Lateral Linking Beats Cascading Down

“Having goals improves performance. Spending hours cascading goals up and down the company, however, does not. . . . We have a market-based approach, where over time our goals all converge because the top OKRs are known and everyone else’s OKRs are visible. Teams that are grossly out of alignment stand out, and the few major initiatives that touch everyone are easy enough to manage directly.”

“Even as modern goal setting successfully transcends the org chart, unacknowledged dependencies remain the number one cause of project slippage. The cure is lateral, cross-functional connectivity, peer-to-peer and team-to-team. For innovation and advanced problem solving, isolated individuals cannot match a connected group. Product relies on engineering, marketing on sales. As business becomes more intricate and initiatives more complex, interdependent divisions need a tool to help them reach the finish line together.”