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Viva Goals Retirement
Hi, Microsoft just announce at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/goals/goals-retirement that Viva Goals ending in December 2025. How do you feel about this announcement? It was one of the top business use cases with significant business value in Viva Suite after Viva Topics deprecation.The benefits of OKRs and using Viva Goals
Have you had a chance to read this blog post? How we are improving employee engagement and business value with Viva Goals - Microsoft Community Hub It documents the journey my peers and I have had by ... Having targeted Objectives Having supported and specific Key Results and Using Viva Goals to manage the ongoing progress our team is having against the OKRs Our journey has seen measurable improvements, as documented in the above blog post. I'm curious... have you seen similar or different results? What's your journey been like? Or, if you haven't started, what are some areas that you hope to see improved?Understanding the connection between OKRs vs. Performance Management
The movie "Air" details the intricate relationships that led to Nike signing a young Michael Jordan to his first basketball sneaker contract, and the creation of "Air Jordans." As part of the negotiation, Jordan's mother pushed for -- and received -- a stipulation that the family would earn a percentage of sales for every sneaker sold. The movie ends with Nike CEO Phil Knight (played by Ben Affleck) pondering how many sales they might possibly generate, which Nike estimated to be $3 million in the first three years. The movie later revealed staggering sales of $126 million in year one for Nike, and Jordan winning Rookie of the Year and making the All-Star team on his way to becoming the greatest player of all time. Talk about crushing your goals! I bring this up because there are a lot of elements of "goal setting" at play here ... Nike as a company, Jordan as an individual, sales targets, CEOs, agents, customers, and other stakeholders. At Microsoft Viva Goals, we often get questions around the intersection of goals and performance management / personal development. After all, we're talking about goals, right? What's the difference between the goals we set as a department, and the goals I talk about with my manager at our 1:1? That led us to publish our point of view: Understanding the connection between OKRs vs. Performance Management Within the document you'll see we present 4 key pillars: OKRs are designed for collaborative, strategic goal setting for your business and teams. Performance Management is used to define individual priorities in support of the larger team effort. OKR output could be one of many inputs into an assessment of an individual’s performance, but it’s important that it’s not the only input. OKR output should generally not be directly tied to an individual employee’s compensation. If we apply these to our Nike story, CEO Phil Knight would have set company-wide OKRs for his entire organization. In addition to goals around their running sneakers and clothing, they might have had an aspirational objective of expanding their market share for the basketball division (people forget at the time, Nike was a distant third to Converse and Adidas), and a key result metric of exceeding $1 million in sales a year of Air Jordans. (Boy, would the percentage results in Viva Goals have been off the chart that year). For the use of this example, remember that Michael Jordan wasn't technically an employee of Nike. A better analogy might be Peter Moore, the designer of the shoe. While he might have had a team OKR around the launch of Air Jordans, his individual priorities would have been judged on a broader basis ... how did he contribute to his team, what was his individual impact, how well did he work with his peers, etc. If he was in his personal review, while the success of Nike selling $126 million in year one certainly would have been one of many inputs to his review, it shouldn't have been the only input. Here at Microsoft, we love aspirational goals. So whether yours is for your company to launch a $100 million brand, or a personal goal to become the greatest of all time at what you do, OKRs and Performance management can lead the way. To learn more, review our document: Understanding the connection between OKRs vs. Performance Management
Viva Goals and Power Automate
I would like to create a flow in Power Automate to download the current list of some 924 OKRs in our 15 organisations and send it to PowerBI and trying to learn how to do it but "Viva Goals" appears nowhere in any Power Automate community search and "Power Automate" appears nowhere in any Viva Goals community search. I'm clearly missing some fundamental knowledge, please help. Thanks, Richard
What's the most difficult part of starting an OKR journey?
I've been thinking about starting energy--how it's hard to pick up (and keep!) a new project or habit. Multiply that by 100 people and finding the starting energy to change how we work seems almost impossible. I'm curious to learn from others' experiences. What's been the most difficult part of getting started with OKRs/Viva Goals (leadership buy-in, cultural change, learning a new tool, etc.)? Have you found strategies that work? Or wishlists that could make it easier?
Identifying biases in your goal setting process
Outside of my day job as a Viva Goals Advisor, one of my passion projects is related to finance. For the past 5 years, my friends and I meet quarterly to talk about finance topics. This year we have been exploring cognitive biases and how it affects our behaviours and decisions as investors. As I prepared for our next meetup in September, I realised how some of these biases might show up in an organisation’s goal setting processes, hampering our ability to full execute on the objectives we set out. Biases are simply mental shortcuts, unconscious and automatic processes we use to make decisions quickly. Some biases might show up when launching a goal setting framework like OKRs, and others during the execution phases. Here are some examples: 1. Status Quo Bias Definition: Resisting change due to fear of loss or attachment to the familiar, a preference to leave things as they are. Example: When launching a new goal-setting process like OKRs, status quo bias might manifest as resistance to adopting the new framework because the team is comfortable with their existing goal-setting methods even when there is a need to improve strategic alignment and transparency in the organisation. Tip: Change is hard! Frame the change in a way that highlights potential gains and benefits rather than losses. A change management process like Prosci’s ADKAR model can be used to help employees understand why the change is needed. 2. Confirmation Bias Definition: Seeking information that confirms existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence. Example: Imagine a team is working on setting key results for a specific objective. They have an idea of how they want to achieve their goals and start looking for information that supports their idea. They focus on data and examples that confirm their initial beliefs while ignoring information that might suggest a different approach could be more effective. Tip: Encourage your teams to actively seek different perspectives and data that challenges their initial assumptions. Avoid groupthink (Another bias). 3. Hyperbolic Discounting Definition: Prioritizing short-term rewards over long-term gains. Example: A team might decide to prioritize executing on key results or initiatives for quick wins and that provides immediate satisfaction even if initiative does not contribute as much to their long-term objectives. Tip: The dopamine hit we experience when we achieve a goal can be a good catalyst for motivation, encourage teams to set key results and initiatives with both short and long-term wins to fully achieve the objectives set. 4. Sunk Cost Fallacy Definition: The tendency to continue investing resources in a failing strategy or endeavour due to the resources already committed, rather than objectively evaluating its viability. Example: In a goal setting process sunk cost fallacy could lead a team to stick with a failing project simply because they have invested a lot of time and effort into it. For instance, if a team's OKR involves launching a new product feature that is not meeting user needs, instead of pivoting and reallocating resources they might continue working on it to recoup their investment. Sunk cost fallacy causes the team to make decisions based on past investments rather than evaluating the current situation objectively. Tip: It is important to regularly assess the progress of your goals and make data-driven decisions. With Viva Goals, you get real time data on the progress of your OKRs with our robust data integrations. If an objective is not yielding the expected results, it is time to pivot. 5. Anchoring Definition: The tendency to rely heavily and make decisions based on the first information we have, using it as an ‘anchor’ or point of reference to evaluate any new information we receive. Example: In a goal-setting process, anchoring bias might occur when a team member suggests a specific target, like a percentage increase in sales, during discussions. Other team members might adjust their targets around this initial suggestion, either raising or lowering their goals based on the anchor, rather than independently evaluating what is realistic. Tip: While setting key results, encourage the team to independently produce their own target suggestions before discussing them as a group. This can help prevent the team from fixating on the first suggestion and allow for a more diverse range of targets that are well-considered and aligned with the objective. Just as biases can impact our financial decisions, they can also impact an organization's ability to effectively execute its objectives. They are mental shortcuts we often take unconsciously, so awareness is key. Recognize biases, challenge assumptions, seek diverse perspectives, and regularly assess progress when setting goals for your organization.
Bulk import of Excel template of OKRs into Viva Goals
In Viva Goals, it states that you can bulk import OKR's using an Excel template that downloads. You cannot make any changes to the template (no renaming or moving columns etc.), just add data. Which I did, but it keeps failing, but it doesn't tell me why it fails or how to fix it. I even added data that was supposed to be "optional". I also ensured that I have the Excel Integrations downloaded. I confirmed how the file format was saved. Could it be that in the Excel template, the Item Type sheet (Objective, Key Result, Project) has different naming properties then what is showing in the trial version that I am using? Under the Admin Dashboard > Custom Terminology, it reads, OKR, Objective, Key Results and Initiative. Could this effect my import? Any help would be much appreciated. Using the OKR template would be very beneficial. Thank you.Viva Goals - OKR Manage Permission problem
When set permission to "Only selected person to view and align" and share to few users allow to edit. Found that those users can't search my KR and unable to align it. Same issue when create Dashboard, also unable search that locked OKR, owner also unable search own OKR, what's wrong with this ? Found only when set back permission "Anybody can view", then only able to search to align. This problem is found start from 18/07/2023, before that is able to search after lock. Any solution for this ?
