Note: This blog post was cowritten by Copilot in Microsoft Teams
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are not about monitoring “business as usual.” As Monique Little, Director of Business Management in Customer Experience & Success, Microsoft, put it during our recent webinar Challenging Mindsets: How to use OKRs and Viva Goals to Enhance and Encourage Growth, “We already have KPI scorecards for that.”
OKRs are about business transformation and getting to 10X where you are today as a business. Ryan Lowdermilk, Cloud Solution Architect and OKR Coach in the Microsoft Americas Partner Tech Team, said it best: “You’re selling things off a truck. Great—but how can you modify the truck? How can you sell better?”
OKRs and Viva Goals sit at the intersection of improved employee experience—better role clarity, maintaining focus during reorgs and restructures—and greater business impact—ruthless prioritization and clear communication between leadership and employees.
Here are 5 steps you can start taking today to improve your business and employee experience based on the wisdom of our speakers—really, guidelines for anyone seeking to improve their goal-setting and management practice in an organization.
Step 1: First comes mission, then strategy, then impact
OKRs, and Viva Goals as the engine which make them work, aren’t a band-aid for not having a clear mission and strategy.
First, make sure your mission, values and culture, and strategic priorities are clear to leadership and employees. Then, use OKRs as the actioning, and make sure your tech tooling is set up to support this process.
During this step, you should be:
- Locking in leadership sponsorship
- Holding an OKR setting session with the leadership team to ensure alignment at the highest level of your organization and/or team
- Encouraging the leadership team to limit objectives to five and having one of those objectives be related to people and culture
- Ensuring there is clarity on the difference between KPIs and OKRs: KPIs are important for measuring performance (your “scorecard”), but OKRs are meant to transform organizations by driving alignment, and helping teams achieve ambitious, collaborative goals that supercharge their growth. Viva Goals helps organizations put this process into practice.
Note: Not all OKR programs begin at the very top of the organization—the definition of leadership team can mean leadership within one department or even team within a department
Step 2: Plug into existing rhythms of business
While bringing any new process into an organization requires time and training, one way to ease the burden on both leadership and employees is to weave OKRs into existing rhythms of business.
"One of my big early learnings was, rather than creating separate sockets or meetings, infuse OKR management into your existing rhythm of business. That way, you're not creating the perception of an additional tax when you're going through this process."
-Maryleen Emeric, Chief of Staff, Modern Work & Business Applications Marketing, Microsoft
During this step, you should be:
- Evaluating what meeting cadences and communication rhythms exist, and figuring out the best ways to weave OKRs into those
- Getting all your integrations with project management and data management tools set up in Viva Goals to make the updating process as seamless as possible for users in your organization
Step 3: Prioritize clarity and communication with employees
As you implement OKRs and work towards a higher performing organization, it will be critical to make the “why” clear to employees, keep in mind that you won’t “get it right” the first quarter, and emphasize the ideal state for all stakeholders involved.
During this step, you should be:
- Making sure employees understand the “why” behind using OKRs and Viva Goals—and that this “why” is coming through leadership’s voice in team meetings and email communication. One common “why”/benefit for employees is a better understanding of how their work contributes to organizational mission
- Emphasizing the growth mindset by positioning OKRs as a collaborative process, encouraging ambitious goals and embracing failure as a way to learn
- Guiding the process of setting OKRs at the team level and creating a community of champions to help guide the process
Step 4: Stay up-to-date on progress and close the business cycle with clarity
Great goals aren’t “set it and forget it,” and OKRs are a discipline in which reflection and resetting is necessary for the organization to learn and grow.
In our webinar, the team discussed the importance of setting time-bound goals to enable a retrospective moment, incorporate feedback, and make better choices in the future. They also discussed the importance of celebrating successes and talking about challenges and what needs to change.
"Teams should answer the question “What matters most now?” every 12 weeks to ensure that everyone is aligned and clear on outcomes"
-Ryan Lowdermilk, Cloud Solution Architect and OKR Coach in the Microsoft Americas Partner Tech Team
During this step, you should be:
- Leveraging the new Goal Broadcast feature to send Outlook emails with goals and context updated directly from Viva Goals
- Making sure goal owners in Viva Goals understand the expectations and timelines for check-ins
Throughout: Maintain a caring, coaching approach
In the webinar, Maryleen, Ryan and Monique discussed the importance of OKR coaches being patient and understanding when introducing an OKR program to an organization. They discussed the importance of using OKRs to measure transformational work, rather than just KPIs, and how to incorporate feedback from leaders and employees into the OKR process.
- Take the time to collect feedback and listen to Viva Goals users in your organization via lightweight polling using a resource like Viva Pulse or 1:1 coaching
- To scale, build an internal community of people who are using OKRs to share experiences and source solutions. Viva Engage is a great internal community solution you can leverage for this use case.
- Turn to the Viva Goals Community to ask questions about the OKR methodology or Viva Goals product, attend events, and learn from experts in the field
Have follow-up questions for our expert speakers? Share in the comments below and we’ll be sure to respond.