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How-the-Chief-Strategy-Officer - Drives-Multi-Axis Alignment
How-the-Chief-Strategy-Officer - Drives-Multi-Axis Alignment
For OKRs to bring focus to strategic objectives and create connections across
departments to maximize organizational effectiveness, the Chief Strategy
Officer (CSO) and OKR Champions (OKR Champions are primary facilitators
of the OKR process) must ensure people align horizontally as well as
vertically. Click here to learn more about the role of the OKR Champion).
Slow and Late - Translating and passing goals down the many layers
of a traditional bureaucracy takes a very long time. It is not unusual in
large organizations for the annual goal-setting process to take months.
You might work a quarter with no objectives.
Effective knowledge workers will first consider the strategic and departmental
priorities to create their own OKRs. Then they consider how their role, skills,
experience, and available resources can maximize their impact.
Fortunately, we have some great strategy execution practices, like OKRs and
horizontal alignment practices and tools, outlined below, to mitigate those
problems and improve performance quickly.
Catch-Ball
There is a lean strategy deployment process that was popular for a while,
called Hoshin Kanri.
Its primary flaw is that it is a very top-down process, but it had some
interesting and useful practices. One was called “catch-ball”, and it involved
a process where a boss would “pitch” an objective or goal to his or her
underling, who would then clarify it, modify it, adopt it, maybe with conditions,
and throw it back.
For example:
Lean process gurus figured out long ago that the only reliable way to KNOW
the status of complex programs or systems was to mandate full integration
and quality validation on a regular schedule. Synchronizing work streams
results in early risk identification, fewer defects, less waste, and fewer delays.
When other groups tag one of our OKRs or ask us to own a KR on their behalf
so they can successfully deliver their objective, we are setting the stage to
accomplish several important benefits:
Then, provide the meeting and collaboration context and “container” and
provide the facilitation structure and tools to ensure they align quickly.
Some impressive templates have been designed to guide and support highly
facilitated training and workshop events for strategy deployment/execution
and transformation engagements. Of course, the best strategy templates
support strategic effectiveness via the creation and management of OKRs.
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