How to communicate about OKRs and Viva Goals with your team
Effective communication is a key component of being an OKR Champion and significantly influences the success of the OKR program. As OKR Champions are in charge of training, driving adoption and helping their teams navigate change, the ability to communicate clearly and effectively is crucial.
1. Assess readiness
It's important to determine how receptive your users will likely be to changing the way they work and adopting new technology. Your rollout plan should reflect the readiness of your organization.
Determining readiness and appetite for change requires:
- Create a shared need and vision: Share your reason for change and need for action now
- Explain the change required: What does current state look like and what will future state look like?
- Mobilize commitment: Identify key stakeholders and solidify executive sponsorship; analyze resistance
Determine readiness by asking these questions:
- What were the success factors when previously rolling out new technology? What were the pitfalls?
- Are there other major rollouts or events happening in your organization?
- What internal resources can be leveraged to help spread awareness? For example, existing communication channels, training cadence, and leadership events.
- What are the benefits and the risks associated with this rollout?
- How can you highlight the benefits?
- How can you mitigate the risk?
Tip
Run a detailed analysis and identify readiness by team and user group; we recommend piloting Viva Goals on one team first to identify and address any issues in an early, controlled environment.
2. Plan
Define success criteria
- What are you trying to accomplish with Viva Goals?
- What does success look like with Viva Goals? Be specific. What do you hope to increase and decrease, and by how much? Describe your future state. You can even use the OKR framework to define success for Viva Goals, and assign yourself or your team this OKR.
Identify key results and milestones
- Your key results should improve based on adoption and will show leadership the impact of Viva Goals on your business
- Establish milestones. Where are you today and where do you hope to be after a quarter? After two quarters? After a year?
Determine ways to gather and measure user satisfaction and progress against benchmarks.
Examples include employee NPS, internal survey data, and user data from Viva Goals.
Assemble your core team
Adopting new technology and methodology requires buy-in and support from across the business. Below are key groups and team members who can help bridge the technology and business outcomes that matter to your organization. Each group or member has a specific role in implementation and adoption and should be engaged early and often.
| Role | Responsibilities |
|---|---|
| Executive sponsor | Communicate high-level vision and values of Viva Goals company-wide |
| Super champion | Ensure the business goals are realized from adoption of Viva Goals |
| Champions | Help evangelize Viva Goals and manage objection handling |
| Project lead | Oversee Viva Goals deployment process and logistics |
| Tenant admin (IT specialist) | Oversee all technical aspects of the Viva Goals deployment and rollout |
| Department leads (stakeholders) | Identify how departments will use Viva Goals and encourage engagement |
| Early adopters | Use Viva Goals early on and provide feedback to help smooth out any issues ahead of broad launch to entire organization |
| Employee training lead | Manage and communicate training content about Viva Goals |
| OKR community / L&D leader | Owns the creation and management of an internal community focused around OKRs, enabling broad discussion, and coordinating learning opportunities across the company. |
3. Deploy
Your end goal is to have Viva Goals operating across your entire organization so that you can connect the daily work of every team member to business outcomes.
However, as we navigate the OKR Maturity model and change management associated with deployment, we recommend easing your organization into OKRs with a user pilot.
The benefits of a user pilot are two-fold: first, you'll quickly learn how the methodology works within your organizational culture and gain insight into the challenges and opportunities. Second, your pilot group can act as an example for the rest of the organization. Their success in achieving their objectives will serve as a motivator for more groups to get on board.
Here are three ways to conduct a user pilot.
Leadership-Only pilot group
One of the most popular ways to roll out an OKR program is from the top-down. The benefit of going this route is that leadership is fully behind the program, and OKRs are very well aligned.
Here's how it goes:
- In the first quarter, OKRs are set by the executive team. Because OKRs are transparent in nature, the entire organization will have visibility into these goals.
- Throughout that first quarter, a weekly cadence for check-ins is set as an example. Meeting agendas are structured around measurement of OKRs.
- After a successful first quarter, team managers are trained. They develop their OKRs, which are aligned with the senior leadership team.
- After another quarter or two, team managers expand their Key Results. At this point, individual team members become involved.
- Ask participants to take the OKR Leadership Program learning path on-demand. So that every pilot participant feels empowered to educate, engage, and upskill their employees in OKR methodology and software.
Department pilot group
Another popular rollout method is for one individual department or group (for example, the marketing or IT department, or a product engineering team) to run a top-to-bottom rollout involving team managers and individual employees.
Here's how it goes:
- With formal or informal support of upper management, the group adopts a weekly cadence for check-ins for 1 to 2 quarters, experimenting with what works and making agile changes. Along the way, team managers report back to management regarding successes, challenges, and recommendations.
- Once the individual department and management is comfortably in a rhythm, a training plan is formulated to roll out OKRs to the rest of the organization. This plan uses the lessons from the individual department to make the process as smooth as possible for the organization as a whole.
- Ask participants to take the OKR Leadership Program learning path on-demand. So that every pilot participant feels empowered to educate, engage, and upskill their employees in OKR methodology and software.
Another option: The Big Bang Theory
While we subscribe to a “crawl-walk-run" approach to pilot your OKR program, mature companies that can efficiently and effectively lead the organization through change may choose to launch OKRs organization-wide all at once.
The advantage of this “Big Bang” approach is that companies are able to leverage the momentum of the initial kickoff, and realize the benefits of OKRs more quickly across the entire organization. However, this approach often requires more resources, and thus is most successful when company leadership is fully bought in, communication is clear, and rollout is supported by the Get Started with Viva Goals learning path.
No matter which path you choose, it's important to find out what works best for your organization. Be patient, as it usually takes a few quarters to get comfortable with change. Soon you'll get into a solid rhythm and your OKR program will grow, mature and transform your organization in the process.
Measuring success
Your goals define the outcome you want and enable you to measure the success of your Viva Goals rollout.
It's essential that you get full participation from stakeholders in defining your OKRs to help ensure they feel a sense of ownership and align these measures of success to defined project tasks. OKRs should include a mix of technical and user-focused success.
| Objective | Key Results | To Do |
|---|---|---|
| Implement Viva Goals in FY22 so we can improve focus and grow our business | KR1: 100% of SLT add OKR in Q1 KR2: Onboard and train 500 users in Q2. KR3: 100% of users added ORKs to Viva Goals in Q3. |
- Identify pilot users - Create a pilot test plan - Enable pilot users on Teams - Implement the pilot - Run a pilot feedback survey - Measure pilot success |
| Build a rhythm of business on Viva Goals so we can embed OKRs into our daily work life | FY22 Q2 SLT business review conducted and completed in Viva Goals KR1: Increase use of Viva Goals dashboard in all-hands meetings from 1x to 3x in Q2. KR2: Increase Teams dashboard usage from 1x month to 2x per month. KR3: 100% of team managers complete one check-in per month. |
- Company OKRs added in Viva Goals. - Managers complete at least one check-in. - Create a compelling review dashboard. |
4. Train and adopt
We cover everything you need to know about writing great OKRs in the Write effective OKRs with Viva Goals module and incorporating OKRs into your business rhythms in the Ensure OKR program success module.
5. Customize your communication plan
One of the most important parts of being an OKR Champion is effectively communicating about your OKR program with Viva Goals.
Put together your communication plan and timeline
Take a phased approach to your communications and make sure the right communications are happening at the right time so that all team members feel included and supported.
Customize your communication plan by audience
For an OKR Champion, there are three aspects of your audience to consider: their professional role, how they learn, and their personality type.
Professional role
The information we give and how we give it should be influenced by who we're speaking to. This allows us to address needs or concerns specific to their role. For example, the content of a presentation and how it's delivered would change if it was given to a group of executives versus an engineering team. When we consider someone's role, we can connect the information directly to them.
A helpful way to begin tailoring information to your audience is to consider what is expected of them on a daily basis.
- How will introducing OKRs help them?
- What potential blockers or concerns might they have?
- How strapped is their bandwidth?
- Can you create space in their schedules so they can feel there's time to learn and adjust to the change being asked of them?
Being aware of what their individual concerns and needs might be will help your team feel more secure and that there's a reasonable path forward for them. This also encourages curiosity, openness, and a growth mindset.
Learning styles
OKR Champions should work with their teammates to develop effective communication strategies and should model flexibility when responding to different needs. There's no one-size-fits-all for communicating. This doesn't mean, however, that there aren't useful strategies that help people communicate inclusively.
Key strategies for inclusive communication include:
- Vary your method. Use different approaches when possible. Schedule interactive collaborative time with an alternate option for independent working hours, provide visual assets to accompany oral meetings, record meetings and turn on live transcription.
- Follow accessibility guidelines. Take actions like checking documents for reading order, turning on live captions in meetings, and adding alternate text to images. Using tools like Microsoft's Accessibility Checker will ensure your documents are up to industry standards.
- Leverage your colleagues. We all explain things in ways that make sense to our own brains; this means there are often communication breakdowns and struggles in learning new material. Ask your colleagues to put your teaching in their own words. This checks for understanding and widens communication lanes.
Inclusive communication is ongoing work that OKR Champions should consistently check.
Personality types
The last element to consider in knowing your audience is to consider their personality type. Bestselling author Gretchen Rubin has provided one framework called "The Four Tendencies" that proves helpful for professional audiences, especially when introducing change and new information. As OKR Champions do both, this is a particularly powerful framework to know.
In studying how people respond to expectations, change, and new information, Rubin found that there were four broad categories of people:
- Questioner
- Upholder
- Obliger
- Rebel
Knowing the basics of each personality type and strategies that can be used when working with them helps OKR Champions communicate effectively and keep the team together.
Questioners want justifications and are information hounds. Questioners wake up and think, "What needs to get done today?" They're motivated by executing things they endorse and understand. Once you have their buy-in, Questioners are powerful allies and advocates. Conversely, they really don't like spending time and effort on activities they don't agree with. Don't be intimidated by their questions; if they're pressing you, it's likely because they're trying to get on board by making sure they agree with and understand what you're asking.
- Strategies:
- Schedule regular office hours; this will likely minimize work for you as they'll realize there's a set time/place for them to ask any questions that come up.
- Provide contact info for who they can reach out to with questions outside of the classroom.
Upholders want to know what should be done. Upholders wake up and think, "What's on the schedule and the to-do list for today?" They're very motivated by getting things done. They really don't like making mistakes, getting blamed, or failing to follow through (if it's on the to-do list, it will get done!). As long as the training was on their schedule, Upholders will most likely be ready to learn and apply new information and practices.
- Strategies:
- Provide all the resources they may need (pdfs, links, decks, etc.).
- Be clear about asks and action items for them.
Obligers are motivated by expectations and rules. Obligers wake up and think, "What must I do today?" They're very motivated by accountability. They really don't like being reprimanded or letting down others. Succeeding with Obligers means setting clear expectations and having built-in accountability.
- Strategies:
- Set guardrails to ensure they stretch themselves (be prepared to need to push them a bit).
- Schedule regular check-ins to make sure they are on board and feel supported.
Rebels want freedom to do things their own way. They resist most all rules. Rebels wake up and think, "What do I want to do today?" They're very motivated by a sense of freedom and self-determination. You may have a tough time getting buy-in with rebels, but as they're often innovators and leaders, once they adopt it, they'll often lead others to do the same. Perseverance is key. Rebels flourish with independence. Honoring this is a great way to keep them on board.
- Strategies:
- Honor their need for independence by asking for their input.
- Give them small leadership roles (for example, putting them in charge of breakout rooms or projects). This encourages buy-in and gives them space to choose into learning for themselves (rather than feeling like it was forced on them)
You won't always know what mix you have in any training but having a reference point for how people may respond differently can help you prepare and meet the needs of your team.
Effective communication requires at least a peripheral understanding of the audience. Doing a bit of work ahead of time to consider the professional roles, the variety of learning styles, and the different personality types present can help OKR Champions tailor their information and communicate more effectively.