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That’s a wrap! Thank you for joining our Microsoft Viva Goals AMA today! We appreciate all the great questions and hope you learned something new! I'll be locking this event to new questions, but our experts will still be able to respond to any unanswered questions. Stay tuned for more Microsoft Viva Goals news!
For any other questions about Viva Goals, head to our Viva Goals Community page: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/viva-goals/ct-p/Viva-Goals.
Kathy_Krumpe For our final question of the AMA, I want to know: what does a great OKR look like?
Unfortunately, I can’t share current team or client OKRs but I like to advise that Objectives contain an ACTION plus a WHAT plus a WHY. For example, my family vacation objective was Adventure with my family in new places so we can laugh, play and create memories of a lifetime. Key Results then need a METRIC and SPECIFIC TARGET results. My KRs for a recent vacation was to find the hidden waterfall, snorkel 5 days and get shave ice daily!
Kathy_Krumpe What are some data points that reveal the employee engagement challenges that organizations are facing today, and how can OKRs and Viva Goals help with this?
Talent is a top topic for all of our clients because we can do better for our employees as the image below shows our teams and employees are not engaged. We know there is true business value to having engaged and connected team members. OKRs when deployed across a company help employees see why their work matters and what is important to the organization. OKRs democratize the strategy to all levels of the organization creating opportunities for inclusion and growing leaders.
Kathy_Krumpe What are the key principles you need to keep in mind on your OKR journey?
- I have a related question around this. I'm deeply goal oriented and persistent, and will stop at almost nothing to make sure a goal is achieved. Seeing OKRs in the red or not achieved goes against my very nature, although I understand that's part of the principle - to challenge and make it OK to fail. We have lots of employees who are similarly driven and have a difficult time with failure or unmet goals. I'd be interested in advice on how we can support those employees and ensure they're maintaining work/life harmony in pursuit of their OKRs while not burning themselves out. It seems like it would require not just a culture and practice shift, but a deep shift in mindset for some individuals.
We talked a lot about the roles of leadership in the session early today and of course the value of a platform to be able to scale. Here is a slide with some key points to make OKRs part of how your team and business operates.
Kathy_Krumpe building off LauraGariano's question earlier...I know you’ve been consulting with clients on OKRs for years. Sometimes, customers tell us that they are using “goals” but not “OKRs”. How would you relate the two?
- OKRs are goals. It’s a goal setting framework however it goes beyond one and done goal setting, they connect an organizations strategic priorities to how each team member can contribute to them, democratizing strategy. It goes beyond KPIs to look forward at leading indicators and bolder beyond standard metrics or attainable goals. It connects the why to the what. They are localized to each team and are flexible with retrospectives set into the cadence so teams can pivot and shift at the speed of work.
- Other methodologies such as KPIs and MBOs are complementary to OKRs, but they lack the deep connection to the Why… why are we taking the actions we take and how can we use specific measured results to continually re-align our actions to our stated objectives. This is a key point… while KPIs help to provide a record of past performance for vital signs, sort of like taking a pulse, OKRs are not annual goals set and measured for periodic reports. They are part of an ongoing process that realigns objectives, actions and results throughout the year-- up, down and across the organization.
- An integrated goals management system would make the goal-setting process at my organization better! (@Lucy Hitz, I might be missing the question we're supposed to respond to for the "OKRs for All" book giveaway... I am VERY interested in this book, so wondering if this post qualifies? Thanks!)
BrittHarper90 I want to make sure LauraGariano's response is recorded here so she gets a copy of OKRs for All!
- Thanks so much, Lucy Hitz! FYI - at mentions are not working for me currently.
- Great session this morning, Kathy - thank you! We are currently doing a small pilot with 6-8 executives in Viva Goals as part of a performance management solution review. We adopted Microsoft 365 a year and a half ago and are excited to have Viva Goals on the list for consideration. Could you please share a bit about Accenture's transition to using Viva Goals related to OKRs? Did you also have to change from SMART goals or KPIs while adopting Viva Goals? It seems like the solution can make it easier for users to make that change over time, but I'm curious how you balanced the learning curve of the solution and general OKR practices. Thanks in advance for any insights you can share!
Some practical tips to adoption as you roll-out Viva Goals include have strong aligned leadership, building a champion network that is committed to leveraging the platform as part of the business rhythms so OKRs are not just a quarterly activity but that you are reviewing them as part of weekly and monthly business reviews and even in 1-1s, bringing team together to co-create the OKRs and not handed down from leadership and we have see creating cross-functional OKRs really improve collaboration, reduce friction and efficiencies across teams.
- Hi Laura! We are currently in pilot with Viva Goals at Accenture after running the private preview this summer. We are finding at Accenture and based on past experience with other clients I've worked with launching a platform like Viva Goals is really important to provide visibility at scale. As you are seeing there is both adopting a platform and the philosophy of OKRs. Viva Goals can support a variety of goal models. One of the reasons OKRs are so successful is because it shifts an organization from thinking about what is attainable like a SMART goal to what is possible and pulls in the why and how. I like to meet my clients where they are at and the coach with deeper prompting questions like - when you reach the objective what does it allow you to do and how do you know you've reached that objective. The key results are those proof points to success. It takes bold leadership to create the psychological safety to encourage bigger OKRs and allow teams to have success if those big OKRs aren't 100% achieved. It is a journey!
- I so appreciate this insight, Kathy - thank you! I once worked for an organization (not my current) that tied challenging stretch goals to compensation, and it eroded psychological safety as you mentioned. It was stressful to be pushed to take risks but penalized in compensation for any failures that took place. I'm so grateful you and the group called that out in the session and included the slide around comparing OKRs and performance management.
Kathy, given your years of experience in the goal-setting space, can you take us on your journey on how you decided on a consistent framework? How you got started learning about the OKR methodology and what made it attractive to you?
- Years ago I was settling into a banquet table for lunch at a conference and John Doerr stepped onto the stage to talk about, Measure What Matters, his book that summarizes the OKR journeys that he helped facilitate at several leading tech companies. At the time, I was COO of Future State, a consulting firm in the Bay Area that was acquired by Accenture. As I sat in the audience, John Doerr’s work struck a chord… yes, I want to bring transparency to our organization… yes, I want to drive a focus on the actions that can have the biggest impact… yes, I want to set big ambitious goals that will yield better outcomes than anyone thought possible.
Welcome to our AMA! We have Kathy Krumpe, Associate Director at Accenture, here with us today to talk about what it takes to successfully deploy OKRs and how they can drive a business forward, especially in this business climate. Kathy, can you introduce yourself and what your role and company’s mission is?
- Thanks LUCY! Hi everyone. I lead the OKR practice as part of the Talent & Organization Human Potential offering at Accenture. I work with clients to create engaging employee experiences and support leaders find deeper alignment, focus and drive change enterprise wide.
