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The benefits of OKRs and using Viva Goals
Have you had a chance to read this blog post? How we are improving employee engagement and business value with Viva Goals - Microsoft Community Hub It documents the journey my peers and I have had by ... Having targeted Objectives Having supported and specific Key Results and Using Viva Goals to manage the ongoing progress our team is having against the OKRs Our journey has seen measurable improvements, as documented in the above blog post. I'm curious... have you seen similar or different results? What's your journey been like? Or, if you haven't started, what are some areas that you hope to see improved?Viva Goals Retirement
Hi, Microsoft just announce at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/goals/goals-retirement that Viva Goals ending in December 2025. How do you feel about this announcement? It was one of the top business use cases with significant business value in Viva Suite after Viva Topics deprecation.I used to think that OKRs were not for everyone...
So my response to a post from BrittHarper90 got me thinking about how my/our method at TBG has evolved over the years regarding that perennial question: how many OKRs should we have? I've worked with clients who called me in after having dived head-first into OKRs and mandated that everyone in the organisation should have their own. This didn't go well for several reasons: The amount of managerial effort needed to review & reset every quarter was huge, so the effort expended/benefit realised equation was way off in the negative People felt "forced" to develop their own OKR that directly aligned with Exec OKRs. The result: Over 1000 people tried to align with the CEO's OKRs. These had next to no value and caused significant anxiety for those who's work was more "transactional" and so didn't have a direct contribution to make to the growth and transformational OKRs the Exec had. The focus was on individual OKRs which did nothing to foster shared goals and stronger collaboration across the organisation. It's worth mentioning that each time I've seen this, it's been HR who have been leading on the OKR implementation. HR definitely have a huge role to play. Still, in my experience, implementations work best when led by those responsible for the strategic planning process across the organisation. If that specific function doesn't exist, then the COO or Chief of Staff are usually well-placed to lead. Based on those experiences, my opinion has since been: have as few OKRs as possible and think of them as a spotlight to shine on what will generate the greatest value for the organisation. Makes sense, right? I always thought so, and for a lot of clients, it works for them. However, I've shifted on this and I'd like to share how and why. Let me introduce to my concept of "hard" and "soft" alignment. Hard alignment is when you have a clear parent and child relationship between two OKRs. You believe that the child OKR (eg. a 3 month OKR) can make a direct contribution towards the parent OKR (eg. often a 12 month OKR focussed on a strategic priority). These are governed by a recognised cadence of check-in and reporting back up to Exec teams. Soft alignment is when you have an OKR which you believe will have a less direct and more general contribution to a strategic priority or theme. The governance around these is less formal and they don't need to be reported back up to Leadership. By making this distinction, I've found that it helps open up OKRs to those teams who are not in a position to directly contribute towards a strategic priority but can still do their bit, albeit indirectly. Lets look at an example: If the organisation had a strategic priority to improve the quality of its service, it could have one or two specific transformational OKRs which will help to drive that (hard alignment). Also, for a team who's work is more transactional like a logistics team, might still have their own ideas about how they could contribute and so could develop a team OKR to test out their ideas but these are in line with a strategic "theme" (big move I like to call them) rather than a specific parent OKR (soft alignment). By making this distinction, I've found that OKRs can be for all, and not at the expense of creating a bureaucratic beast of a process that buckles under its own weight.Understanding the connection between OKRs vs. Performance Management
The movie "Air" details the intricate relationships that led to Nike signing a young Michael Jordan to his first basketball sneaker contract, and the creation of "Air Jordans." As part of the negotiation, Jordan's mother pushed for -- and received -- a stipulation that the family would earn a percentage of sales for every sneaker sold. The movie ends with Nike CEO Phil Knight (played by Ben Affleck) pondering how many sales they might possibly generate, which Nike estimated to be $3 million in the first three years. The movie later revealed staggering sales of $126 million in year one for Nike, and Jordan winning Rookie of the Year and making the All-Star team on his way to becoming the greatest player of all time. Talk about crushing your goals! I bring this up because there are a lot of elements of "goal setting" at play here ... Nike as a company, Jordan as an individual, sales targets, CEOs, agents, customers, and other stakeholders. At Microsoft Viva Goals, we often get questions around the intersection of goals and performance management / personal development. After all, we're talking about goals, right? What's the difference between the goals we set as a department, and the goals I talk about with my manager at our 1:1? That led us to publish our point of view: Understanding the connection between OKRs vs. Performance Management Within the document you'll see we present 4 key pillars: OKRs are designed for collaborative, strategic goal setting for your business and teams. Performance Management is used to define individual priorities in support of the larger team effort. OKR output could be one of many inputs into an assessment of an individual’s performance, but it’s important that it’s not the only input. OKR output should generally not be directly tied to an individual employee’s compensation. If we apply these to our Nike story, CEO Phil Knight would have set company-wide OKRs for his entire organization. In addition to goals around their running sneakers and clothing, they might have had an aspirational objective of expanding their market share for the basketball division (people forget at the time, Nike was a distant third to Converse and Adidas), and a key result metric of exceeding $1 million in sales a year of Air Jordans. (Boy, would the percentage results in Viva Goals have been off the chart that year). For the use of this example, remember that Michael Jordan wasn't technically an employee of Nike. A better analogy might be Peter Moore, the designer of the shoe. While he might have had a team OKR around the launch of Air Jordans, his individual priorities would have been judged on a broader basis ... how did he contribute to his team, what was his individual impact, how well did he work with his peers, etc. If he was in his personal review, while the success of Nike selling $126 million in year one certainly would have been one of many inputs to his review, it shouldn't have been the only input. Here at Microsoft, we love aspirational goals. So whether yours is for your company to launch a $100 million brand, or a personal goal to become the greatest of all time at what you do, OKRs and Performance management can lead the way. To learn more, review our document: Understanding the connection between OKRs vs. Performance Management
What's the most difficult part of starting an OKR journey?
I've been thinking about starting energy--how it's hard to pick up (and keep!) a new project or habit. Multiply that by 100 people and finding the starting energy to change how we work seems almost impossible. I'm curious to learn from others' experiences. What's been the most difficult part of getting started with OKRs/Viva Goals (leadership buy-in, cultural change, learning a new tool, etc.)? Have you found strategies that work? Or wishlists that could make it easier?Alternatives to Viva Goals?
Viva Goals being retired wasn't good news. It put many of us in the community in a pretty tough spot. There is less than a year to find a new OKR software and migrate. We really liked Viva Goals because our team could use it inside Microsoft Teams. Some of the alternatives we are considering switching to are: Teamflect WorkBoard Perdoo All three of these have great Microsoft Teams integration and solid OKR features. We are also considering other alternatives such as Profit Co and Lattice. Any opinions on or experience with these tools?
OKRs For Better Outcomes
OKRs is one tool that helps companies achieve their desired outcomes, however, they do not stand alone. Instead, they are integrated into at least three larger streams of value, which typically have different sponsors within companies. Understanding these value streams is helpful for context when connecting with the right leaders to cost-justify OKRs, and implementing OKRs to improve these value streams. Strategy Execution - When Andy Grove and John Doerr founded and popularized OKRs it was with the intent of ensuring that longer term strategic initiatives not get lost in the sea of short-term, immediate and important day-to-day work. A number of years ago, I wrote a Forbes article about https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2012/01/04/what-happens-when-the-strategy-consultants-leave/?sh=5930b4c62113, in other words as companies move from focusing on strategy to focusing on execution. The short answer is OKRs helps with this translation process. The leaders most engaged in strategy execution are the CEO, COO, and other members of the CXO. Employee Engagement - Goals have been an essential part of leadership and employee development and performance reviews for a very long time. What goal-setting with OKRs can help achieve is to connect leaders, managers, and employees to company, department, and team goals. By doing so, they engage employees into the broader context and purpose of the company, their department, and their team. The senior leaders most focused on this value stream are the CHRO along with other CXOs. Agile Operational Execution - The Agile methodology used for improving software development and IT, is now moving to operational execution for organizations more broadly. Many organizations have robust agile practices, and prioritizing goals is essential to this practice area. The COO, CTO, and CIO are typically sponsors of Agile software development and operational execution. When working with or within organizations it is essential to understand the broader context of what they are trying to accomplish with OKRs. This context helps when advocating for OKRs, and leads to using the right language and levers to support successful trial and implementation.
How My Team Got Started with OKRs
My team recently started helping our clients to create accountability and transparency through Viva Goals, and understanding OKRs has been foundational to enabling success. I'll share how we got started with OKRs: 1. First, we sought to understand the difference between OKRs and other goal setting frameworks. For example, in my experience as a Strategy & Operations professional, I was much more acquainted with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) than I was OKRs. I found that KPIs are a measurable way to understand performance, but they are missing some key elements that OKRs bring to the table: the "why?" behind the measure, and the "how will we get there?" steps to achieve it. 2. Next, we took advantage of the Viva Goals materials within https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/browse/?products=viva&terms=viva%20goals. There is a wealth of training courses and information there that really helped us in our learning journey. 3. Lastly, we practiced using OKRs! We set OKRs for every engagement now, and not only has it been a great way to grasp the concept -- it has enabled us to set aspirational goals and go back regularly to measure how we are performing against what we set out to do. How did you get started with OKRs?
PODCAST - "Committed vs. Aspirational"
Hi Team, I thought some might enjoy a recent podcast I recorded around https://thelittleokrnewsletter.substack.com/p/committed-vs-aspirational?utm_source=podcast-email,substack&publication_id=1227319&post_id=111693753&utm_medium=email#details. Often we might get questions on how OKRs differ from Scorecards. Are they? If they are different, how? We explore those questions in the pod. BTW - forgive us for the audio quality. We had some microphone issues during this episode. BTW - if you like this content and want more, you can find it in my newsletter, https://thelittleokrnewsletter.substack.com/. Thanks all,You can try out Viva Goals with a 60-day trial
Interested in trying out Viva Goals before you purchase? Viva Goals trials (and other Viva apps) are available for 60-day trials, for those looking to get started. To trial Viva Goals, click "Try now" from the Viva Goals homepage : https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-viva/goals . For IT admins, this can kick off an IT Admin trial (for your enterprise, for 50 users); for other users, this will kick off a self-service trial (for yourself). It's a great way to get started on understanding and using Viva Goals! There are also great resources on how to deploy and benefit from the trial on our Microsoft Learn page, at Start a trial overview | Microsoft Learn .
