CAI helps clients design, deliver, operate, and maintain quality, critical manufacturing facilities by pooling its global resources of more than 800 employee-owners. The company’s engineering, technical, and consulting services integrate people, processes, equipment, systems, and facilities into a high-performance, global manufacturing operation. It serves clients in business areas that include Commissioning and Qualification; Quality, Regulatory, and Compliance; Human Performance; and Automation and Information Technology. A business area consists of a set of services that requires a unique quality system, a set of personnel with skills and experience, a potentially unique client base, and requires unique knowledge of a market segment.
As the company grew and expanded its services and delivery capabilities, it recognized the need to embrace a more modern approach to goal setting and management. To foster alignment and strategic focus across its dispersed remote workforce and better respond to its customers’ needs without losing sight of its overall business strategy, CAI adopted the objective and key results (OKR) framework. OKR is a goal-setting methodology for setting ambitious objectives, along with measurable key results, to track progress and align teams toward a common vision. “We adopted the OKR framework because we wanted to be more agile in how we plan for and react to the market,” says Richard Tree, Chief Operating Officer at CAI.
To stay agile and responsive to customer needs, the company needed a solution to help adopt and manage OKRs and better align its globally dispersed remote workforce around more proficient goal setting and business planning. “I recommended Microsoft Viva Goals as a solution to our overly manual, spreadsheet-driven business planning processes because we typically invest in technology solutions that help us stay aligned and minimize repeated work,” says Tree.
“I recommended Microsoft Viva Goals as a solution to our overly manual, spreadsheet-driven business planning processes because we typically invest in technology solutions that help us stay aligned and minimize repeated work.”
Richard Tree, Chief Operating Officer, CAI
Viva Goals is a module in Microsoft Viva, an employee experience platform that’s designed to enhance productivity, collaboration, and employee wellbeing in the digital workplace. Its comprehensive goal management features provide the company with a centralized solution to set, track, and manage OKRs across the entire CAI organization. Employees can align their objectives with the company’s strategic vision, track progress toward these objectives, and better understand how their individual contributions affect the organization’s overall success. And because employees can quickly track and update OKRs in real time, CAI management can immediately identify and respond to areas that require attention and resources. Goal management workflows can also be automated to work with the company’s existing Microsoft 365 apps and services without complexity or code.
Viva Goals works seamlessly with Microsoft Teams and Power BI, making it easy for employees to access and manage OKRs within familiar interfaces, streamlining workflows, and enhancing the potential for data-led collaboration. The interoperability of Viva Goals with CAI’s existing Microsoft ecosystem allows employees to manage and communicate OKRs from where they’re already working and reduce the learning curve for adopting new systems.
Setting goals in a dynamic operating environment
CAI needs to remain agile and adaptable while consistently delivering high-quality services. Using OKRs and Viva Goals provides the company with methods and tools to help thrive in its rapidly evolving and highly competitive markets. The OKR framework helps CAI establish clear objectives and measurable results that align with the company’s mission and strategic vision.
This alignment is critical in navigating the complexities of industries where shifts in regulations, technology advancements, and market trends can affect project requirements and objectives. Viva Goals further supports CAI’s agility with a user-friendly, interoperable platform that employees can use to easily manage and track their OKRs, stay connected and informed, and respond effectively to change. The company is selective about the customers it works with and the services provided, and that hyperfocus depends on its operational readiness.
“We don’t create a traditional business plan now. We use Viva Goals with our customer-facing project teams to manage progress, align strategy, and create accountability to high-level objectives.”
Richard Tree, Chief Operating Officer, CAI
Transitioning from traditional business plans to agile OKRs
Before Viva Goals, CAI used annual business plans to guide operational alignment with strategic objectives. These plans quickly became outdated and less relevant to shifting industry demands, and they languished behind real-time project requirements and the hardwired instincts of CAI’s scientists, engineers, and consultants to focus on solving customer problems in real time. “As we expanded into different countries and added more employees, the existing business planning process became an exercise in futility,” says Tree.
After reading about the OKR framework in the book Measure What Matters by John Doerr, Tree was intrigued by the potential of a modern goal-setting and management approach to help create a more effective business plan. The adoption of Viva Goals started with Tree and his operations team and quickly spread to the company’s strategy team when key stakeholders learned of his team’s experience with it. Now, the company uses Viva Goals for both business units. “We don’t create a traditional business plan now,” says Tree. “We use Viva Goals with our customer-facing project teams to manage progress, align strategy, and create accountability to high-level objectives.”
”Adopting Viva Goals helps us confidently incorporate OKRs for performance reviews and make data-informed decisions about compensation,” says Tree. “The intent is to manage every part of the business with the OKR methodology using Viva Goals.”
“Adopting Viva Goals helps us confidently incorporate OKRs for performance reviews and make data-informed decisions about compensation. The intent is to manage every part of the business with the OKR methodology using Viva Goals.”
Richard Tree, Chief Operating Officer, CAI
Embracing goal management for global operational readiness
To help ensure the successful adoption of the OKR framework, CAI developed internal training and communicated OKR best practices to assist its customer delivery teams with goal setting and management. Some of the best practices that the company adopted included limiting objectives to fewer than three per business unit, limiting key results to no more than three to five options, and using a root cause analysis approach to justify the selection of OKRs. “The most challenging aspect of goal management is writing good goals and key results,” says Tree. “Viva Goals is instrumental in helping us overcome that hurdle.”
These guidelines help CAI maintain focus on strategic priorities and leave room for including more ambitious OKRs. With Viva Goals, the company’s operations team has experienced a significant improvement in its ability to accomplish goals that align with strategic objectives. “The evidence shows that we’re much better at accomplishing our objectives today than before Viva Goals,“ says Tree. ”We’ve shown at least a 30 percent improvement in the diversification of integrated services on engagements since implementing diversification goals in Viva Goals.”
“We’ve shown at least a 30 percent improvement in the diversification of integrated services on engagements since implementing diversification goals in Viva Goals.”
Richard Tree, Chief Operating Officer, CAI
With strong leadership and commitment, organizations that want to optimize OKR methods and tools can experience transformative shifts in goal management and performance. “To help adopt this approach meaningfully, you need people with power to invoke change,” says Tree. “Otherwise, you’re just scratching the surface.” He emphasizes the importance of establishing an OKR Champion in senior leadership to help ensure successful adoption. By embracing Viva Goals and the OKR framework at the highest leadership level, CAI was better prepared to adopt modern goal-management practices that can deliver tangible benefits.
As CAI became more proficient with Viva Goals and the OKR framework, its strategic objectives increasingly focused on employee engagement. Tree explains that while there isn’t a strong connection between engagement and the use of goals at the employee level, leadership now emphasizes using technology to improve employee engagement. “Our company is divided into global operations and strategy and a support team that sits in a few physical offices worldwide,” says Tree. “Everyone else works remotely or is embedded onsite at client locations worldwide. Collaboration and avoiding information silos in such an environment takes effort.”
CAI’s use of Viva Goals and the OKR framework influences customers in the quality of deliverables and the thought leadership, skills, and talent that it brings to projects. As the company achieves its objectives and goals in project management, clients experience better project outcomes. Viva Goals helps CAI streamline communication between employees and management, and project teams can easily share updates on their progress, allowing for better alignment and quicker decision making at the customer level.
One of the company’s most significant benefits since implementing Viva Goals is reinforcing a culture of continuous improvement. ”Our employees are encouraged to learn from each project, taking advantage of OKR insights from Viva Goals to make data-driven decisions that foster growth and innovation in future projects,” says Tree.
“Our employees are encouraged to learn from each project, taking advantage of OKR insights from Viva Goals to make data-driven decisions that foster growth and innovation in future projects.”
Richard Tree, Chief Operating Officer, CAI
This project-level transparency enables CAI to break down silos and create a unified approach to achieving the company’s strategic goals. Using Viva Goals also helps align customer-facing project initiatives with its overall strategic mission, which helps anchor its operational focus to high-level strategy without compromising its ability to react to industry demands.
The combination of Viva Goals and the OKR framework now plays a significant role in shaping the company’s purpose-driven operations. “We’ve become more sophisticated in how we use OKRs and Viva Goals over the past two years, and we anticipate continuous improvement in our business operations,” says Tree. As the company continues to grow and evolve, Viva Goals will be critical in driving alignment, collaboration, and employee satisfaction. CAI is well equipped to maintain its position as an industry leader, delivering innovative solutions and purpose-driven customer experiences.
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