The KPI Institute, a global research institute specializing in business performance, has announced the winner of the TKI People Awards for Employee of the Year 2022. The TKI People Awards recognize employees and teams who go above and beyond expectations, excel as team players, and create a tremendous impact on the company.

Teodora Gorksi, Managing Director – MENA, is the recipient of the Employee of the Year award. She has not only excelled in her job but also contributed significantly to the growth of the organization. She was praised by Adrian Brudan, Managing Partner at TKI, for her “relentless efforts, support offered to the team, and excellent results achieved.”

Let’s find out what her life and work principles are.

What does receiving the Employee of the Year award mean to you?

Teodora: I always like to tell a story about myself. Starting with my childhood, I was always trying to be one step ahead. It began with a story about finding Neverland, winning first prize in school, going to the math Olympics, and being captain of the volleyball team. Growing older made me realize that it is more than that. Being ahead means creating something great, trusting people, putting passion in what you do, keeping your family and friends near, learning from many, teaching more, encouraging everyone, and finally, never forgetting that when you were a child, you thought everything was possible. Well, it still is. This has always inspired me to bring motivation, passion for what I do, knowledge and an open heart and mind to what I do. I am a proactive learner, and I always feel the motivation and commitment towards personal and professional development while leaving my personal contribution and legacy in the things I get involved.

What’s your favorite accomplishment so far at TKI?

Teodora: I would include among them, opening operations in a new region and fostering positive work and personal relationships with my colleagues, a lot of which I can call my friends, and some are even part of my family. Together, we established a strong foothold in the region and created a collaborative work environment that led to remarkable results.

When you’re faced with a challenge at work, how do you find a solution?

Teodora: “Have a break, have a KitKat.” 😊

Or, if you want something more serious:

‘”Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt

What would be the three main career lessons that you have learnt thus far?

Teodora: I’d like to mention four based on Luthans’ four positive attributes:

Hope – Embrace hope as a driving force to set goals, create a roadmap, and stay self-motivated with willpower and waypower to reach your destination.
Efficacy – Develop efficacy by cultivating the conviction to execute tasks with excellence in any given situation. Believe in yourself, and let your confidence shine through.
Resilience – Cultivate resilience as an indispensable trait that enables you to bounce back and overcome any setback, disappointment, or success.
Optimism – Harness the power of optimism to propel you forward toward success. Optimism creates a positive outlook and a belief in the possibilities of achieving your goals. Let this positive energy fuel your happiness, perseverance, and success.

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Join The KPI Institute’s growing team! Visit TKI’s official LinkedIn page to see job openings, career opportunities, and more.

Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt of an article authored by Islam Salahuddin, a Business Research Analyst at The KPI Institute. Originally featured in the 24th printed edition of PERFORMANCE Magazine, the article delves into the concept of Web 3.0 and its relevance to the online presence of government services.

The third generation of the World Wide Web (WWW or Web 3.0) is the next frontier for e-government services to excel. Since it is still an under-formulation concept, it has no rigid definition so far. However, some of its main features have been more and more clear, especially since it has been steering debates on its applications and implications.

To understand the general concept behind Web 3.0 and what it serves for the online presence of government services, going through the WWW evolution history is necessary.

The web at its basis is a system of sharing documents between computers and servers, connected in a network that we cumulatively call the internet. This is according to W3 Consortium, the organization that is led by Tim-Berners Lee, the inventor of the web, with little paraphrasing for the sake of simplification.

This system has evolved since it was first introduced in the early 1990s. Evolution does not happen with a switch, meaning there is no one company for instance that will introduce the technology to the world. Rather, each generation of the web emerges first as a group of concepts that develop through technologies and get widely adopted over time, eventually changing the way the web functions. 

Web 3.0 for example, being not the “mainstream” web yet, is just a term to differentiate the envisioned web reality that the new concepts and technologies will lead to in the future, from concepts and technologies shaping the web functionality in the present and the past. The very first version of the web (Web 1.0) offered only static pages linked together in a “web” through hyperlinks. It is a version of one-way communication from publishers to readers. 

Governments have recognized the potential of using the internet to publish information that their citizens need, mostly in order to aid their access to the brick-and-mortar services such as administrative and legal services. Consequentially called Government 1.0, e-government services in this phase have included only pushing information on regulations and procedures, and announcing statements and public holiday schedules for instance.

With technologies evolving, two-way communication on the web has become possible. This is the main feature of Web 2.0 that offers the possibility of user-generated content and interactivity. Therefore, it has opened the gate for the rise of social media and personalized web experiences. Web 2.0 is the version of the internet that everyone knows today.

E-government services have evolved to Government 2.0, with the ability to use the internet not just to aid offline public services, but to offer parallel online transactional ones. With the United Kingdom launching gov.uk and Norway launching norge.no, governments have been able to get their citizens to apply for certificates and licenses, register properties, submit taxes, and pay fines and bills, all through the internet. Web 2.0 also has given governments the chance to engage with citizens in online discussions, including how to enhance digital services.

To know more about Web 3.0 has to offer and how the government can prepare for it, read the full article in the latest edition of PERFORMANCE Magazine. The 24th PERFORMANCE Magazine – Printed Edition offers detailed analyses and valuable insights on the performance of the public sector amidst the post-pandemic environment. Grab your copy in the TKI Marketplace now!

The OKR certification offered by The KPI Institute reflects its commitment to guide organizations in improving their performance and nurturing a culture that values growth and innovation. But how does OKR make this happen? What is its actual role in decision-making and employee empowerment?

Here’s what Human Hardy, a business research analyst at The KPI Institute, wrote in his article “How does OKR transform organizations into a high-performance culture?”

Objectives and key results or OKR is a goal-setting tool used for measuring organizational/departmental/individual objectives through challenging and ambitious key results. Extracted from the organization’s visions and missions and aligned with the department’s goals, OKR involves activities such as planning, activating, managing, and adjusting.

With OKRs, teams can cascade and align goals to the different levels of an organization, defining outcome-based key results that help verify the success of the objective. OKRs act as a guide for daily work and connect all employees to a larger purpose, which is what the organization intends to achieve.

If OKRs are perceived as more than just a goal-setting tool and instead as a communication one, it shows why the OKRs are brilliant at building a high-performance culture. The effort of achieving daily goals at the individual and team levels eventually leads to the achievement of the overall objectives at the organization level in the long run.

As a result, when implemented correctly, OKRs can help a company enable a high-performance culture and achieve far more than their team thought possible. OKRs help the organization adopts performance culture in the following ways:

OKRs provide organizations with a clear direction, coordination, control, and orientation.

Direction, coordination, control, and external collaboration play a vital role in helping organizations jump from their current state to the state they want to achieve. To guide the organization in achieving what they desire, it’s important that the organization ensures that its vision and strategic clarity are understood by the stakeholders in every layer, and while doing so, the organization must also facilitate the involvement of its employees.

OKR helps organizations align priorities and make sure everyone at every level in the organization moves towards the same goals. Employees must be given the opportunity to provide their insights when the organization decides in the next 12 months. It is recommended to start with an OKR workshop where all key stakeholders responsible for company strategy ask for and gather input from employees on what they think the top priorities should be.

Those inputs can then be aligned with the existing company strategy and broken down into three to five OKRs. The process can be done using collaborative notes and documents or even a whiteboard to ensure that collaboration and ideas are well-captured. The goal of the process is to reach an agreement on what priorities should be achieved in the following year.

The process is then followed by aligning the company OKRs with team and individual OKRs. OKRs provide teams and individuals with a clear set of directions and achievements. OKRs are also a reason to remove things that are unrelated to the scope of the objective they wanted to achieve, keeping their focus and avoiding unnecessary activities or resources.

If every team gets the opportunity to create their own OKRs that they will be working on in a particular quarter, for example, it can assure a successful OKR program while helping the organization realize its strategy and maintain its focus.

OKRs increase employees’ motivation, innovation, capabilities, and accountability.

OKRs can be used to develop a set of productive behaviors that establish an essential motivating culture. Through the process of building OKRs, employees set the outcomes they’ll achieve. These outcomes are in line with the organization’s setup that supports autonomy and motivation.

In addition, OKRs focus on outcomes over outputs. It is a way to resolve organizational problems and gives employees the flexibility to experiment, innovate, and think outside the box. It also allows a humanistic approach, rather than a systemic approach. OKRs promote positive behavior by providing continuous reflection and iteration about the organization’s goals, sharing progress updates, and keeping goals collaborative, all while observing freedom and trust.

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To learn more about OKR implementation and how it impacts an organization’s performance, check out The KPI Institute’s Certified OKR Professional course.