BUSINESS IMPACT
EMBRACED
EMBRACED
TEAM OPENLY
NEW DIRECTION
SUNSETTED
TWO DAYS BEFORE
PITCH TO ELT:
ELT made the call and cancelled our slot. We hit our time limit.
and became a valued resource
COLLABORATION
COLLABORATION
ALEX FOUND PASSION FOR LEADING WITH
SUNSETTED
Balancing Craft and Speed
Data-driven critiques allowed the team to stay focused, and keep us driving towards solutions that solved problems, not what looked the best or felt the most familiar.
“Design for now, plan for later” to help us keep us laser focused on building the most simplified version needed to provide proof of concept.
Fluent, Microsoft’s UI Design System, gave us structure by letting us focus on flow and intent, instead of spending time redesigning components from scratch.
By grounding the team with the end-to-end flow, I had quickly established what core problems the team needed to solve for. And with this established, we officially moved into taking concepts and data and turning them into tangible ideas.
To balance craft and speed, I leveraged three leadership principles of mine:
To reset, we started listening. We spoke with Microsoft VPs outside our org, external leaders across levels, and reviewed research on goal setting.
Alex thrived here. She asked sharp questions, made smart connections, and helped surface deeper themes across teams. It was clear she was ready to lead.
Letting Curiosity Lead
Journey Mapping
Interview Insights
DISCONNECTED
DISCONNECTED
FEELS
BURN OUT
BURN OUT
SUFFERS FROM
“I would be better served if everyone was more TRANSPARENT.”
Breakthroughs in workshops can come from anywhere. For Alex and the team, it came during an interview, when a manager shared how hard it was to set org-wide goals using OKRs.
We realized the real alignment work wasn’t happening at the executive level. It was happening with Senior Managers. The ones responsible for translating high-level goals into action, coordinating across teams, and reporting back up.
Their role was high stakes, high stress, and often invisible.
Senior Managers sit at the center of communication. They report upward to executives, coordinate sideways with peers, and guide their teams below. Each direction demands clarity, alignment, and constant context-switching.
With Alex’s help, the team pivoted. We stopped trying to force OKRs and started focusing on the people doing the hard work of alignment.
To make this real, I worked with Alex and our product partners to build a “happy path”. A simple flow that followed a Senior Manager through Microsoft’s ecosystem, that would give a starting point for the rest of the team to build on.
The journey started with an email prompt, moved to goal creation in Teams, and continued through sharing updates in PowerPoint and Teams chat. It ended with recognizing team success.
This flow reframed our goal: not to perfect OKRs, but to reduce friction for people driving alignment in real time.
Sr. Manager
Sr. Manager
Executive Leadership
Manager
Individual Contributor
Mona and her manager, Carole, receive updates and are able to check in with their teams
Mona adds high level goals
in app
Mona prepares a presentation for an executive review using export to PowerPoint
Carole is able to comment, edit and select which metrics she wants to keep track of in her digest email
Time passes, Mona sees a quarterly wrap up in email that summarizes her teams wins and opportunity areas
She shares her team’s wins both privately and publicly via
the Praise functionality
Daisy is invited to add details, which she is able to do live in app, or through Teams & email
When all information is in, Mona shares out her team’s goals via Viva Engage & email
David starts sharing status in his flow of work
The Role of Sr. Managers - Complex Organizational Collaboration
Fun Fact
Mona Kang
Daisy Phillips
Carole Poland
Adi Kapoor
David Power
THIS IS A STORY ABOUT SUPPORTING MY REPORT ALEX AND SCALING A PRODUCT FEW BELIEVE CAN SUCCEED
Alex is a Senior Product Designer who had been shuffled between teams. She felt stuck and wanted to explore if design management was right for her. To do that, she needed a meaningful project where she could lead and grow.
At the same time, Viva Goals was struggling. The product needed a clearer direction, stronger integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, and better support for enterprise users. Many on the team were burning out, unclear on the path forward, and unsure if the product could even survive.
Key Challenges:
Alex had little visibility within the design org and I was her third manager in six months
VISIBILITY
VISIBILITY
ALEX WANTED
Shift to thinking about Enterprise clients
Lack of product focus and integration with Microsoft tools
SCALE
SCALE
RAPIDLY
Teams couldn’t connect their work to company goals
Strategies felt vague and uninspiring
CLARITY
CLARITY
CREATE
Where It Started: From Ally.IO to Viva Goals
Before Viva Goals, there was Ally.IO, an OKR tool for small and mid-sized businesses, acquired by Microsoft in 2021. It was built around the founder’s belief that alignment creates clarity.
The company grew fast, focused on promoting a specific OKR philosophy and building features to support 30 distinct user personas. The result was a dense, rigid product rooted in one framework: OKRs.
Over time, that vision stopped resonating. Enterprise sales slowed, customers left, and product-market fit slipped away. As selling became more difficult, many founding members started to leave the team en masse.
This created a divide within the team, splitting it into two distinct groups.
MOVED ON
MOVED ON
CLUNG TIGHTLY
CLUNG TIGHTLY
ONE GROUP
ONE GROUP
www.vivagoals.com/home
M
SCALING A PRODUCT
Maintaining alignment is often harder than establishing it in the first place.
VIVA GOALS
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