focus throughout your organization.
As Matt Lowth, the Chief Information Officer of MLC Life Insurance put it, the mid-cycle review is a “Pressure test of progress”. This is where the mid-cycle review comes into its own. We’re able to hold ourselves accountable and solve problems as a team. The mid-cycle review acts as a bearing checkpoint, ensuring we’re still on course.
Understand the Significance of Mid-Cycle Reviews
When I first started with OKR I found that we would start strong at the beginning of a quarter. The trouble was as we came into the end of the quarter, we always seemed to loose our focus.
A big part of the reason I created the mid-cycle was to address this loss of momentum. The other reason was we never seemed to celebrate our wins. Yes, we'd do it once a quarter, but that was never enough. The half way mark seemed like the perfect opportunity to pressure test the plan and bank those wins.
It helps with momentum as it acts as a checkpoint to evaluate progress, identify obstacles, and make adjustments to the plan. It ensures that you're not just blindly following the plan but is actually making meaningful progress. By taking a moment to reflect on your current trajectory, you reassess the original plan and take steps which drive better results.
In these reviews, you assess what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to pivot or double down on strategies. This reflection is super important as it prevents small issues from becoming major roadblocks. Additionally, mid-cycle reviews foster a culture of transparency and accountability, encouraging open communication among team members. This process isn’t just about identifying problems; it’s about finding solutions and aligning your team’s efforts with the overarching goals.
When everyone understands the significance of these reviews, they become a powerful tool for driving success. They empower your team to stay focused, adapt to changing circumstances, and continuously improve their performance. Ultimately, mid-cycle reviews help you steer your organization toward its goals with confidence and clarity.
Why do we need a mid-cycle review?
Maintaining outcome-based execution in a multi-team environment is hard. It’s easy to talk about what we’re going to do, and who’s going to do it. What’s not so easy is keeping teams focused on what the impact of their work should be.
This brings us to the 3 key challenges of outcome-based execution, and how the mid-cycle review helps:
- Maintaining outcome focus: People tend to focus on their to-do list. This is fine, as it’s tangible and actionable. The issue is, we run the risk of losing sight of the why behind it. If we’re not clear on the why then we run the risk of just “tick boxing” our work. The goal becomes completing the work, rather than making an outcome. The mid-cycle review intends to make sure we’re clear on why we’re doing this OKR. Being clear on who it is helping and what needs to be different to consider the goal achievement a success.
- Aligning on outcomes: When you’re anything larger than a small start-up, alignment becomes your major challenge. This largely comes down to the nature of teams focusing on what they can immediately influence. This creates silos where they sub-optimise the work to make their lives easier, possibly at the expense of effective execution across the business. In reality, most material outcomes require teams to work together. They’ll need to collaborate on a set of activities to drive a specific outcome. The mid-cycle review provides a good reflection point to validate teams are working together to drive an outcome. It doesn’t replace effective dependency management, but it does help us join the dots across the business.
- Outcome confidence: Given all of the activities we have underway, are we sure we’re going to achieve or surpass this outcome? The reality is ideas are cheap, but the execution is everything. So the ideas we had to achieve our outcome at the start of the quarter may have sounded great at the time. That’s all for naught if we haven’t driven any meaningful outcomes. The mid-cycle review provides an opportunity for us to pause and think deeply about this.
Underpinning these points is accountability. It’s almost like a naughty word nowadays, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s as much about holding ourselves accountable as it is holding our peers accountable. The mid-cycle review is the perfect time to discuss with each other how we are going. If we’re not making the progress we hoped for, then why not?
Remember we need to facilitate accountability in a psychologically safe manner. It’s about validating our progress because we care!
Who’s involved in the mid-cycle review?
In practice, we find executive teams get the most value out of this session. Here’s why.
Teams working on an OKR who are hosting a weekly confidence score will already be having good robust discussions about their OKR. They’ll have first-hand data and be experimenting on what needs to be done to achieve the OKR. This means the discussion is a lot more continuous at the team level. That is not to say teams shouldn’t do the review, just make sure there is a need first!
While executive teams should be doing a weekly confidence score, they face different challenges due to data and action proximity. Generally, they rely on other teams to execute and probably can’t test and learn at the same pace as frontline teams. Another challenge is the Key Results they work with require activities from many teams to influence an outcome. The executive team needs to be joining the dots to identify where teams may not be collaborating enough or the business has lost sight of the intent behind an Objective or Key Result.
To make mid-cycle review successful, you will want to include more people than just the executive team. The mid-cycle review is an incredible opportunity to get key stakeholders from across the business involved in the strategic execution of the business. These additional stakeholders will provide valuable inputs (including real data) and examples of the work done to date. Remember, it’s not just their job to bring this in, but they can certainly contribute many insights.
Preparing for an OKR Mid-Cycle Review Meeting
With everything going on, preparing for a mid-cycle review meeting can sometimes feel like a chore. The reality is that with the right preparation it can make the OKR Mid-Cycle a game changing session. Without everyone doing some preparation, it'll be a long talk fest with no real impact
Ultimately, effective preparation maximizes the meeting’s impact. By ensuring that everyone knows the purpose and how their contributions matter, I empower my team to make informed decisions that drive progress. When we approach mid-cycle reviews with intention and openness, they become powerful opportunities for growth and collaboration beyond your tracking your weekly checkin.
OKR Mid-Cycle Checklist
Here's a checklist to guide your mid-cycle review:
I go a lot deeper into this in my OKR Mid-Cycle Review Checklist, so make sure you grab if you're running your own Mid-Cycle Review.
Mid-Cycle Review Meeting Agenda
The following is a standard meeting agenda which I use to run are really focused OKR Mid-Cycle Review that allows for lots of discussion and celebration of wins. Just but make sure you adjust it to suit your needs! The key point is when you’re running the session, make sure you stick to time. You’re not going to solve everything in this session, so park topics quickly for future follow-up.
- Introduction - 5 minutes
- Explain session purpose - Clearly explain why we’re hosting the mid-cycle review
- Clarity on the why - Reinforce why we’re using OKR and why the current OKR is important
- Establish psychological safety - We’re validating progress and seeking feedback from our peers with plenty of time to tweak the plan
- Review each Key Result - 40 Minutes
- Key achievements - What have been the key outcomes so far this quarter for this Key Result? Celebrate wins with by thanking specific team members who helped. If there are people or teams not present, make sure your have a follow up action to drop them a thank you too!
- Problem to solve - What's the top problem holding back our progress this quarter on this Key Result?
- Closeout plan - What are the specific steps we need to take to address this problem over the next 6 weeks?
- Next quarter’s OKR (Pre-planning) - Let's get a head start on our vision for the future. To do this, please note down your biggest problems and opportunities to solve. This is big-picture exciting things. I know there are a lot of challenges, but let’s go large! - 10 minutes
- Ideally, use the following format (but don’t worry if you can’t make it work): "If we solve [problem], then we will [outcome]"
- Close & celebrate - What are the actions, decisions and communications? Remember to reflect on and capture the big achievements so far! - 5 minutes
This topics cover the reflection, the wins and the planning for the rest of the quarter. It also gets you thinking about strategy for the quarter to come (this is game changing). The real art of this agenda is keeping to time.
OKR Performance Review
Assessing OKR performance during mid-cycle reviews involves analyzing key metrics and identifying improvement areas. Begin by evaluating your progress against each key result. Are you on track? If not, why? Use data and insights to uncover trends and patterns that may be impacting performance. Look for bottlenecks or challenges that need addressing.
Once you’ve identified areas for improvement, collaborate with your team to brainstorm solutions. This is an opportunity to leverage collective knowledge and experience, ensuring you’re making data-driven decisions that align with your objectives. By thoroughly reviewing performance, you can make informed adjustments that drive success.
Additionally, consider whether your key results are still relevant and impactful. If necessary, refine them to ensure they remain aligned with your overarching goals. This review isn’t about discarding your initial OKRs but refining them to maximize their effectiveness. Ensure your team is aligned with any changes, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment.
After the OKR Mid-Cycle: Re-evaluate and Refresh OKRs
Once you’ve completed your mid-cycle review, it’s time to follow up on any outstanding items and make sure you’ve captured any insights and notes for the future.
- Share all data and other insights from the session with interested stakeholders
- Follow up actions for completion within a week
- Communicate to teams where greater collaboration might be needed to achieve an outcome
- Ensure all ideas for the next cycle are captured.
Depending on the discussion, you may need to refresh your OKRs. Start by assessing whether your current objectives still align with the strategy and strategic problems to solve. This comes back to the intent question we asked during the mid-cycle review. If not, make necessary adjustments. Consider whether your key results are still relevant and impactful, or if they need refinement.
Remember, we're not talking about scrapping your initial OKR. We want to refining them to keep us focused on the outcome as possible. Don't do this in isolation. Make any changes as a team so that we keep that sense of ownership and commitment.
The review may also highlight where a change of plan is needed on the initiatives. Maybe some things are just not making the impact we expected. In this case, change the plan!
If you do make any adjustments, communicate the changes clearly other teams and stakeholders Ensure that everyone understands the reasoning behind the adjustments and what the impact is on them (aim to keep that to a minimum).
Improve Your Mid-Cycle Review Process
Are you already running a Mid-Cycle Review? Fantastic if you are, however you need to keep refining and improving it.
After each review it's a good idea to ask for feedback from your team on how the process can be improved. This creates a culture of continuous improvement and ensures the review process is delivering value.
One of the cornerstones of OKR is we really want to make it safe for people to experiment and challenge how we're doing that. No one likes a one size fits all, so embrace new ideas and approaches that may make your OKR reviews more effective. This will ensure that you're always getting better at OKR and therefore, better able to achieve your OKRs.
If you're looking for some quick wins, explore my OKR Mid-Cycle Review Checklist. This resource offers practical tips and templates to streamline your reviews, making them more efficient and impactful.
Drive Performance Through OKR Mid-Cycle Reviews!
In conclusion, mid-cycle reviews are a powerful tool for driving performance excellence. They provide a structured approach to assessing progress, identifying challenges, and making informed adjustments to your OKRs. By regularly reviewing and refreshing your objectives, you ensure they remain aligned with your organizational goals, driving meaningful results. Improving the process each quarter only males it better and stronger.
My aim with OKR Quickstart is to make this easier and more accessible for all. If you're looking to improve how you use OKR, here's some useful ways you can make your OKR journey easier and more successful:
- Explore our OKR Training Courses (includes FREE training),
- Grab into my resources and templates to kickstart your OKR journey
- Jump on a call with me (Tim Newbold) to discuss the best way to start or check out my OKR Services if you're just exploring.