O.C. Tanner uses Microsoft Viva Goals to align on objectives and key results and create “unity in focus”

But the company is evolving. Over the past two decades, O.C. Tanner has invested in its competitive advantage by transforming from a manufacturing company to a technology-plus-manufacturing company. With new tech-only companies entering the market at a rapid pace, O.C. Tanner needed a clear and focused product strategy to maintain its leadership position in an ever-changing market. The company’s Vice President of Product, Jason Andersen, and Director of Program Management, Julie Livsey, have both played a crucial role in this journey.

To keep pace with innovative players as well as the market’s accelerated pace of change and innovation, O.C. Tanner had to transform the way it develops and improves products. “We have a very tenured organization with people who have been here for a long time and have a certain way of doing things,” says Andersen. “These methods haven’t always been the easiest or most tech-savvy. That’s why in the product management and software engineering area specifically, we saw the need to elevate our game in terms of aligning the objectives we needed to accomplish and how to accomplish them. That’s why we chose to roll out Microsoft Viva Goals to all of our software and IT employees.”

Embracing objectives and key results to drive change 

The most critical step to seeing success was undergoing a change management initiative that got everyone on the same page. About two years ago, John Doerr’s book, Measure What Matters, helped the product team understand the benefits of focusing on outcomes versus outputs. However, they weren’t sure how to make this shift a reality at a strategic or tactical level. Objectives and key results (OKRs) helped fill that gap.

Although adopting OKRs was a “great step forward,” Andersen noted that the product team initially used PowerPoint and disparate spreadsheets to track them, which led to a number of challenges. The most notable was a lack of any centralized repository or source of truth for OKRs. The team developed their goals every six months, but “there wasn’t a lot of tie-back to individuals on the teams,” Livsey notes. “There wasn’t a good way for us to create accountability by the teams for the goals we were setting. We were looking for a way to create alignment between team and department goals and then tie them back to our corporate and strategic goals.”

Andersen and Livsey also realized that manual tools had many planning and alignment limitations. “We initially began looking for any Excel templates that people had created as a way to track OKRs, but we quickly realized there were issues with that approach,” Andersen says. “I toyed around with creating a tool within Airtable to track OKRs but also saw the limitations that came with custom building a tool. Even if it could handle the basic structure, there would still be limitations in reporting and accessibility for the team.”

That is when Livsey began looking into commercially available tools. After aligning with the IT organizations and assessing internal needs and requirements, O.C. Tanner began using Viva Goals. Although many companies fear that implementing more solutions will create “tool fatigue” that will ultimately hinder adoption, Andersen notes that the team already felt pain from not having an effective tool to manage and administer OKRs. “People knew we were committed to OKRs, even without a tool, but because we felt the pain, the team was willing to embrace a new tool,” he says. “The team knew that we would keep at this until we felt good about how we were managing OKRs and that they were delivering value.”

Working together for better alignment and productivity

Initially, the O.C. Tanner product team did a small pilot with leadership, including Andersen and the engineering leaders. A few months later, Viva Goals was rolled out to the entire software and IT organization. The new tool has made all of the administration aspects of OKRs “a breeze,” Andersen explains. “Viva Goals helps us keep OKRs established and aligned for the appropriate planning periods and creates visibility across the entire team.”

O.C. Tanner’s product team now incorporates OKRs into all planning and collaborative processes. Because the team uses Viva Goals in semiannual and quarterly planning and refers to it in biweekly status updates, everyone is able to align on their tasks and ensure that their work is laddering up to big-picture initiatives. The goal is to keep everyone on the same page, ensure all OKR status updates are accurate, and empower employees to ramp up internal and team productivity.

Reducing planning cycle times and staying in sync

The intuitive Viva Goals user interface makes it easy for employees to explore, move, and delete OKRs. The module also helps users learn how to better structure OKRs, which has helped shorten the learning curve and accelerate adoption and even positioned the team to develop more ambitious, stretch objectives.

Viva Goals also played a critical role during COVID-19, when teams had to adjust to working remotely. As of the creation of this piece, O.C. Tanner is still 100 percent remote, with plans to move to a hybrid model in August 2021.

Ultimately, O.C. Tanner uses Viva Goals to stay in sync, even in the world of hybrid work. “Viva Goals has tied us together,” Andersen says. “It’s one place to go for all the documentation and information we need. And even though we’ve been working remotely, our strategic planning is stronger than it’s ever been. Adopting OKRs and utilizing Viva Goals have been key to that success.”

O.C. Tanner’s product team also uses Viva Goals to reduce planning cycle times and help team members better understand how their day-to-day tasks contribute to OKRs for a specific period. Their success has helped the broader organization see the power of a software solution in scaling OKRs. Livsey explains that this sets a powerful foundation for the broader organization to implement Viva Goals in the future. “Our ultimate goal is to have a tool that is being used company-wide that creates that broader visibility.”

The biggest benefit the product team has seen using Viva Goals is that it has helped uncover dependencies, which will be tremendously beneficial as more departments use the solution moving forward. “It’s bringing a lot of unity in our focus,” Andersen says. “In product, we’re dependent upon our connections to marketing, to sales, to customer success. There are so many stakeholders in what we do, so when we say we’re going after something, that requires a lot of work outside of our group. We need visibility into that from the top down, and everyone needs to understand their part. That’s what we really want to get to.”

Choosing a platform to evolve with

Although O.C. Tanner is still early in its journey with Viva Goals, Andersen notes that the new features and capabilities that have been added show that Microsoft Viva isn’t just a platform, it’s a partner.

“Every planning cycle, we find more pros and fewer cons with Viva Goals, which speaks volumes about the software and Microsoft,” Andersen says. “To our delight, some of the capabilities we wanted to see in Viva Goals seemed to appear within weeks after we discovered a need for them, such as committed items, better dashboards for tracking progress, and tagging. Internally, it created greater confidence in Viva Goals but also in our OKR process.”

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