Management Tools: Quarterly Plans

Quarterly plans are important to any leader who’s hoping to have long-term success. Many leaders put a lot of effort into yearly plans but although, long term objectives are important, the most important part to get right is quarterly plans and short-term objectives.

Weekdone’s Quarterly OKRs (Objectives and key results) are a good tool for this sort of strategic planing.

Making quarterly plans

We believe in the integration of weekly reporting and quarterly plans and connecting our daily tasks to short term objectives.

Why should you have quarterly plans?

Measurable quarterly plans make sure your employees and teams stay on track and don’t lose sight of the objectives.

It’s easy to ignore yearly plans („I still have 11 months to do it. I’ll start it next month“) but quarterly plans feel more urgent.

Objectives and key results.

The easiest way to set quarterly plans company-wide is using Weekdone OKR software

OKRs consist of a list of objectives. Each objective usually has 3-4 measurable key results.

Implemented initially in 1970s by the President of Intel Andy Grove, it later spread across many tech companies. Nowadays it’s used by teams and whole companies from SMEs to Fortune 500.

Google, LinkedIn, Intel, Zynga, Sears, Oracle and Twitter are just some well-known OKR users who love them.
Take a look at this infographic for more about OKR history, users, quotes, best practices and examples.

Hierarchical objectives.

Our belief is that to get all the employees in your company working together, they should all share an aligned hierarchical tree of objectives and key results.

The more visible, transparent and up to date on everyday progress it is, the better it works. Only if teams do what’s best for the whole company, and employees do what’s best for the team based on that, true success arises.

Whatever methodology for reporting you choose, quarterly planning is a very important part of a leader’s or manager’s toolbox.

So choose wisely and give Weekdone a try at making your life easier