Microsoft's innovative platform, Viva, has been making waves in the corporate world. You might have come across Viva and its multifaceted offerings over the past year. If you haven't, one thing's for sure—Viva has the potential to revolutionize the way organizational leaders and employees perceive their business. Viva, an Employee Experience and Engagement Platform, has a particular offering we're going to delve into today: Viva Goals. I'll share why I wish that every company I have worked for in the past had implemented it.
Tactics or Strategy
In business discourse, 'tactics' and 'strategy' overlap in meaning, albeit with nuances. 'Strategy' generally refers to long-term business plans and goals, while 'tactics' pertain to individual, short-term steps and actions required to implement a strategy. This usually translates into leaders focusing on strategy - planning, talking, and measuring strategic outcomes - while employees handle tactical planning and decision-making.
This dichotomy can create challenges due to differing understanding of the business framework and operations among leaders and employees. How can leadership ensure that day-to-day or week-to-week tactical actions are advancing the organization’s strategic objectives? Similarly, how can employees understand the impact of their actions on these objectives? Aligning tactical action with strategic objectives has always been a significant challenge for organizations.
Introducing Viva Goals
Microsoft’s Viva Goals is tailored specifically to bridge this gap. It establishes a clear link between tactical actions and strategic outcomes, effectively closing the divide between tactics and strategy. For leaders, this presents an opportunity to monitor tactical actions that contribute to strategic objectives. Conversely, employees can see the impact of their actions on these objectives.
Implementing Viva Goals begins with defining your organization's Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)—the strategic component. You have a multitude of options for setting up and tracking your OKRs, such as client count, website page hits, sales figures, or any other relevant metrics. For instance, if your OKR is to increase leads generated by email campaigns by 20% over the next six months, Viva Goals displays your current increase percentage, the 20% target, and your progress based on the timeline. Moreover, Viva Goals can autonomously collect data from various sources, ensuring it remains current without manual updates.
The solution then filters down to the tactical level by associating initiatives and tasks with particular OKRs. For example, you can assign initiatives like "Design six additional email campaigns" or tasks like "Automate connection of lead generation system to mass-mailing solution" to users or user groups. Viva Goals can even be linked with project or task management solutions such as Dev Ops to automatically update task progress and completion, eliminating redundancy and boosting adoption.
Why This Matters
Implementing Viva Goals in your organization offers significant benefits. For leadership, Viva Goals aligns tactical actions with strategic objectives, reduces uncertainty about progress towards achieving objectives, and provides real-time visibility into tactical actions.
From a personal standpoint, having worked in large corporations, I often found myself executing tasks without understanding their broader impact. In my time at Hewlett Packard, for instance, I worked on a small team testing power equipment. While I understood the tactics of ensuring the power supplies met specifications, I was unclear on how these tasks contributed to the overall objectives of the company. This disconnect dampened my enthusiasm and interest in the work. Had Viva Goals been implemented, I would have understood how my tasks contributed to larger strategic objectives, fostering a greater sense of purpose, and keeping me engaged in my work.
Aligning everyone in the organization, from the CEO to the newest employees, behind strategic objectives can lead to a dramatic shift in how people approach their work and define how tactical decisions get made. I’d recommend giving Viva Goals a try— it’s amazing what an organization can accomplish when everyone is pulling in the same direction.
If you want your organization to gain strategic and tactical alignment, give us a call toll free at 1-877-HIRE-UIT (447-3848) or Contact us now.
