Investec maps leadership vision to organizational initiatives around the globe with Microsoft Viva Goals

With more than 8,500 employees serving high net worth individuals and institutions worldwide, Investec needed clearer visibility into its priorities. By implementing Microsoft Viva Goals, the international specialist banking and wealth management group gained transparency into interdependent goals and measurable key results at all levels.

Investec, a leading international specialist banking and wealth management group operating across the two core geographies of South Africa and the UK with offices across the globe, turned to Microsoft Viva Goals to improve alignment across regions, business units, and teams.

With more than 8,500 employees serving 1 million high net worth individuals, private clients, and institutions worldwide, Investec lacked cohesive visibility into strategic priorities across its global footprint. Existing siloed processes obstructed collaboration towards tracking and achieving business goals.

By implementing Viva Goals after a successful pilot program, Investec gained transparency into interdependent goals at all levels. It allowed the company to make full use of the objective and key results (OKR) framework, a goal-setting methodology for aligning ambitious objectives, along with measurable key results, to mobilize teams toward a common vision.

“Viva Goals creates visibility for all our teams by showcasing and cascading strategic objectives,” says Enolicia Strever, Technology Project Management Office Leader at Investec. “That is from a group level, down to the business level, right down to the team level. This really enables collaboration among teams and identifies cross-team dependencies. This is the kind of visibility that our teams appreciate.”

Now Investec is expanding Viva Goals in a phased approach, aiming to bring the entire organization into close alignment to achieve corporate goals.

“We wanted a clear structure for cascading objectives and goals across regions. Viva Goals helped us do that. Seeing our strategy flow down across the business was huge. Viva Goals made those connections visible.”

Enolicia Strever, Technology Project Management Office Leader, Investec

Driving strategic alignment and engagement with Microsoft Viva Goals

To meet the challenge of successfully implementing OKRs across the company, Investec implemented Viva Goals to boost strategic alignment globally. Integrating seamlessly with Microsoft 365, Viva Goals enables tracking objectives and key results at all levels. By connecting goals from leadership down to individual contributors, Viva Goals provides:

A clear structure for setting and communicating aligned objectives.
Enhanced visibility into interdependent goals across teams and locations.
Real-time tracking of strategic progress through automated analytics.
Data-driven insights to guide leadership decisions.
Employee empowerment to proactively impact objectives.

For Investec, Viva Goals offered the ideal solution to rally its distributed workforce while accelerating growth through enhanced strategic visibility.

"We wanted a clear structure for cascading objectives and goals across regions,” says Strever. “Viva Goals helped us do that. Seeing our strategy flow down across the business was huge. Viva Goals made those connections visible."

Deploying Viva with change management best practices

Guided by proven change management methodologies, Investec took a gradual approach to rolling out Viva Goals. After a successful pilot within digital and technology teams, broader organizational deployment commenced. Coaching and ambassador networks encouraged sustained usage and capability building across regions.

“We provided multi-modal training for both our pilot groups and unfamiliar teams,” says Strever.

Strever notes change management is an iterative process requiring collaboration, transparent communication, and time to evolve mindsets. Investec aims to bring each employee along the journey through a phased, step-by-step approach.

To integrate with existing tools, Viva Goals’ compatibility with Azure DevOps synchronized developer goals across platforms. This reduced administrative workloads while enhancing insights.

Already, strong adoption is evident through high license usage and staff access requests. Investec aims to have all relevant employees actively utilizing Viva Goals within the next year.

Connecting teams and goals across disparate silos

For Investec, a key Viva Goals benefit was bridging geographic and departmental divides by enabling clear line of sight into objectives enterprise wide. “Increased visibility enables contracting among teams and identifying cross-functional dependencies—which has been hugely beneficial,” explains Strever.

With transparent visibility into linked goals, priorities become focused at all levels. Employees gain empowerment to proactively impact outcomes advancing strategic targets.

Viva Goals’ automated roll-up analytics also equip leadership with real-time visibility into progress across regions. “It requires fewer clicks to update leadership to inform their decisions,” says Strever.

In addition, Viva Goals provides value up to the executive and board level by helping leadership monitor strategic progress through easy-to-consume dashboards.

The solution equips board members with real-time analytics to help them prepare for and engage in meetings.

Says Strever: "We customized Viva Goals' dashboard to accommodate the information provided to board members in packet form. This makes it easier for everyone to work from the same data during a meeting and make quicker, outcome-focused decisions.

With comprehensive visibility into the current state of alignment across the organization, leadership can course-correct in real-time if objectives veer off track. Viva Goals gives executives and the board a comprehensive, up-to-date view of performance towards strategic priorities aggregated from business units worldwide.

By cascading down and funneling data up, Viva Goals unified Investec’s strategy across silos, enhancing accountability, productivity, and collective success.

Optimizing Viva Goals for Investec’s culture

To drive effective implementation, Investec partnered with There Be Giants, specialists in OKR frameworks and alignment.

Through in-depth discovery, There Be Giants customized Viva Goals to Investec’s organizational culture, existing processes, and pain points. Immersive workshops, coaching, and leadership enablement all helped build capabilities for lasting relevance of the framework.

Says Strever: “By partnering with There Be Giants, we aimed to set our teams up for long-term success with Viva Goals.”

This human-centered approach delivered a solution primed for adoption and impact across regions. Continuing activities focus on sustaining mindsets, skills, and behaviors to extract maximum value from Viva Goals in the future.

Connecting individuals to company-wide objectives

With Viva Goals, each Investec employee can clearly trace their work's impact on group-wide objectives. This galvanizes engagement towards strategy from all corners of the organization.

Strever recounts that historically, some teams questioned how their initiatives connected to high-level goals. Viva Goals solved this by creating transparency into strategic interdependencies at all levels.

Individuals gain tangible proof of how their contributions ripple through linked objectives to influence group performance. With strategic context, people feel connected to purpose and empowered to drive important outcomes.

This fosters a thriving culture of ownership for both team and collective success.

Creating a culture rooted in alignment

Currently in the early stages of using Viva Goals, Investec aims to continue expanding Viva across the organization through a thoughtful, phased approach focused on change-management best practices. “This is just the beginning of our journey with Viva Goals,” says Strever.

While financial platform integration remains crucial for comprehensive ROI measurement, Investec’s foremost priority is bringing each employee along through gradual, collaborative process improvement.

With Viva Goals, Investec is nurturing a culture steeped in alignment—connecting people to purpose and accelerating unified strategic success. Visibility through technology is helping Investec realize improved execution, communication, and business impact across its global footprint.

The road ahead for Investec and Viva Goals

As Investec continues adopting Viva Goals, Strever aims to achieve 100 percent utilization by relevant employees within the next year. This will help achieve the full benefits of an aligned, engaged workforce.

Strever's vision is a culture where every employee understands how their contributions lead to strategic success. Viva Goals provides the visibility to connect people to purpose, accelerating growth powered by insight and participation across the business.

While the journey is just beginning, Viva Goals is already helping Investec build capabilities to extract maximum value from this solution. With a thoughtful approach focused on strategic visibility and culture, Investec is primed to unlock the full potential of dynamic alignment across teams, functions, and regions.

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