Fast 5 Questions about OKRs w/ OKR Coach Ryan Lowdermilk

Team, I was recently asked "5 Questions" internally here at Microsoft regarding OKRs. I thought I would share them here.  Hope they are helpful.

 

1. Tell us about yourself / team and role at Microsoft

I’m in the GPS Americas Tech Team org. We are a group of 200+ technical people who help our Partners build, ship and sell solutions that make money!

 

2. Why Viva Goals for your organization? How has Viva Goals helped transform your organization?

Our leadership team chose to implement OKRs because we believe it’s the most loving and thoughtful act leaders can do. By that we mean, ensuring our leadership team has put our people in the position, every day, to come into work and know WHAT they are working on together on and that it MATTERS. We want our people to know that their work has profound impact.

 

3. What do you wish you'd known earlier on your journey?

Be patient. It’s about direction, not perfection. Learning how to do OKRs well takes time. The journey of doing OKRs well can be optimized but not microwaved. People need real time to make mistakes, learn, and grow.

 

4. What gets you excited about Viva Goals?

OKRs have the power to galvanize and unify. Bringing people together to achieve audacious and aspirational goals is potent. When people accomplish great things together, it builds wonderful and meaningful human connections and relationships.

 

5. What feature or capability would you like to see next in Viva Goals and why?

Viva Goals is already wonderful to work with. It makes it easy for our teams to visually see their alignment and track their progress. A feature I would love to see is integration that provides suggestions on how to better write an Objective or a Key Result. Words matter. Communicating ideas in a lucid and succinct manner is a powerful way to lead. Writing great OKRs is an art and a science. Using ChatGPT or otherwise, would be helpful.