Forum Discussion
Really, are OKRs just for senior leadership?
Hey folks! My name is Michael Davis, and I've been practicing OKRs for...quite some time. I founded Ally.io's strategic services practice, and lead a team of OKR coaches here at Microsoft.
One...
Roger! Been a while. Great to see you here.
I love your points.
Re: 1 -- I think your call out of understanding which OKRs need to be aligned is important...Because some goals may simply align up to a team-level (or may sit at the individual level). Not everything needs to be aligned
Re: 2 - Yes! We have this vision for work where planning is more inclusive than top-down, and this ...goal development process is a key place to enable this
Re: 3 -- This is still an area we're optimizing our understanding around. This works best when all teams / employees are on one platform.
I love your points.
Re: 1 -- I think your call out of understanding which OKRs need to be aligned is important...Because some goals may simply align up to a team-level (or may sit at the individual level). Not everything needs to be aligned
Re: 2 - Yes! We have this vision for work where planning is more inclusive than top-down, and this ...goal development process is a key place to enable this
Re: 3 -- This is still an area we're optimizing our understanding around. This works best when all teams / employees are on one platform.
Hi Michael - yes, great to be connected again 🙂
1 - Yes, and to expand a little further; I find it useful to distinguish between "hard" and "soft" aligned OKRs. Hard being that they have a direct parent/child relationship. Soft in that the link is a little "looser' - ie. the child OKR doesn't contribute to the parent one directly, but it does point in the same direction and aligns into the overall strategic theme. I'm also not a big fan of individual OKRs, certainly not hard-aligned ones as that creates a huge management challenge every quarter when it comes to resetting. I've seen OKRs fail because of this.
3 - if there's anything I can do to help here, just shout. Completely agree; it becomes a major barrier if teams are not on the same platform!
1 - Yes, and to expand a little further; I find it useful to distinguish between "hard" and "soft" aligned OKRs. Hard being that they have a direct parent/child relationship. Soft in that the link is a little "looser' - ie. the child OKR doesn't contribute to the parent one directly, but it does point in the same direction and aligns into the overall strategic theme. I'm also not a big fan of individual OKRs, certainly not hard-aligned ones as that creates a huge management challenge every quarter when it comes to resetting. I've seen OKRs fail because of this.
3 - if there's anything I can do to help here, just shout. Completely agree; it becomes a major barrier if teams are not on the same platform!