Imagine the first 30 days of exploring something new — moving to a new city, exploring a new career path, taking up a new hobby. There’s a blend of curiosity, excitement, and uncertainty as you start the journey ahead. Isn’t it nice when you have a guide to steer you in the right direction and hint at what’s to come?
We can find parallels between these life events and getting up to speed with Microsoft Viva Goals, a goal and OKR management solution designed to help leaders and teams create, manage, and track organizational goals.
To keep things simple, we’re going to give you just 3 key things to do in your first 30 days. After all, if a friend was moving to your city, you wouldn’t overwhelm them with a list of 27 restaurants to explore. You might start out with a fast but delicious lunch option, your favorite restaurant for dinner, and a great weekend brunch spot. So grab a snack and let’s take a look at the 3 key areas to explore.
[Note: For the purpose of this article, we’re assuming you’re an end user and that your company has already set up and configured your instance of Viva Goals. If you’re a business leader still evaluating the software, check out our validation and configuration checklist to understand how to configure and use the core features within Viva Goals.]
1) Get to know the Viva Goals software
While Viva Goals offers an intuitive interface that allows users to jump right in, it’s wise to take some time and learn your way around.
- Resource 1: Viva Goals Quick Start
This area begins with a quick 2-minute video to give you a visual of the software and what it can do. You'll discover how to navigate various screens, and then can get an overview of what we call “The 4Cs” … Collaborate, Create, Check-in, and Close.
- Resource 2: Viva Goals 101
This slide presentation gives you the background and benefits of Viva Goals, illustrating how it helps take companies from strategy to execution by connecting you to organizational goals while providing visibility and alignment.
2) Learn about Goals and OKRs
If you’ve ever used any kind of budgeting or online investment platforms, you know that software is only half the battle. Equally important is a working knowledge of personal finance.
The same holds true here – the software is important, but so is the language around it. Your company might define their strategy around milestones, targets, “big rocks,” or simply “goals.” If that’s the case, it’s helpful to learn some of the foundations of creating great goals.
Additionally, Viva Goals is built upon the OKR framework, which stands for Objectives and Key Results. It’s the #1 most commonly used goal-setting framework at enterprise organizations. So if your company has chosen to utilize OKRs, we’ve got content to get you up to speed on those.
- Resource 1: Guide to great goal writing
This guide provides an overview of what makes a goal great and best practices for writing goals that inspire action and deliver results.
- Resource 2: Guide to OKRs
Learn more about the OKR framework, the benefits, pitfalls, and best practices.
- Resource 3: OKRs 101
This slide presentation gives you a visual walkthrough of OKRs: what they are, how to write them, how they help high performing organizations, and how they fit into your company’s mission and purpose.
3) Enter your first Goal
With a solid foundation of the Viva Goals software and knowledge of the OKR framework, you’re ready to begin tracking your goals.
If you already have some goals sketched out, great. Feel free to start with what you have and get them entered into the system. It’s far more important to make initial progress, add them to Viva Goals, and build on them, rather than get hung up trying to craft the perfect metric. When starting out, keep it simple and have some fun.
However, if you need help figuring out how to formulate or phrase your goals, we have some great resources to make things easier and faster. The guides to Goal and OKR writing in the previous step give you a broad understanding of what’s important, but we’ve gone ahead and distilled that knowledge into an easy-to-use cheatsheet, along with specific examples broken out by department.
- Resource 1: OKR Writing Cheatsheet with Examples
This guide provides simple formulas and real-world examples to teach you how to write effective OKRs that inspire action and deliver results.
As with any new venture, having a guide to steer you through the first 30 days is helpful, and the journey to embrace Microsoft Viva Goals is no different. By familiarizing yourself with the software, understanding the art of goal setting, and crafting your first set of OKRs, you’ll be able to confidently get up to speed and make an impact for your organization.
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Are you in your first 30 days with Viva Goals? Drop your questions below and we’ll be sure to answer them.