Predefine items differently - based on user's credentials
Hi all, I have provocative idea coming through my mind during these days. Every time when you select hierarchy icon ("Add child item") on some of the items (Objective, Key Result, Initiative), new creation dialogue is predefined with data from origin item. I can imagine it should be more helpful and intuitive to respect the user who is creating new item instead. So if I select an item I wanna contribute to (OKR), it will be most probably me who will be an Owner, to be Check-in owner and my Team to be pre-set on new item, isn't it? By default now all these three are set same as they're on the item I clicked on "Add child item" upon. My thinking process is, that first I select OKR I want to contribute to and then I create my own one. With current approach I start with "+ Objective" (new Objective) and with alignment I have to search for relevant OKR. It's easy if there are few OKRS and somewhere around (Company, level above, team), but with more OKRs respectively with cross-functional contribution it's more and more tricky as the dialog for "Alignment" is as it is. Or ... if I use "Add new item", I have to change all three fields shown above. Would be great to have an option per user to switch from current to mentioned above, as I can expect not everyone has the same thinking process or procedure to build the OKR structure in Viva Goals. Is that feasible, do you think? Share your thoughts, comments? Did I miss something while adopting Viva Goals for our company? 😉Now Available: Export your goals to PowerPoint
Hi everyone! We are excited to announce that you can now export your OKRs to PowerPoint so you can save time and energy preparing for your business rhythms. More information can be found in this blog post. Please take a moment to try it and let us know your feedback. Thanks!How to Improve Collaboration and Results with Viva Goals and ADO
We are excited to announce the How to Improve Collaboration and Results with Viva Goals and ADO livestream event on Tuesday, September 26th at 9:00AM Pacific! In this 45-minute YouTube Live event, Mark Myers, Senior Program Manager, Digital Security & Resilience, Microsoft, and Johnny Jones Jr., Senior Technical Program Manager, Microsoft Security Response Center, share the challenges they faced when trying to find a consistent way to track team goals and showcase cross-team collaboration – and how they utilized the Viva Goals and ADO integration to tell a better story of the work their team does to their organization and the business impact they made. Add your questions now!OFFICE HOUR - 2nd May - Top 3 tips for writing awesome OKRs
I'LL BE ONLINE TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS AT 08:00 PST/16:00 UK TODAY. Just post them in the comments, and I'll respond there. Top 3 tips for writing awesome OKRs For such a simple concept, there’s a lot to get to grips with when starting to work with OKRs. They represent such a fundamental shift in the way in which goals are formed and worked with if you want to fully leverage their potential value; systems, routines, a framework, training, these all need to be worked out first. So, is it right to think that writing them is the easy part? Well, yes and no. A well formed set of OKRs will help get you off to a strong start and help to set the standard for others when writing theirs. Here are my 3 top tips to help you overcome challenges you might face when writing your OKRs: Know your Key Results There are three types of KR and it’s important to know which one is right for what you’re trying to achieve. The first (and the best) is a lagging measure. This metric measures the impact of work that has already been done. It’s the best type of KR as it is a clear measurement of the value created, not actions completed. Value is in the eye of the beholder, though, so it’s important to agree on the value measure when you are forming the Objective. The second is a leading measure. This is also a metric, but instead of it being a measurement of value, it provides an indication that you are on the right track. The third is a milestone measure. This is your fallback when you don’t have data available, so can’t use a metric. It helps you to avoid a binary “yes/no” KR, which is useless when it comes to transparently scoring and reporting progress. Don’t daisy chain This is where a KR of a “parent” OKR is used as the Objective of the ‘child’ OKR, which aligns with it. This might seem like a good idea when it comes to aligning your OKRs, but, in my view, this is a big mistake for a number of reasons: 1 - It removes the opportunity (and so disempowers) those working at the next level to form creative solutions to solve the challenges set by the OKRs they are aligning into. 2 - It causes confusion as objectives start to feature metrics, so then what’s the difference between an O and a KR? 3 - You could end up with a single objective supported by nothing but key results Mind your blind spot If all you do is just write an Objective statement that is two or three words long, you’re missing a trick, and this is a mistake I see leadership teams make often. Brevity is often tempting, as the belief is “it will do” and that we (ie. Leadership) understand it, but this is a blind spot for them. But what about the wider audience? The best Objective statements are the ones which instil a sense of motivation in the reader so they can say “I get that and I want in!” So I hope you find these helpful. If you have any more questions about writing OKRs, just put them in the comments below, and I’ll do my best to help you out. Best of luck in all things OKR 🙂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.Creating alignment from all levels
https://www.mcchrystalgroup.com/strategy_alignment/ has been the bread-and-butter of my company for at least a decade. When our President, Chris Fussell, talks about front-line leaders driving the pendulum forward, in some sense he's speaking to the ability of real-time information driving changes to the company's strategy at large. To that end, Viva Goals is not only a reporting tool for objectives, it's also a means for the organization to align to the environment. Leaders driving success with OKRs who fail to review the context of Key Result reporting are missing the evaluative value that Goals feedback provides. At the very least, this is a necessary component of the quarterly close-out, if not worthy of a more frequent review. Does your organization have any real, tangible and transparent mechanisms to inform your strategy, or do your senior leaders do all the talking? Is your strategy static until the year-end close, or does it live organically driven by the context in which its operating?
