The OKR Podcast

Tarun Chopra, Vice President of Product Management, Data and AI at IBM, sits down with Deidre to explore the power of OKRs to build strategic clarity and cross-functional alignment in product orgs tasked with continuous innovation, why leaders must model the right OKR behaviors to drive accountability across the org, and the opportunity to use OKRs as a collaborative coaching tool.

Brianna Ringen, Director of Performance Management, Global IT & Digital Business Office at National Grid, sits down with Deidre to discuss how a single source of truth on strategy execution ‘make lives easier’ while increasing accountability, and the best practices National Grid adopted to implement WorkBoard and OKRs, drive fast adoption, and realize value in less than one quarter.

Jeff Gothelf, business agility and OKR framework expert, organizational designer, author and speaker, sits down with Deidre to share his unique approach to cultivating a product-focused mindset across large, complex enterprise organizations. Jeff uncovers how agile organizations that manage to outcomes are fundamentally in opposition to legacy, command and control leadership practices - and more importantly, how leaders can empower their people with the right framework for autonomy, discovery, and learning.Jeff’s Recommended Reads:Jeff Gothelf.com - BlogSense and Respond - Jeff Gothelf & Josh SeidenContinuing Discovery Habits - Theresa TorezLean UX - Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden

Anthony Coppedge, Principal Agile Digital Sales Global Transformation Lead at IBM, sits down with Deidre to share how he introduced OKRs across Sales and Digital Marketing to ensure the creation of customer value is the focus of every employee in the org, and why a self-directed culture is at the core of successful business transformations. Running his business on fact-based data enables Anthony to validate business goals, navigate with headlights, and inspire deep trust amongst his people.

Cindy Hoots, CIO at AstraZeneca sits down with Deidre to share her unique perspective on driving innovation at speed and scale. Cindy shares the importance of operationalizing the strategy and how it helped get everyone aligned and focused on outcomes.

5 ways OKRs go sideways and why. Tried OKRs and they didn't work or hearing that from a colleague? This podcast talks about why OKRs fail, the root issues, and gives a fresh perspective gaining their true value.

Cathy Benko, Former Vice-Chair and Managing Partner at Deloitte, shares her wisdom on the implications of the way we work and the steps leaders, CEOs, CIOs, and CHROs can take to prepare themselves and their organizations for a thriving and more resilient future.

This week, Deidre welcomes Vikas Butaney, Chief Product Officer and GM at Cisco. Vikas shares how Cisco implemented OKRs, the power of every employee being aligned on the mission, and advice for new business leaders who need to connect distributed teams.

Zendesk CIO Colleen Berbue says "it's just how we run the business" as she shares how OKRs flow into WorkBoard Biz Reviews and they ensure every major initiative has an OKR that clearly aligns to the company objectives. Teams, time, and effort align and they're building stronger accountability muscles as they grow from 6k people to 10k.

Margo Georgiadis, former president of the Americas at Google for 8 years, leads a master class for executives on why the choice of measures is really a strategic decision, and how clarity and alignment on the right measures are growth fundamentals. Her examples from leading Google's ad business and YouTube are priceless and her experience bringing OKRs to Ancestry.com as CEO and to 40-person startups is equally insightful.