WorkBoard Announces Coach Certification Program to Help Organizations Launch and Scale OKR Initiatives

Redwood City, CA, September 18, 2018 —   WorkBoard, a pioneer in Enterprise Strategy and Results Management, today announced an OKR Coach Training and Certification Program for individuals tasked with facilitating Objective and Key Results (OKR) initiatives within their own organizations. The training program and certification includes classroom sessions, role playing practice, offline exercises and a final exam designed to provide coaches with the skills to guide their teams to quickly achieve results with OKRs.

OKRs, a methodology for defining, aligning and measuring strategic priorities and success metrics at a rapid cadence, are used by fast-growth startups and large companies alike, as venture capitalist John Doerr describes in his recent book Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs. The popular book shows how the OKR methodology helps companies achieve explosive growth.

“If you don’t have a systematic method to align on business results and measure them, then you’re not aligned on results or achieving them – it’s that simple,” said Deidre Paknad, CEO and Cofounder of WorkBoard. “We started WorkBoard four years ago because we recognized that the most important business process for any company, aligning on business outcomes, was slow, ad hoc and labor intensive when it should be a systematic, data driven way to increase results velocity. The increasing pace of market change compounds the need for faster, more agile ways to iterate and activate strategic priorities. WorkBoard customers use OKRs and our solution to systematically accelerate growth and fully engage teams in faster value creation.”

While the potential to accelerate and improve business results is immense, implementing OKRs often requires teams to learn new habits and new ways of communicating.

Sameera Moinpour, OKR certification instructor and WorkBoard Director of Client Services, who has coached thousands of teams on OKRs says, “Introducing OKRs is a shift from activity to results focus. Most people naturally think about what they need to do, but have less practice thinking about what results and outcomes their work creates or how that aligns with business priorities. Attendees of our program are trained to work with managers and teams to define and align objectives and key results and enable their organizations to achieve faster, consistent success with the OKR technique.”

"The depth, breadth and materials of WorkBoard’s OKR coach training program were excellent preparation for leading internal OKR initiatives and expanded upon my management consulting experience nicely," said Carolin Obernolte, Management Consultant at Deutsche Telekom’s Detecon group, a global management and technology consulting company and WorkBoard customer.

Certified OKR Coaches enable colleagues and customers to effectively:

• Set high integrity objectives and key results.
• Gain true alignment and tie off.
• Shift from an activity habit to a results habit.
• Achieve better results in their first quarter.

Program curriculum and certification will encompass:

• Anatomy of objectives and key results.
• How to facilitate leadership team OKR setting.
• Guiding teams to measuring results vs activity.
• Metrics and key result mastery.
• Enabling young managers to lead strong conversations and set good OKRs.
• Facilitation best practices.
• Managing an OKR program roll out.

Ideal candidates for the OKR Coach Certification Program have strong business acumen, fluency with strategic priorities and the ability to read a P&L or investor presentation. OKR coach skill profiles to help identify potential coaches within an organization can be accessed here, or interested parties can be connected to WorkBoard’s network of coaches by contacting the WorkBoard team.

Course Schedule Fall 2018
October 22-23 in-person classroom session
Certification exam must be completed within 14 days of class work
Redwood City, CA
Class size limited to 12
» Learn More

About WorkBoard
WorkBoard is the pioneer of Enterprise Strategy and Results Management solutions which help organizations to set, measure and execute strategic priorities faster. Company founders, who combined hold 18 patents and two Smithsonian Innovation Awards, created a new solution category when they recognized that market and technology acceleration would require a corresponding acceleration in how companies iterate and activate strategic priorities. WorkBoard already counts IBM, Microsoft, Samsung, 8X8, Catalina, Disys, eSilicon, EDMI, TrendKite, Influitive, and others among its hundreds of customers. For more information, visit www.workboard.com or follow the company on Twitter @WorkBoardInc.

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