Event banner
Event details
- BrittHarper90
Microsoft
Welcome to our AMA! Hi Don and Scott, we are excited to have you here with us today, can you introduce yourselves and what your role at Microsoft is?- DonSCampbellI’m the Senior Director of the OKR Enterprise Accelerator team, where I spearhead Microsoft’s evolution and change management toward the mastery of objectives and key results (OKRs) methodology leveraging Viva Goals.
- ScottBlackwellHey there - great to be a part of this AMA. I'm also part of the OKR Enterprise Accelerator team. I spend my days working across teams here at Microsoft helping them start and/or improve their OKR practice, and also how to get the most out of Viva Goals. Looking forward to speaking with you more!
- BrittHarper90Don, what does the OKR Enterprise Accelerator team do, what is your mission?
- DonSCampbellWe basically have two parts to our mission or vision. The first part is simple, help enable ~225,000+ full time employees at Microsoft adopt OKRS leveraging Viva goals. The second part then is, as we do that, how do we build our lessons learned our insights or successes into the product, marketing, partner initiatives, etc. That’s where you’ll see this team, Scott, others or I help to translate what we're finding. So, we can better it for our customers, so we're quicker, faster, time to value, employee experience, etc.
- BrittHarper90Don, does your team have to “sell” internal Microsoft teams on using OKRs and if so, do you have a framework for that?
- DonSCampbellAbsolutely. We all must understand and realize benefits of BOTH the employee experience and business results which OKRs leveraging Viva Goals can bring to life. It’s human nature for us to want to know, “What’s in it for me?” when being introduced to a new process. To help communicate the benefits of OKRs to your leaders, teams, or colleagues, we’ve broken it down into the outcomes they’ll see individually if the organization adopts OKRs. We’ve also incorporated findings from our 2021 Goal Management Report to give hard data to fuel the fire. When asked to rank the top three benefits of their goal management process, executives, managers, and individual contributors all answered with similar shared values: higher performing teams, faster growth, increased revenue, and less wasted time.
- BrittHarper90Scott, when rolling out Viva Goals internally, how do you see teams testing it? Is it more of a top-down approach or a bottom-up approach? And do you recommend one way over the other?
- ScottBlackwellWe see a mixture of both top-down approaches and/or bottom-up approaches. From our team's perspective, we’re always thinking about how we influence the leadership program type because we know that's what anchors and creates the quickest time to value for the rest of the organization.
- BrittHarper90Don, if you look at the cases where you've been able to ascend into more senior leadership contacts what are some of the takeaways and best practices you've used?
- DonSCampbell
Culture
-Keep employee value at the center
-Showcase Executive sponsorship
-OKRs underpin the culture
Deployment
-Define success and your “why”
-Choose deployment model and depth in organization
-Enable in rhythm of business and workflow
-Check-Ins & Dashboards Adoption
Adoption
-Ensure psychological safety
-Normalize “intelligent failure”
-Build “Champ” community and evangelism
-Celebrate the wins
- BrittHarper90Scott, when working with leadership teams on deploying OKRs and Viva Goals, what were some of the top objections from Leadership, and what are your teams' solutions to those objections?
- ScottBlackwell
- Lack of mission, vision and values: Vital components which determine the overarching objectives you'll base your OKR framework on.
- Lack of Focus: Best practice is to decide on a smaller set of objectives, each with set of key results, at one time.
- Lack of Patience and/or Commitment: Be committed and willing to wait up to 3+ months for results to become obvious.
- Lack of Regular Check-Ins: Without frequent check-ins, it's difficult to keep OKRs on track, aligned and adjusted with the big picture.
- BrittHarper90Don, what kinds of actions has your team taken to drive adoption/usage for teams that are newer to OKRs? And on top of that, how are you driving usage from individual contributors that don't own OKRs?
- DonSCampbellFor users newer to OKRs we aim to demystify the approach and help them understand in many cases they are already following components of the approach as part of their existing rhythm of business and planning processes. We then depict how OKRs can leverage what they are doing today and make it even more impactful for employee experience and business results. For those that don’t own OKRs we encourage them to view and understand how the existing OKRs are being leveraged in their organization, the value they are delivering and ask questions to understand how they too could gain value.
- BrittHarper90Scott, what success have you seen so far, benefits to teams who have rolled out OKRs and Viva Goals at Microsoft?
- ScottBlackwell
- Shift focus from output to outcomes/impact.
- Cross functional cooperation to unify direction and improve collaboration
- Navigate rapid change and reduce risk
- Clarity that is documented, measurable, and owned
- Clear, contextual communication with continual progress reviews
- Inspires stretch and fosters team involvement
- BrittHarper90Don, If you could give some advice to those tuning into this AMA on how to initiate an OKR accelerator team like yours to continue to have skin in the game and continue to assist in "selling" OKRs within their company, what sort of advice would you give?
- DonSCampbell
Similar to one of my previous answers I would highlight the below. Our Microsoft journey to date has found these themes key to enabling a better employee experience and increased business results leveraging OKRs and Viva Goals.
Culture
- Keep employee value at the center
- Showcase Executive sponsorship
- OKRs must underpin culture
Deployment
- Define success and your “why”
- Choose deployment model and depth in organization
- Enable in rhythm of business and workflow
- Check-Ins & Dashboards
Adoption
- Ensure psychological safety
- Normalize “intelligent failure”
- Build “Champ” community and evangelism
- Celebrate the wins
- BrittHarper90Thanks, Don and Scott for being here and sharing your insights! I hope hearing about Don and Scott's experiences on deploying OKRs and Viva Goals internally across Microsoft was beneficial for you all. Have a great day!
