Goal setting in an organization can be complex. Some objectives are unique to a specific team, discipline, or product line, while others span the entire department or company. When the same core idea emerges across multiple teams, how should leadership address it? Should goals be structured in a “federal” and “state” system, or should they remain localized? Let’s explore an approach we’ve implemented in a large-scale OKR rollout to strike the right balance.
Team-Specific OKRs: Focus and Accountability
Teams exist to specialize in a particular product, customer segment, geographic area, or business function. Their OKRs should reflect their distinct sphere of influence—the specific aspects of the business they are responsible for improving.
For example, a B2B product team would not be expected to work on B2C initiatives, just as a marketing team wouldn’t set goals for a software engineering team. Clearly defining team-specific OKRs ensures that goals remain relevant, actionable, and impactful.
The Challenge of Shared Objectives
In working with a client’s leadership teams, we observed an interesting pattern. Each team crafted unique OKRs aligned with their responsibilities. However, nearly every team independently identified a goal related to improving ways of working. While their product objectives varied, their internal efficiency goals were strikingly similar.
This presented a choice:
- Allow each team to pursue its own improvements independently, tailoring efforts to its specific needs.
- Create a unified effort to streamline improvements, reducing redundancy and fostering cross-team learning.
While localized efforts could yield customized solutions, they also risked inefficiencies, with teams duplicating efforts and learning in isolation.
A Hybrid Approach: Global Objective, Local Key Results
To balance alignment and flexibility, we adopted a hybrid strategy: a shared organizational objective combined with team-specific key results. This ensured a common strategic direction while allowing teams to tailor execution to their unique contexts.
Example Implementation:
Global Objective: Our deep understanding of the customer continuously influences our decision-making process over the next 12 months.
Local Key Results:
- Team 1: Team leads kick off at least 50% of new initiatives with a proven customer problem.
- Team 2: 90% of product managers speak to at least five customers per quarter.
- Team 3: 75% of newly onboarded marketing managers have spoken to a customer within their first month.
While the overall objective is shared, each team’s key results reflect their specific progress and needs. Team 1 is refining its execution, while Teams 2 and 3 are working to embed customer insights into their workflows.
Finding the Right Balance
This approach is now in motion. Will it be successful? Time will tell. The goal is to maintain a shared vision while allowing teams the autonomy to execute in ways that fit their context. The key risk is divergence—if some teams accelerate while others lag, alignment could suffer. However, by fostering shared understanding and minimizing duplicate work, this model provides a promising foundation.
How does your organization handle shared goals? Would you approach this differently?
