How LichtBlick was able to improve its strategic alignment and goal achievement with OKR and Workpath

Executive summary

Improved strategic alignment and goal achievement through OKRs and Workpath

With the implementation of OKRs and Workpath, LichtBlick wanted to standardize its strategic processes to improve alignment, transparency, focus and accountability.

With Workpath's help, the framework was rolled out across the organization within six months. This strategic realignment has led to improvements in the targeted areas.

About LichtBlick

"Energy from another star: the sun.”

900 employees | 1.7 million people served | 1.37 billion euros in revenue

LichtBlick is the leading green energy provider in Germany. The company, which is part of the Dutch energy transition pioneer Eneco, offers its customers climate-neutral energy solutions for at home and on the move.

LichtBlick is driving the future of energy by investing in innovative technologies and services such as the StromWallet, which networks decentralized energy sources. With revenues in the billions, the company underscores its commitment to actively shaping the energy transition and pursuing the goal of climate neutrality.

The challenge

Lack of strategic alignment and transparency

Before implementing a unified strategy execution process, LichtBlick faced several challenges that hindered its ability to efficiently achieve its goals:

Alignment

Communication between departments was often unstructured and infrequent. As a result, the need for support between teams was not communicated in a timely manner, leading to blockages due to lack of capacity.

Transparency & Communication

A rudimentary strategy and a lack of clarity about current priorities often left employees in the dark about the company's goals. As a result, teams often did not know how their projects could contribute to the company's success.

Lack of focus

A large number of priorities were often pursued simultaneously or changed in a short period of time. This made it difficult to focus on the most important priorities.

Accountability

There was a lack of clear responsibility and accountability for achieving goals and implementing actions. As a result, projects were often not completed or lost sight of.

In the past, projects were often started without considering which teams would be needed and whether they would be able to provide support. This led to repeated stalls because there were no agreements and the required teams did not have free capacity.

Thomas Rahn, OKR Lead at LichtBlick

Before OKR or Workpath, LichtBlick worked on strategy on an ad hoc basis. There was no framework to address the challenges in a structured way. A committee met once a year and developed annual goals. In the course of the year, LichtBlick often lost sight of these goals, as further communication within the company did not consistently refer to them. In addition, there was a lack of uniform cascading and coordination within the teams in order to implement them in a structured manner.

The solution

The implementation of an effective strategy execution process at LichtBlick

The implementation began in the IT department, which initially experimented with Kanban. In 2018, the department then introduced OKR, initially on a trial basis for two quarters, and achieved positive results.

However, this approach was initially met with reservations in other departments, as IT's OKR-centric priorities led to requests from other departments being deprioritized and thus blocked. This highlighted the need for a company-wide implementation of the framework.  Eventually, the conviction of some managers about the benefits of OKRs led to a company-wide rollout in the summer of 2019.

The decision for Workpath

On the IT side, it became clear during the testing phase that the use of specialized tools was necessary for a successful and scalable implementation. PowerPoint was used, but it was too maintenance-intensive and non-transparent. Different versions with different update statuses made the OKR process much more difficult. It was decided to use Workpath from the start to ensure the best possible communication and transparency.

OKR-Rollout

The decision in favor of the OKRs was made in June 2019, and LichtBlick started with half of all teams in September of the same year. All teams were then integrated in the following quarter. LichtBlick's approach to the company-wide OKR rollout was as follows:

In general, the framework was enthusiastically adopted by the teams as it helped them recognize their contribution to the strategy and improved communication and transparency around the issue.

The result

Successes at LichtBlick

After almost 4 years with OKR and Workpath, LichtBlick has seen significant improvements in previously challenging areas.

Alignment

LichtBlick has made great strides in alignment, both vertically and horizontally. Using Workpath's Contribution Request feature, teams can now request support from other departments in advance. This allows them to identify bottlenecks early on and determine whether a project should be started at all given the current capacity utilization. A central coordination meeting at LichtBlick is based on these requests for support, which makes coordination much easier and more practical.

Transparency

Most teams now know what the company's goals are and how they can contribute to them. Workpath supports this aspect through transparent progress updates in the tool and regular OKR check-ins with the Conversations feature. This feature encourages conversations about the OKRs and how they are being met, identifies roadblocks, and determines the need for further initiatives. In addition, Workpath's integration with Jira helps teams map their daily tasks directly to OKRs, eliminating the need to maintain tasks twice.

Accountability

As part of the continuous improvement of strategic processes at LichtBlick, accountability has emerged as an area with potential for optimization. With the recent switch to a matrix structure, the company has undergone a significant change in its organizational structure, a process that is still ongoing and means that responsibilities still need to be clarified.

Focus

There is increasing discussion at management level about de-prioritizing projects to focus on the most important issues. However, there is still room for improvement - too many issues are still being addressed at the same time.

Learnings

Insights from practice

In the course of introducing OKR and Workpath at LichtBlick, a number of insights were gained that were used to sustainably improve the strategy processes.

One of the key insights was the importance of the correct formulation of OKRs for goal achievement. Workpath data shows that in many organizations, teams that follow best practices tend to outperform their peers. Rahn recommends that his teams use innovative technologies such as AI. For example, Workpath's AI-based OKR generator can help suggest key results and better formulate objectives.

It has also been shown that a healthy dose of pragmatism can be conducive to the successful use of the framework. The OKRs can remain constant over several quarters, underscoring the longevity and relevance of the key themes. Adjustments are mainly made to the key results to ensure flexibility and practical relevance.

Outlook

Feedback and future plans

Following the successful implementation of OKR and Workpath, which resulted in a 13.9% increase in average goal achievement, the focus is now on further optimization opportunities. Recent structural changes resulting from the introduction of a matrix organization provide additional opportunities for improvement. A more precise allocation of responsibilities and more data-driven decision making are expected to further improve the goal achievement rate in the future.

The foundation for future success is therefore laid not only by what has already been achieved, but also by clearly identified levers for improvement. With this solid foundation and an awareness of the existing potential, LichtBlick is ideally positioned to further optimize its strategic processes and effectively advance its goal of climate neutrality.