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Organizations can incorporate goals into their rhythm of business (ROB) by using dashboards across key meetings and activities in order to build a healthy goals program.
Value Driver: Drive strategic planning and alignment.
Objective of this meeting: The purpose of this activity is to drive strategic planning at the senior leadership level. It's often started in the launching phase of a rollout to share a common vision, and continued to make sure senior leadership is kept in alignment.
Annual strategic planning is generally run by the CEO or senior leader of a division. The meeting is with members of the senior leadership team, and serves to set the goals for the year.
From there, quarterly and monthly meetings are run by the CEO or often their Chief of Staff. The meeting is with members of the senior leadership team and serves to make sure the goals for a given time period are on track.
Who is involved
- Meeting owner: CEO, Organizational lead, or Chief of Staff
- Audience: Senior leadership team
Meeting categories
These are meeting types that you might already have in your existing rhythm of business. Remember, we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather, incorporate goals into your existing workflow.
- Annual strategic planning
- Quarterly reviews with senior leadership
- Monthly scorecard review
How goals help
- Engage key stakeholders early in the planning process and establish ownership and accountability of critical goals
- Identify macro dependencies, both vertically and horizontally across the organization, to ensure that key projects can be achieved without blockers
- Surface early constraints such as budget, bandwidth, and priorities to allow for planning and execution
- Keep senior leadership informed on overall progression of goals at the org level
- Ensure ongoing, consistent accountability to avoid a “set it and forget it” mentality
Key milestone
Dashboard report for senior leadership to provide transparency and highlight opportunity and risk
Leadership Strategy Dashboard (Annual)
A review dashboard for annual planning is a great way to visually organize your meeting. The dashboard for Annual Leadership Strategy might have the following elements, or widgets, within Viva Goals.
| Widget type | Widget name | Use | Benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text block | Mission & Vision | Communicate the vision, mission, and values of the company. | Allows organizations to reiterate the purpose and get everyone excited about the upcoming year. |
| Text block | Agenda | Communicate the agenda for the meeting. | Helps set the context for everyone for the meeting. |
| Custom Embed | Revenue and Financial Metrics | If needed, share financial metrics from previous time periods using an embedded report from Excel or other source. | Allows senior leaders to quickly communicate financial status without having to jump back and forth to pull data from other tools. |
| Text block | Major initiatives | Highlight major initiatives to be achieved in the coming year. Use “The 5 Ps” as a starting point if needed. | Allows everyone to review the “big rocks” the organization focuses on during the year. |
Leadership Strategy Dashboard (Monthly or Quarterly)
A review dashboard for quarterly and monthly Strategy and Alignment meetings is a great way to engage senior leadership, keep goals top of mind, and make sure progress is on track.
The dashboard might have the following elements, or widgets, within Viva Goals.
| Widget type | Widget name | Use | Benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text block | Agenda | Communicate the agenda for the meeting. | Helps set the context for everyone for the meeting. |
| Custom Embed | Revenue and Financial Metrics | If needed, share financial metrics from previous time periods using an embedded report from Excel or other source. | Allows senior leaders to quickly communicate financial status without having to jump back and forth to pull data from other tools. |
| Text block | Major initiatives | Highlight major initiatives to be achieved in the coming year. Use “The 5 Ps” as a starting point if needed. | Allows everyone to review the “big rocks” the organization focuses on during the year. |
| Text block | Updates from last month | Used to communicate what happened last month, plan for the upcoming month, identify current blockers and dependencies. | Enables the manager to quickly communicate the plan for the coming month and discuss how the team can tackle problems they’re facing. |
| OKR list | View current objectives | List objectives by filtering them based on the active time period being reviewed. | Enables managers to briefly summarize the progress made since the beginning of the current cycle. |
How to run your Leadership Strategy meetings
Imagine you’re a large organization who primarily uses annual strategic planning today, and historically checked in on progress against your scorecard quarterly.
As you incorporate goals into your business rhythms, you would still keep your annual planning cadence, but move towards monthly check-ins, using dashboards within Viva Goals to track progress.
Annual Planning
Annual planning is the most critical piece in setting up your company for success. With a concrete plan, you'll gain a clear idea of where your organization is headed, how you'll define success, and how you'll achieve your organization's biggest priorities. Annual planning consists of three phases.
One to three months before the new year
Senior-level leadership meets and discusses annual company goals. In this phase, you should ask the following questions:
- Which goals do we want to roll over for the new year?
- What did we learn from the goals we reached this year, and from those we didn't reach?
- What are our current gaps and problem areas? This should include market and industry, cross-functionality, team ability, and resourcing.
One month before the new year
Senior leadership should communicate with team leaders about annual company-level goals and how those align with the team's quarterly goals. Discussion with team leaders ensures that every team understands the priorities for the upcoming year.
In this phase, you should accomplish the following things:
- Make sure team leaders understand the company mission, and vision and how those tie to the company-wide goals
- Give team leaders a chance to deliver feedback on company-wide goals
- Train team leaders on goal best practices and Viva Goals
First week of the new year
Senior leadership shares the organizational goals with the entire company, and schedules regular check-ins, monthly, and quarterly reviews.
Monthly or Quarterly Strategic Meetings
While annual planning sets the north star for the year, monthly or quarterly strategic meetings ensure members of the senior leadership team stay on track.
The dashboard for this meeting should have two elements:
Text boxes with qualitative information
- Meeting agenda
- List of major initiatives or “big rocks”
- What went well / completed items
- Key learnings and opportunities to improve
- Risks, mitigation, and where help is needed
Widgets with quantitative information
Objectives and key results for this time period showing exact progress against goals
How to create and customize dashboards within Viva Goals
Now that you’ve seen the “why” around using dashboards in your business rhythms, see the step-by-step process “how” to create a dashboard, add panels, customize widgets, and present your data in the Microsoft Viva Goals software platform: Create and customize dashboards within Viva Goals.