How we helped eSky Group master the art of simplicity with OKRs
In the vast landscape of corporate strategy, striking the right balance between ambitions and executable plans is both an art and a science. This is particularly true with the popular Objectives and Key Results, commonly known as OKRs, that are loved for their precision but feared for their complexity.
OKRs promise clarity, alignment, and quantifiable results in achieving strategic goals. Though these attractive frameworks are conceived as tools to streamline success, they often become a cloud of confusion for companies that try to implement them.
What if the secret to mastering OKRs is easier than we think?
Enter eSky Group, a leading global online travel platform owner renowned for enhancing travel experiences from booking to boarding. With operations in over 50 countries, eSky is well known for its future-oriented approach and unwavering commitment to elevating the user experience. Well aware of the power of OKRs to propel teams toward greater heights, the company wholeheartedly embraced the methodology and embarked on the journey of implementing OKRs.
But without a tailored framework in place, its initial efforts led to a bit of turbulence.
This is where we came into the picture and partnered with the eSky team. In a very rewarding collaboration, we helped eSky tackle the challenge with a fast U-turn back to the basics. Keep on reading as we unfold the journey of how the company became a standout example from our portfolio of success stories by quickly mastering the art of simplicity with OKRs.
🧭The challenge: a maze instead of a roadmap.
When eSky Group first approached us, the truth is their goal-setting framework was more of a maze rather than a roadmap. The system was filled with frequent modifications and numerous interdependencies, which made navigating and implementing OKRs across the company’s teams a daunting task.
Zooming out, it made sense why eSky’s first attempt at setting up a new OKR framework ended with complexity. It is a company with a cross-functional structure, numerous objectives, and a can-do attitude. In setting up a system to chart its way towards growth, eSky wanted to reach new heights and be inclusive of every goal and ambition in the organisation.
Overcomplexity is a common pitfall that many companies face with OKRs. An important element about them, as well as strategy in general, is that, even when aiming towards complex and interconnected goals, they must remain simple. This requires an exercise of structure and boundary-setting that is not always easy. So how do you not simply write successful and clear OKRs, but also limit them to the point that they are meaningful and trackable? And what’s the right balance between idealism and realism?
This was the two-fold, joint challenge that we faced. It was not simply about adopting OKRs across the company’s structure, but about adapting and simplifying them to align with its dynamic business environment. In short, in order to soar to new heights, there was a dire need for a landing back to ground zero.
🎯Our Approach: streamlining for the win
Our mission was clear: strip down the complexity and build a goal-setting framework that resonated with eSky's operational needs and cultural dynamics. We set out to establish a clear process and manageable tracker—not a high-tech tool or an imported OKR playbook, but a simple, effective framework, designed to get everyone on the same page.
To do that, we had to immerse ourselves in the current state of the company. We conducted a series of in-depth stakeholder interviews and internal surveys to identify pain points with goal-setting among the company's teams and structures, and we reviewed past attempts at implementing OKRs in deal. This discovery phase revealed that while eSky had set out goals, they weren’t measurable enough and they lacked solid guidelines, making them hard to both track and achieve.
For OKRs to work as a framework, less is always more. Objectives should be qualitative, ambitious and actionable, key results should be quantitative, measurable and difficult but not impossible to achieve. In both cases, they should remain broad and simple, and rarely exceed 5 OKRs per cycle.
eSky Group’s team was fully on board with revisiting and simplifying their approach to OKRs, embracing another essential aspect of change management: simplicity also simply leads to better adoption. It is always better and easier to iterate or add-on a simple framework, than to subtract pieces from a convoluted one. So by focusing on what’s essential and building upon understanding and engagement, eSky was ready to enhance its internal alignment and to set a scalable example for winning OKRs.
🖌️ Redefining the framework: the solution design
There’s a rule that we really believe in REBORRN: there is no problem that you cannot solve if you get the right people in the room, free of distractions, in the right context and with the right attitude. Armed with our newly gathered insights, we planned a two-and-a-half-day design sprint during which we would redefine eSky’s OKR framework and process.
The sprint was held in the outskirts of Krakow, and included team members from a wide range of backgrounds, from eSky’s CEO to product managers. After 60 hours of collaboration, focus and streamlining (and even a walk in the forest) it was no surprise that by the end, it led to the team identifying the key traits of an effective and realistic OKR framework that eSky could apply in a breeze.
Each day had a specific clear agenda and milestone to accomplish:
Day 1 was about immersion and hammering the big picture.
We delved deeply into the findings from our review, identifying the pain points of eSky’s goal-setting framework implementation and summarising general best practices and rules of thumb for inspiration for the way forward. We then used a collective exercise of brainstorming and voting to hammer out the first important decision: what is the purpose of eSky’s OKR framework and what should be its key deployment parameters.
Final outcome from the day: a decision about all key components of the framework (how many, how frequently they are set, how will OKR teams be formed and how aspirational/committed the OKRs will be).
Day 2 was about solution design.
It was time to turn theory and big-picture into practice. After rolling up our sleeves, we made an empathy map outlining the biggest challenges currently faced by various personas, like product owners, business owners, or tech leads. This set the groundwork for an ideation about how to best prioritise goals, keep all eSky teams aligned and ensure transparency and ownership. After lunch, we set out to turn ideas into solutions. With a focused solution-design methodology and several co-creation exercises, the teams agreed on a number of best tools and processes for eSky’s robust goal tracking and iteration.
Final outcome of the day: tangible and defined solutions on how OKRs will be planned and iterated, how teams will be aligned, how OKRs will be tracked, what data will be required, and how the strategy will be communicated.
Day 3 was creation time.
Gathering the inputs from the last two days, it was time to set the plan for success. Much like architects holding blueprints, we transformed the components of our solutions into a strong OKR process. This included actually setting and tracking the OKRs, incorporating various checkpoints throughout the yearly cycle, as well as a closing exercise around how to effectively set future OKRs, making sure we clearly hammer an understanding of the difference between the objectives (what we set to achieve) and the key results (how we get there).
Final outcome of the day: a new OKRs framework, adapted to eSky’s needs.
The design sprint was also reflective of another golden rule when it comes to OKRs: when goals are simply dictated top-down, motivation will be corroded. Collective agreement and alignment are crucial to achieving maximum goal achievement and focus.
And a chance to set goals while also enjoying rare opportunities to connect as a cross-functional team can get you a long way.
🛫 Implementation time, and some lessons about OKRs
After the sprint was done, it was time to set all the proper conditions for OKR take-off, by providing a comprehensive collection of tools and resources. The idea was to finish our goal-setting exercise with a path for smooth adoption of the changes, so that they would be easily embraced at all levels of the organisation. This included everything from a communications plan to guides, handbooks, and organising dedicated training sessions to help the team grasp and embrace the new OKR framework.
Our client quickly shared the news of coming up with a structured and clear approach to setting and prioritising their OKRs. The clarity of the new system allowed for far better adoption and a more focused and measurable direction toward key business objectives. We were happy to find out that results all around were received very positively - in the words of George Raz, a Strategist with eSky Group who worked closely with us in the OKR project, “the outcome was outstanding”.
“REBORRN helped us clarify our needs, identify key stakeholders to be involved, bridge gaps between teams and processes and provide a proven methodology backed by extensive experience”, says Raz, when reflecting back to our collaboration with eSky. “The framework was actionable, complete with rituals and tools that gave our teams clear priorities and measurable success metrics. It had a lasting impact on our alignment and performance.”
“What set the REBORRN team apart was their human approach—they took the extra mile to understand our unique context rather than applying a one-size-fits-all solution. They do a great job at bringing clarity to complexity.”
eSky’s proactiveness and willingness to redesign its OKR framework can be an inspiration for other teams facing similar challenges. One of the reasons we share this case study is exactly because we know this is a common challenge for many companies, and we believe in a culture of openness and candor to address it.
A goal-setting framework is a daunting process and requires nothing short of an ambitious and inclusive attitude. The world of goal-setting is indeed inherently complex. But if anything, this case highlights the importance of starting simple and bold, and being open to iterating processes along the way. Once you beat complexity and convolution in OKRs, they can truly unlock the path of fostering a unified and goal-driven organisation.
Here are four additional key learnings about OKRs, grasped from this journey with rethinking eSky’s framework and beyond:
Always adapt to your company’s needs. No matter the popularity, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Maybe OKRs are not even the best framework for your organisation. It is much better to approach the mission of goal-setting not by getting stuck on a catchy buzzword or a best practice, but by really thinking about the systems and processes that best suit your company’s needs.
Stay broad: OKRs are much more effective if you start at a high conceptual level, as opposed to digging down to every single individual case of a goal or milestone you want to hit. This allows for both cross-functionality and alignment, as well as iterations, which are essential in goal-setting.
Balance ambition with realism: OKRs should be aspirational, and they should set difficult targets. But they should also be actionable and attainable. If you aim for the stars you must also pave the traceable path towards getting there.
Keep it simple! (no surprises here): Focused goal setting is important regardless of the framework you use. This can only work if you start with the basics. Start simple and keep building up from there.
 | A guest post by
|