Context

Since the OKR setting is already done by the managers or team leaders, they have a deep context about the OKR that they are working towards. So hardly any context setting is needed. This is a pure accountability driving & unblocking meeting.

It is also preferred if the participants of the Biz Review pre-read the content before the meeting starts as they can discuss challenges rather than “Read-out updates”.

Some organizations prefer detailed written notes that are narrative rather than bullet points. These are also “pre-read” in the first 10-15 mins of the meeting to avoid the “Presentation mode”.

This works mostly like a document (inspired by Amazon’s 6-pager) vs. a bullet-pointed presentation. A lot of leading organizations have moved from presentations to pre-read notes as they find it a more productive use of their time.

When to schedule

All the low-level teams start in the first week of every month. Between 3rd - 7th all the low-level teams should have completed their reviews. By the 2nd week of the month, it should have bubbled up to the top level and reviews should be closed.

How often to schedule

Once a month to discuss each month's updates
Once a Quarter to review the quarterly updates

If your business hasn’t done any Biz Review meetings at all previously - prefer to start with QBRs and once you get the hang of it, start monthly reviews.

Audience

Ideally, the owners of the OKRs, their peers and their managers should be part of these meetings. It is mostly accountability, course correction and unblocking that happens in such meetings.

Eg: if it is a product QBR/MBR, the product manager and engineering manager would sit with their Director of Product and Director of Engineering who themselves are partners.

What is not discussed?

These are the topics to avoid in your MBR/QBR to serve the purpose of the meeting right. If you feel the meeting is going in the below written direction - call out and schedule another meeting for it.

Product brainstorming, ideas, feedback
- Discussing the details of an upcoming design, management feedback on a recent release, and ideas on the products - these go into too much detail and should be avoided in this meeting.
OKR Planning & Estimation
- Since this is a tracking meeting, estimation and planning should be out of this meeting.
- Occasionally, the OKRs can be corrected but if it feels like it takes the entire meeting, cancel this and managers should help their teams draft out separately.

What is the best outcome of this meeting?

Leaders have complete clarity on where exactly the team is with their goals set and the projections for the upcoming months/quarters.
Risks are called out that stop them from achieving them and resource planning is done to bring them back on track.
Critical Action Items are noted down to track open items from the meeting.
Badly written OKRs are called out and a new meeting is scheduled to redraft the OKRs.

Format & Template

Here are the sections that should be there in your template for this meeting. Peoplebox would allow you to set this format and run this through.

Action Items (Peoplebox AI section)
1. Most meetings start with follow-up conversations from the previous meeting and their closure.
2. This helps accountability of any open context.
3. As the meeting progresses - keep adding action items.
Highlights / Executive Summary (Text Section)
1. This contains the Hits & Misses of the last time period
2. Talk about in points and detail them out with numbers.
OKR Summary along with Projects (Peoplebox OKR section)
1. This usually forms the core of the meeting. You’d be spending at least 50% of your meeting in this section.
2. Go through each Objective and talk about the updates, status and progress of each of the Key Results.
3. Share the projections of how numbers might change based on the current situation.
4. View previous updates or dig deeper into projects where needed
5. Talk about the Key projects that are helping to drive these key results.
  1. Talk about release dates, status, roll-out plan etc
Health Metrics / KPI Update (Peoplebox KPI section)
1. Your business would have key metrics that are a north star. You’d usually have a lot of metrics here as this is the superset.
2. You will be tracking them regularly, but not necessarily working to move these numbers.
3. These numbers represent the health of the business.
4. Add Graphs, Tables and talk about the delta
Talking Points / Key Asks / Deep Dive (Text section)
1. Talk about any dependencies that you want from management in this meeting.
2. Deep dive into any specific product or topic.
3. Hiring budgets - talk about potential people that you need to get your task done.
4. Prioritization/focus - talk about dropping few KRs, Objectives to focus and achieve.
5. Cross-team priorities - talk about priorities about the other team that you are dependent on that you would want to be changed to ensure you can collaboratively achieve goals together.
Product Updates / Recent Releases (Peoplebox Project/Roadmap section)
1. Zp through this fast, it would add more context to the meeting.
2. Screenshots of the recent releases.
3. Add notes on the purpose of the release.
4. Impact & Release metrics - how did the project positively impact the customers?
Customer Anecdotes (Text section)
1. Stories and anecdotes from customers.
2. Emphasize on interesting insights that you received from the recent customer meetings.
3. Talk about how customers perceived the recent project updates and how it impacted them.
Plan for the upcoming month (Text section)
1. The aim of this section is to give clarity to the leaders as to what should they expect next month.
2. What are the planned targets for the upcoming month
3. What projects are planned
4. Any major events that are planned

Quarterly & Monthly Reviews Templates (QBRs, MBRs)