✅ Aligning goals: Loose alignment to give visibility on which goal helps achieve organisation goal. Not all goals need to forcefully align to company or other team goals.
🚫 Cascading goals: Trying to link all goal to a parent goal such that they fit like a tree map.
Aligning goals is important cascading is not.
Once the Organisation OKRs are set, teams get a clear direction and then decide how they can contribute to those OKRs.
Each team then defines their OKRs that contribute to the organisation’s OKRs and that loosely align with them. The team can have their OKRs based on their planning process that doesn’t align with the company’s OKRs. This is completely OK. Trying to align everything is wrong and takes up a lot of time and energy. this is one of the common mistakes why OKRs fail
Laszlo Bock, former Google VP of People Operations wrote in his book Work Rules!:
On the topic of goals, academic research agrees with your intuition: Having goals improves performance. Spending hours cascading goals up and down the company, however, does not. It takes way too much time and it’s too hard to make sure all the goals line up. We have a market-based approach, where over time our goals all converge because the top OKRs are known and everyone else’s OKRs are visible. Teams that are grossly out of alignment stand out, and the few major initiatives that touch everyone are easy enough to manage directly. So far, so good!
What cascading looks like
In his popular book, Measure what Matters, John Doer explains cascading with an OKRs strategy for a Football team example. He calls our upfront that cascading top down, is and old outdated method which was once popular.
In the below example notice how in the cascaded version of the OKRs, the General managers key result become the Head coach’s Objective. and the Head coach’s key result becomes the Defensive coaches objective. this is not a good way of structuring OKRs, read on to learn why.
🚫 Cascading OKRs
General Manager
Objective: Make $ for owners
KR1: Win super bowl
KR2: Fill stands to 90%
—–👇 —–
Head Coach
Objective: Win super bowl
KR1: Passing attack of at least 300 yards per game
KR2: Defence allows <17 points per game
KR3: Special teams unit ranks in top 3 in punt returns coverage
—–👇 —–
Defensive Coach
Objective: Passing attack of at least 300 yards per game
– KR1: Passing attack of at least 300 yards per game
– KR2: Defence allows < 17 points per game
– KR3: Special teams unit ranks in top 3 in punt returns coverage
———-👇 ———-
Offensive Coach
Objective: Passing attack of at least 300 yards per game
– KR1: Passing attack of at least 300 yards per game
– KR2: Defence allows < 17 points per game
– KR3: Special teams unit ranks in top 3 in punt returns coverage
👈 These are the General managers OKRs, notice the 1st KR in this list.
———-
👈 These are the Head coaches OKRs, see how the Objective here is the first KR of the General Manager
———-
👈 These are the Defensive coaches OKRs, see how the Objective here is the first KR of the head coach’s OKR…
You’ll see this trend continue below.
Why is cascading OKRs a bad idea
Cascading is a lot of work. When all are required to cascade, it means that Tightly cascading organizations tend to resist fast and frequent goal setting. Implementation is so cumbersome that quarterly OKRs may prove impractical.
No flexibility. Teams are not creative in setting their own goals. they
Marginalized contributors. In a top-down goal setting culture, teams don’t feel a sense of ownership.
One-dimensional linkages. While cascading locks in vertical alignment, it’s less effective in connecting peers horizontally, across departmental lines.
Before you start
What are OKRs?
Are OKRs right for me?
A Brief Guide to OKRs
Aligning with OKRs
OKRs in Strategy
OKR Case Studies
Take the OKR Quiz
OKR FAQ
The North Guide to OKRs
Getting started with OKRs
A typical OKR Cycle
Weekly OKR Check-In
Why OKRs Fail
Stretch vs Committed OKRs
Aligning vs Cascading OKRs
Aligning OKR Teams
Input vs Output metrics
OKR Templates
Learning resources
Google OKR Template
OKRs for Product teams
OKRs for CEOs teams
OKRs for Sales teams
OKRs for Marketing teams
OKRs for HR teams
OKRs with Google Workspace
North Features
Org and Team goals
Goal Initiatives
Goal Check-ins
Give Awards
Goal Alignment
Discussions
Our take on Product
On Product discovery
Communicating well
Metrics for Product teams
Telling stories with data
Data visualisation
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