INTRODUCTION TO HOWWE

For too long, we’ve seen brilliant strategies and high-performing teams stumble and fall, not because they lacked ambition or skill, but because they were ill-equipped for the race to execution. It’s as if they were trying to sprint through their strategic plans in socks—socks obvoiusly being a methaphore for the outdated tools like PowerPoint and Excel or management consultants that have dominated this scene for decades.

To solve this, we studied everything there is to know about goal execution, about proactive behaviors and about team commitment. We combined all the knowledge from the latest research with best practices of several thousands of real-world managers and used it to build Howwe: its a combination of a powerful methodology and a digital application that helps you to reach your goals.

And the beauty of it all is that mastery in execution is within your reach, regardless of your role or aspirations. The disciplines ingrained in Howwe are universally applicable. Whether you’re eyeing a personal milestone or plotting your next career leap, you’re in a far better position to make it happen once you’ve absorbed what we’re about to share.

Strategy and execution are deeply intertwined, each vital and neither effective without the other. Their interdependence is at the heart of the methodology we’re about to delve into.

This approach consists of just four components, making it easy to grasp and implement.

The first two components, Most Important Goals and Company Initiatives, form the strategic part of our methodology. They answer the questions of WHAT we aim to achieve and HOW we aim to achieve it.

Most Important Goals is the art of prioritizing. Exceptional execution begins with narrowing the focus—pinpointing what must be achieved above all else. You can’t be everywhere at once, and without this focus, other accomplishments lose their significance. This discipline also delves into how to align goals within a hierarchical structure to maintain focus as you move outward.

Company Initiatives is about enabling your focused goals with the most efficient and effective tactics. There are countless paths to the same destination, but it’s crucial to chart the most direct course. Overloading on initiatives can dilute resources and blur focus. The key is to select a few high-impact initiatives and nurture them with the full force of the organization’s resources.

The third and fourth components, Key Activities and Acceleration Meetings, form the execution part of our methodology. They answer the questions of what we DO in order to focus our efforts and how we sustain change and maintain momentum over time.

Key Activities is about identifying your high-impact actions. It’s based on the principle that a small number of activities will drive the majority of your results. It’s essential to identify these high-leverage activities and focus your efforts there.

Acceleration Meetings is about fostering a culture of commitment and propelling real change. It’s a team process that brings to light the successes and failures, enabling course correction and continuous improvement. It’s about creating a rhythm of accountability and progress, driving the organization towards its Most Important Goals.

Simply put, MIGs are each teams top priority, the goals they need to achieve.

“Focus on less to achieve more” is a guiding principle when deciding team MIGs. By allowing each team to really prioritize what is most important, team efforts are aligned and the team is set up for success. Ideally, each team has no more than 2-3 MIGs.

The journey of deciding an organisations goals starts with the organisations top prioritisation: based on the strategy and business plan, what are the few critical goals for the organisation? The management group is first out to decide these top MIGs for their team and thus set the direction for the entire organisation.

From the management team, goal-setting cascades down in the organisation, each team asking themselves “how can we contribute to the Most Important Goals in the team above us”? For example for the HR department, a way to support a profitability goal set from the top could be to focus on reducing employee churn, and thereby minimising recruitment costs.

Each team decides on 2-3 MIGs that both represent what is most important for them to achieve, but also ensure that these goals are in line with the direction set by the team above them.

The ingredients of a good MIG are aligned with the concept of SMART Goals:

• The MIG has a clear target and timeline
• It can be easily measured, ideally on a monthly basis
• The outcome of the MIG can be influenced by the team itself
• Team MIGs are aligned with MIGs in teams above so that all MIGs essentially reinforce the organisations top MIG

In Howwe, each teams MIGs are shown on their team overview page, including in the management team. This part of the team overview page is accessible to everyone in the organisation, thereby increasing transparency: each employee is able to see what other teams have decided is their top prioritization and to what extent they are reaching these goals. A description is added to to the MIG to tell the story of WHY this is most important and to communicate the business logic of why they chose this as most important.

This might be a good time to check out our library, where you can browse MIG ideas from many different types of industries and teams.

Company Initiatives answer the question of HOW the company will succeed in reaching its top Most Important Goals. They narrow down the many ways progress can be made in reaching the top MIGs to a few focus areas with the greatest impact on the organizations strategy.

In other words, Initiatives are central enablers to succeed with Most Important Goals. 

Company Initiatives tend to be cross-functional in nature. Think of the Initiative of “automation”: there are many different teams involved, from many different departments, doing very different things, but all working on increasing automation across the organisation.

As with Most Important Goals, there first needs to be a process of prioritization and alignment in the management group: Which 3-6 Company Initiatives should the organization focus on first? Once these are decided, teams that can and should contribute are pinpointed. Not all teams will contribute to all Initiatives, but all teams will usually contribute to at least one Initiative.

In order to increase clarity of the Initiatives, and to ensure that these are not just buzz words in a company presentation, these are now broken down into so called sub-Initiatives: For example, in order to fullfil the Initiative “automation”, what sub-Initiative is needed by the customer service department? Maybe a chat bot and some more automated processes for handling first and second line support.  Clearly defined sub-Initiative ensure that the organisation has a concrete path to start working on.

Company Initiatives help the management team to understand and agree on HOW their strategy and thus Most Important Goals will be realised. And they help each department and team better understand how they can contribute to the company strategy and what is expected of them and by when.

In Howwe, the Initiative overviews give stakeholders an overview of how each Initiative is going: which teams are contributing in these cross-functional focus areas, are they meeting their deadlines and to they have a solid plan going forward?

Teams need to identify the Key Activity they need to complete in order to contribute to these Initiatives. More on that in the next chapter.

The real key to achieving goals is to not get caught up in measuring the outcome, to instead focus on the actions – the critical activities that push the goals forward. These are the things we can control and they’re what will determine whether we succeed or not.

Key Activities are the few impactful activities the team needs to focus on to make progress on reaching their most important goals, or to contribute to one or more company Initiatives.

In the Howwe way of working, there is a clear distinction between the “normal” operational work that a team does from day to day, and the improvement work that will help them accelerate to their Most Important Goals. In reality, these will probably overlap somewhat, but keep in mind that Howwe is not for adding a teams day to day operations. Instead it is a solution to help teams make a clear and actionable plan of how to execute their strategy. Teams are therefore asked to identify proactive Key Activities with that focus on strategy and improvement work in mind.

Key Activities can be of two types: Either a Key Activity is recurring, a behavior we want to instill in our team every week, OR Key Activities are instead unique improvement tasks from a business plan. Lets look a bit closer at both, starting with the latter:

Realising the strategy or business plan of a team requires a concrete and actionable plan. In Howwe, this plan translates to Key Activities that are collected in a sprint. In each sprint, teams assign unique tasks to members of the team. Each of these activities has a clear impact on either the team MIGs or it contributes to a Company Initiative.

However, when a Key Activity is repetitive, meaning that recurrent focus is needed on a particular action or behaviour, then weekly Key Activities can be set up instead. In other words: the team member focus on the same activity each week.

How many Key Activities a team needs varies, a guiding principle is that each team member should contribute to the work and thus have either some sprint Key Activities to work with, or a weekly Key Activity.

Check out our library to find examples of Key Activities and MIGs which they support.

In many organizations, the challenge isn’t just setting a goal. It’s about achieving that critical goal while being constantly bombarded by daily tasks and urgencies, what some might call the “whirlwind.” It’s easy to get lost in this whirlwind, to let it sweep away the best-laid plans.

At the core of the Howwe Way of Working is the Acceleration Meeting. Having clear, prioritized goals paves your path forward. Having the correct activities to reach these goals gives you the means to do so. However, you also need to a way to stay focussed on completing these activities, and to leverage the entire team to contribute to the plan. You need a dedicated meeting in which you set the whirlwind aside and only focus on the few impactful and proactive activities that will help you realise your long-term goals and Initiatives. And given the challenging nature of the Key Activities you are trying to achieve, you need this meeting to be weekly or bi-weekly in order to make continuous progress.

The Acceleration Meeting is laser-focused. The Howwe-application helps with a set agenda and an intuitive design. During the Acceleration Meeting, the team leader shares his or her screen with Howwe open and discusses what the team achieved in the previous period. The team then discusses what needs to be done in the coming period and each team member commits to completing new tasks before the next Acceleration Meeting.

That is the heart of this meeting: the commitment phase. It’s where intentions transform into promises. Here, each member articulates their objectives for the upcoming week. These individual promises ensure that the team as a whole allocates sufficient time to the strategic plan and the areas that truly matter.

Many teams decide to integrate this short meeting into their weekly team meeting, others keep it separate. But as part of the Howwe Way of Working, each team uses the Acceleration Meeting to set their daily operations aside and to relentlessly focus on reaching their Most Important Goals or to contribute to prioritised Company Initiatives.

And each team member logs into Howwe at the end of each week to report their achievements, meaning how much of their commitments they actually managed to complete. This can also be done using the Howwe mobile app. In order to enable a quality discussion in the next Acceleration Meeting, it is important that each team member takes the time to write a few lines to describe the details of what they have achieved.

So what is Howwe? Howwe is a solution for growth that enables organsiations and teams to prioritize what their most important goals are, to zoom in on the company Initiatives that will enable reaching these goals, to identify the key activities that need to be completed in order to make progress on these Initiatives and goals, and to actually work with these Key Activities continuously by enabling recurring focus during the Acceleration Meeting. Howwe is a digital application that makes it easy for every team in the organisation to work according to this methodology.

For organizations that are currently onboarding, Howwe coaches have planned the onboarding of each team, so you can be sure that the correct meetings and workshops will be booked in your calendar in time. This course is meant as an introduction to the methodology and to enable more efficient onboarding meetings.

If, instead, your are a new employee in an organisation that has been using Howwe for a while, then hopefully this course serves as an introduction to the methodology and for you to understand what Howwe is all about. Explore our other courses and video tutorials for more content!

Either way, for the Howwe methodology to work, YOU are the last vital key.

• If you are a team member: Engage in the Key Activities assigned to you and report your progress with quality. Contribute with new ideas for Key Activity, get involved in the proactive planning of sprints. See this as an opportunity to contribute to the long term success of your team and company as a whole, and therefore your career.
• If you are a team leader: The Howwe way of working gives you simple and concrete tools to become proactive in your strategic work, to leverage the entire team in improvement work and to create a simple but effective structure both for how to execute the Key Activities you identify, but also throughout the year of how to plan your business. Use the Howwe coaches available to you to find a structure that works for you and your team, and use the resources in Howwe Academy to become an expert in sprints and company Initiatives.