Set your objectives once. Keep them alive all quarter.
Most companies walk out of planning with good objectives, and a month later every department is back to working on its own list. This guide walks you through three processes that fix that: monthly priorities inside every team, OKRs with the meetings that keep them alive all quarter, and a monthly business review that catches what's stuck. Start with one, or run all three together.
Everyone leaves the planning session excited and clear on what matters this quarter.
Each department is deep in its own priorities, and the company objectives stopped coming up in conversation.
Someone opens the OKR doc before the next planning session and realises half of it was never touched.
A better plan won't fix this. A rhythm will.
What keeps goals alive is a handful of habits, each with one job, that pull people back to what they agreed on at the right moments. Here are the three that matter most, who they're for, and when each one helps.
Monthly priorities
Each manager and their team agree on what comes first this month, and where anything new goes.
Start here if new requests keep landing and teams aren't sure what to finish first.
Process 2 · Every quarterOKRs & cadence
Leadership sets the quarter's objectives (or Rocks), shares them with everyone, and keeps them alive with a few recurring meetings.
Start here if departments drift away from company goals within a few weeks.
Process 3 · Every monthMonthly business review
Department leads share a short pre-read, see every status on one screen and spend the meeting unblocking what's at risk.
Start here if you want one meeting that surfaces what's stuck, with or without OKRs.
They work on their own and they work better together. OKRs set the company goals, monthly priorities turn them into each team's focus, and the business review catches what's stuck before the quarter is gone.
Monthly priorities
Most teams track tasks and still don't know what matters most. This process teaches managers to lead with a short, ranked list of priorities and to talk about it openly with their team.
Set your team's priorities for the month
Company goals only move when each team knows what to work on first. Once a month, every manager sits down with their team and agrees on the month's priorities. This isn't task tracking. It's how managers learn to lead with priorities and talk about them openly with their team.
Nothing shares a number.
There is one number one, one number two, and so on down to five. When something new comes in, it doesn't get added on top. You go back to the list, decide together where it goes, and everything below it moves down.
The order isn't a schedule. Your team won't spend week one only on number one. It means number one gets fully finished before number two, and if the month goes sideways, number one is the thing that's done.
How to run it
- Look back at last month 15 min
What didn't get done, what moves into this month, and what happened along the way. - The manager brings the draft list
Managers set the priorities first, because they see what each person is working on and know the company goals most closely. Making sure the list serves those goals is their job. - The team adds what's missing
This is where "but I also have this" comes out. Be honest about what each person really has on their plate, and keep it fully transparent. - Agree the final order
One to five, nothing tied, each with a clear owner. Anything that doesn't fit waits for next month.
What to notice each month
During the look-back, watch for patterns. Maybe priorities change too often, nobody is clear on what matters, or leadership isn't committing to its own priorities. None of this is a mistake to punish. It's what every company goes through while it finds the right rhythm. If nobody looks, the team lives in constant change and never notices that this is why it isn't moving forward.
When something new lands mid-month, AI can help you place it in the list instead of quietly stacking it on top.
The new request didn't go on top. The team placed it at three, and everything below moved down.
September's seven reshuffles are the conversation to have. They usually point to a leadership decision, not to the team.
OKRs & cadence
Setting objectives takes a day. Keeping them alive takes a rhythm. This process covers both: how to choose the quarter's objectives, and the meetings that keep bringing them back into the room until the quarter is done.
Teach OKRs before anyone writes one
If even one person in the room has never written an OKR, your planning session turns into an argument about definitions instead of priorities. Thirty minutes upfront saves you two hours later, so make sure everyone uses the same words before you start.
What to cover
- The objective is where you want the company to be at the end of the quarter, written so people actually want to get there.
- Key results are the two to four numbers that prove you got there. If you can't measure it, it's not a key result.
- Initiatives are the projects you'll run to move those numbers. They matter, but they live under the key results, not in place of them.
- Hitting 70% of an ambitious key result is a good quarter. If you hit 100% every time, your targets are too safe.
Generic examples don't stick. Ask AI to teach OKRs using your own business, so the training feels like planning practice.
Run the OKR session
This is where the leadership team decides what the whole company focuses on for the next 90 days. Ask every leader to bring up to three candidate objectives for the company, not for their own department, along with what they think is getting in the way.
How to run it
- Look back 15 min
What did last quarter teach you, and what's still unfinished? - Put every candidate on the wall 20 min
Each leader explains their picks in a minute. No debate yet. - Group and vote 20 min
Merge the ones that overlap, then everyone gets three votes. - Write the key results 40 min
Three objectives is plenty, five is the limit. Give each one two to four numbers. - Name one owner per objective 10 min
One person, never a department, and write down what you're saying no to this quarter.
That last part matters more than it looks. A written "not this quarter" list settles more arguments next month than the OKRs themselves.
Bring AI into the discussion as one more voice in the room, especially the one willing to disagree with the most senior person.
Nine candidates go in, three objectives come out, and each one leaves the room with a single owner.
Set your Rocks instead
Rocks are the handful of priorities that, if you hit them, make the quarter a win. They work best when your company keeps starting new things, when priorities are shared but nobody is sure which department owns what, or when each department has its own list and nobody has worked out how they need to support each other.
The discipline is subtraction. The power comes from what you leave off the board, because if everything is a priority, the team ends up treating nothing like one.
How to run it, top of the whiteboard down
- Name the critical number first
Before any rock is mentioned, agree on the one number that tells you the quarter worked: revenue, activation rate, churn, cash. - Give the quarter a short theme
A phrase people can repeat in the hallway. The theme and the number are what everyone in the company should remember. - Choose three to five rocks
Each one should clearly move the critical number. If you can't explain how, it's not a rock this quarter. - Make each rock measurable and owned
Write the outcome, not the activity. Add the KPI that proves it and one person accountable for it. - Map how other departments collaborate
Name every handoff: who owns which part, what they deliver and roughly how much time it takes them.
Why the collaboration map matters
The owner usually starts the work and carries most of it, but almost no rock lives inside one department. Marketing needs something from product, product owns a piece of the process, and finance has to sign off. When that isn't agreed at the start, the help feels like a favour, and a team discovers in week five that it has two weeks of work on top of its own priorities. Put every department's part on the board while everyone is in the room and can say yes or no to it.
Map it with the Function Engine template →AI is good at spotting the handoffs nobody mentioned and the department that quietly ends up carrying three rocks.
Call a leadership sync when something is stuck
This meeting has no fixed date. You open it when a signal tells you something needs a decision from more than one leader, which keeps it short, rare and worth everyone's time.
Signals worth a sync
How to run it
- Keep it to 30 minutes and invite only the leaders the issue touches.
- Whoever raised the signal brings one paragraph: what's happening, what it affects, and the decision needed.
- Leave with a decision, an owner and a date. If you can't decide yet, leave with who will find out what and by when.
AI can watch for signals so you don't have to: key results falling behind their expected pace, and blockers people keep mentioning in their updates.
The gap between expected and actual pace is what turns a worry into a meeting.
Hold the monthly business review
Once a month, department leads share a short pre-read, mark every objective or rock as done, on track, at risk or off track, and spend most of the meeting unblocking whatever is at risk. It's important enough to have its own process, so the full how-to is in Process 3.
How to run the monthly business review →Run a retro with the wider team
Leaders see the numbers, but the team sees what's actually in the way. Open the retro to people beyond the leadership team, so the problems that never make it onto a dashboard still make it to you.
Three questions are enough
- What's slowing you down right now?
- What's unclear: who decides, what's expected, or how something works?
- What should we stop doing?
Ground rules
- Let people answer anonymously. You'll hear things you'd never hear out loud.
- Leaders listen first and speak last.
- Close the loop within a week. Tell the team what you'll change, what you won't and why. That's what makes people bother next time.
Thirty honest answers are hard to read in one sitting. Ask AI to group them and connect them to what you're trying to achieve.
Review what you committed to and what happened
At the end of the quarter, put your commitments next to your results. You're not grading people. You're learning what to do differently with the next 90 days.
Walk through it in this order
- What did we commit to, and what actually happened?
- What worked that we should keep doing?
- What didn't work, and what was the real reason?
- What carries over, and what do we drop for good?
Then you go back to step 2. The loop starts again, this time with a full quarter of evidence behind every choice.
Memory is a bad source for a quarter review. Let AI pull together every decision, owner and result from the quarter's meetings so you start from what happened.
| Commitment | What happened | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first value 14 → 5 days | Reached 6 days | Hit |
| Expansion revenue +20% | +11%, pricing landed late | Partly |
| Projects closed on time 80% | Stayed at 52% | Missed |
| Decide pricing exceptions owner | Finance owns it from Nov 1 | Hit |
Monthly business review
The meeting that keeps the quarter honest. It's part of the OKR cadence, and it works just as well on its own if your company isn't ready for OKRs or Rocks yet.
Hold the monthly business review
This is the meeting that keeps the quarter honest. Once a month every department lead sits down with one goal, which is to find what's stuck and get it moving. Updates happen in writing before the meeting, so the time together goes to solving problems.
Before: a short pre-read, 48 hours early
- Mandatory for every department or team in the meeting, shared at least 48 hours before.
- Keep it short. One paragraph on how the month went and a few points you want the room to notice. That's it. A long pre-read gets skimmed, so resist the urge to write more.
- Give the status of each objective or rock you own, your wins, and exactly what you need from other teams.
During: the meeting
- Read in silence 10–15 min
Everyone reads every pre-read, in the room, before anyone speaks. It feels awkward the first time. Do it anyway, because it's the simplest way to make sure everyone actually reads and gives each team real attention. - Status 15 min
Each department marks every objective or rock as done, on track, at risk or off track. Put it on the screen so the room sees how many sit in each group instead of only hearing it. - Choose the focus
Filter to at risk and off track. Done and on track don't need the room's help today. Each owner names the metric to look at and describes the issue in a sentence or two. - Deep dive 40–80 min
The most important part of the meeting. The whole room works on unblocking: what resources would help, whether a team needs training, and what has to change for the work to get done right. - Agree the actions 10 min
Close with the tasks everyone agreed to, each with one owner and a date.
Ask AI to summarise every pre-read in one place, so nobody has to open document after document. It can also draft each team's pre-read from the latest numbers, and after the meeting it captures the agreed actions and reminds owners before each date.
Customer Success · October
Example pre-readActivation hit 71%, above the 70% target, mostly thanks to the new setup checklist. Kickoff calls are slipping because booking is still manual, and we expect to stay at about 75% unless that changes.
- Win: onboarding tickets down 28%
- Need from Ops: automated booking link by Oct 25
- Question for the room: pause kickoffs for accounts under 5 seats?
Most rhythms fail on clarity, not effort
People skip meetings they don't understand and miss deadlines nobody wrote down. Before the first quarter starts, make three things obvious to everyone involved.
The process
Everyone knows when each meeting happens, what to bring and what should come out of it.
Responsibilities
Each objective has one owner and each meeting has one person running it. Write down who decides, who gives input and who just needs to know.
Expectations
Spell out the small things: pre-reads land 48 hours early, "at risk" means more than 10% behind expected pace, and action items get a reply within two working days.
| Process | Meeting | When | Who | Bring | Leave with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Priorities | Team priorities | Start of each month | Each manager and their team | Last month's list and a draft for this month | Priorities ranked 1–5, nothing tied, each owned |
| OKRs & cadence | OKR training | Before the OKR session | Anyone new to OKRs | Questions | The same language for everyone |
| OKRs & cadence | OKR session | Start of each quarter | Leadership team | Up to 3 candidate objectives | 3–5 objectives, key results, owners, a "not now" list |
| OKRs & cadence | Rocks session (alternative) | Start of each quarter | Leadership team | A candidate critical number and rocks | One number, a theme, 3–5 owned rocks and a collaboration map |
| OKRs & cadence | One-pager | Within 48 hours | Whole company | The session's decisions | Everyone knows the plan and their part in it |
| OKRs & cadence | Leadership sync | When a signal appears | Only the leaders involved | The signal and the decision needed | A decision, an owner and a date |
| OKRs & cadence | Team retro | Monthly or every other month | The wider team | Honest answers to 3 questions | Themes, and what will change |
| OKRs & cadence | Quarter review | End of each quarter | Leadership team | Commitments and results | What to keep, change and carry over |
| Business review | Monthly business review | Every month | All department leads | A short pre-read (a paragraph and a few points), 48h early | Agreed actions, each with an owner and a date |
Six rules that keep the rhythm working
Agree on these once, out loud, and put them at the top of every meeting agenda for the first quarter.
No pre-read, no slot
If your one-pager isn't in 48 hours early, your department doesn't get agenda time this month.
Start with what's red
Good news can wait. Spend the first minutes on what's at risk or off track.
One owner, one date
Every issue leaves the room with a single name next to it and a day it's due.
Write the decision down
Before anyone leaves, someone reads the decisions back. If it isn't written, it wasn't decided.
Disagree in the room
Say it in the meeting. Once you leave, everyone backs the decision, including the people who argued against it.
Cancel what has no job
If a meeting has nothing to decide this month, cancel it and tell people why.
Add AI to your team the way you'd add a new hire
Every process in this guide has steps someone has to do: drafting the pre-read, summarising five departments, turning a whiteboard into a one-pager, chasing an owner before a deadline. Today those steps land on some of your busiest, most expensive people. They can land on AI instead, and that's how a team grows its capacity without growing its payroll.
Why most AI doesn't make the team faster
Most companies try AI as a chat window on the side. Someone copies in context, gets an answer and pastes it somewhere else. That saves one person a few minutes, but the team's work doesn't move any faster, because the AI has no idea what was decided last week, how the team works together or who is waiting on what.
What changes when it's part of the process
AI starts adding real capacity when it lives inside the process your team already follows, connected to the same decisions, meetings and handoffs as everyone else. It knows what earlier steps concluded and who comes next, so you can assign it a step exactly the way you'd assign a person, and it can take over some of the back-and-forth that happens inside teams today: collecting updates, asking for a missing number, drafting the first version for feedback.
A task is something one person does and ticks off. A step is part of how the team works together: it gets what it needs from the step before, has an owner, and hands something to the next person. When AI owns a step, it moves the whole process forward instead of answering one-off questions.
- Share the pre-read48 hours before the meetingMDR
- Summarise every pre-readCommon themes and top risks in one view
- Status and deep diveThe team decides how to unblock what's at riskMDRJ
- Write up the actionsDecisions become actions with owners and dates
- Follow up before each dateReminds owners and flags anything slipping
Same meeting, same people. AI takes three of the five steps, so the leaders only spend time where a decision is needed.
Less waiting between steps
An AI step doesn't wait for a free slot in someone's calendar, so the work keeps moving from one person to the next.
More done with the same team
AI takes whole steps of the process, so the team can take on more without opening a new role.
Senior time goes to decisions
Summaries, write-ups and follow-ups stop eating your leaders' hours, and their time goes back to the calls only they can make.
How to start
- Pick one process your team already runs. The monthly business review is a good first one because its steps repeat every month.
- Mark the steps about preparing, summarising, drafting or following up. Those are the ones AI can usually own.
- Assign AI to those steps and keep people on the decisions, the approvals and anything that needs judgement about your business.
- Review it after a month. Look at what AI handled well and where people still had to step in, then adjust which steps it owns.
Where this happens
This only works when the process, the team's decisions and the AI live in the same place. That's the idea behind Nova: operations are set up there for collaboration, and AI has a seat at the table, so you can assign it steps in the same process your team follows. The templates below come with these AI steps already set up.
Everything above, already set up for you
Each template comes with the steps, the questions and the timing built in. Adapt it to your team, connect it to your calendar so recurrences and reminders run on their own, and bring AI into any step.
Monthly Priorities
Each manager and their team agree on what comes first this month, and where new requests go when they land.
- Look-back on what got done and what carries over
- Ranked list from one to five, nothing tied
- Each priority linked to a company goal
OKRs & Operating Cadence
Your whole quarter set up in one place, from OKR training to the quarter review.
- OKR training and the objective-setting session
- AI turns decisions into a one-page PDF for the whole company
- Leadership sync, business review, retro and quarter review on a recurring schedule
Monthly Business Review
Short pre-reads, every status on one screen and a deep dive on what's at risk or off track.
- Pre-read template with a 48-hour reminder
- Done, on track, at risk and off track at a glance
- AI summary of every pre-read in one view
More templates for your operations
Use these alongside the three processes, or on their own when you need them.
Quarterly Rocks
Agree on one critical number, a theme and the three to five rocks that make the quarter a win.
- Critical number and theme before any rock is named
- Outcome, KPI and one owner for every rock
- What you leave off the board, written down
The Function Engine
Define the minimum collaboration and responsibility each department owes to reach a shared goal.
- Which department owns which part of the work
- The handoffs between teams, agreed upfront
- No more help that feels like a favour
Department Scorecard
Each department's key numbers in one place, so the status in your business review comes from data.
- The few numbers that show the department is healthy
- Each number tracked against its target
- Feeds straight into the monthly business review
Incident Report
Capture what happened, what it affected and what changes so it doesn't happen again.
- What happened and who it affected
- The real cause, not only the symptom
- Agreed changes with an owner and a date
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