Beyond OKRs: An Inclusive Approach that Aligns Everyone

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Imagine you're in a large organization where every team proudly displays their OKRs. The employees even know them by heart. They know exactly what they need to achieve this quarter. And yet something is missing. When you ask, "Why do you want to achieve these goals?" or "How do they relate to our response to market changes?", the answers are generally vague, disjointed or missing altogether.

This disconnect is not just a communication problem, but a fundamental alignment problem that is becoming dangerous in today's world of increasing complexity and uncertainty. We live in a time when Donald Trump's tariff policies, China's focus on new markets, the war in Ukraine and the exponential acceleration of artificial intelligence are simultaneously reshaping the business landscape.

Traditional goal-setting systems such as OKRs, while useful for execution, often fail to provide the deeper meaning and direction needed to manage this complexity. The result? Organizations where teams are rowing energetically but in different directions, unable to adapt coherently to the changing winds.

At Enterprise Agility University , we have observed this pattern in dozens of organizations worldwide. The solution is not to abandon OKRs, but to anchor them with something more fundamental: Three Universal Outcomes that provide consistent direction regardless of market turbulence.

Let me explain why this approach works and how it changes organizational alignment in practice. It will be a long explanation, but I promise you, it will change everything you — and the people aroundyou—do.

Where traditional alignment approaches can fail

Traditional strategic planning assumes a relatively stable environment where you can set 1-3 year plans and cascade them through the organization. But today's business landscape is more like white water rapids than a calm lake. The COVID pandemic has taught us that entire business models can be turned upside down in a matter of weeks. AI advances are now compressing similar upheavals into days.

In response, many companies have embraced agile practices and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). These provide adaptability at the execution level—you can adjust quarterly targets as conditions change. However, they don't solve the fundamental problem: if everything is changing so quickly, what permanent direction should guide these adjustments?

Without this overarching guidance, several problems arise:

I recently worked with a global company where different departments had created completely logical OKRs that were actually working against each other. I imagine you also experienced situations like these.

The innovation team was striving for breakthrough AI capabilities that would turn their market upside down, while the operations team wanted to optimize the existing business model. Both had excellent metrics and execution, but they were building a fundamentally incompatible future.

What they needed was not better OKRs, but a unified direction that went beyond quarterly targets.

Three Universal Outcomes: The Foundation for True Alignment

This is where the concept of Three Universal Outcomes comes into play. Rather than just focusing on what to deliver (which is constantly changing), these north stars define how the organization must operate to succeed in uncertainty. They are:

1. Always Ready: Building organizational capabilities to recognize and understand emerging situations without reacting immediately to reduce stress while increasing awareness.
2. Always Responsive: Creating the processes, mindset and partnerships necessary to consistently deliver relevant products and services while maintaining organizational health.
3. Always Innovative: We foster a culture and mindset of constant innovation in all areas of the organization.

What's special about these three outcomes is that they remain constant, even when everything else changes. They are not goals to be achieved, but constant states to be maintained and strengthened.

I would like to show you how this works in practice.

A financial services company I advised was struggling with digital transformation in the midst of regulatory change and fintech disruption. Instead of developing a detailed one to three-year strategy that would quickly become outdated, the company organized around these three North Stars.

To be always ready, they created a dedicated sensing network—employees who spent part of their time monitoring emerging technologies, regulatory changes and shifts in customer behavior. More importantly, they developed standardized ways to communicate these insights across the company and ensure that everyone had a shared understanding of the changing landscape.

For Always-Responsive, they redesigned their product development and delivery processes to emphasize continuous delivery of smaller, valuable increments instead of large releases. They also established clear metrics for wellbeing to ensure that this responsiveness does not come at the cost of burnout.

To be always innovative, they set up cross-functional innovation circles where team members from different departments worked together to redesign their offerings, finding emergent markets. This was not a one-off initiative, but an ongoing capability that was built into the organizational structure.

Let me be super clear... the OKRs didn't disappear—they became the quarterly manifestation of progress toward those North Stars. But when someone asked why they were pursuing a particular goal, the answer was clear: "It helps us become more innovative/ready/responsive in this way."

How the Three Universal Outcomes create system-level alignment

These three North Stars are particularly powerful as they reshape the way the system functions. Each of them strengthens the others and keeps them in balance.

For example, Always Innovative without Always Responsive can lead to "Innovation Theater"—lots of exciting ideas that never reach customers. Always-Responsive without Always-Ready can lead to reactive organizations that become exhausted in responding to every market change without thinking.

Striving for all three in balance creates organizational resilience that transcends any specific market situation or challenge.

A manufacturing company a friend helped illustrates this beautifully. When it came to pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, the company had already simulated similar scenarios and identified alternative suppliers thanks to its 'always-ready' capabilities. Their always-innovative approach meant they quickly redesigned their products to use more available components. And thanks to their always-responsive systems, they were able to quickly inform their customers of these changes and the delivery times.

While competitors were still trying to figure out how to adjust their annual plans, this company was already adapting and capturing market share.

Implementing them in your company

Switching to this model from Enterprise Agility doesn't require a complete organizational overhaul. Here's a practical approach to get you started:

First, assess your current state based on each of the Universal Outcomes. How innovative is your culture really? How well can you recognize and understand new situations? How consistently can you respond with relevant offers while maintaining the health of your organization?

Be brutally honest—many organizations overestimate their capabilities in these areas. One healthcare company another colleague worked with thought they were very innovative because they had an innovation lab. But when we looked at their actual track record of implementing new ideas, the reality was very different.

Next, identify the critical gaps in each area and prioritize based on your industry's specific challenges. For this, you need to involve evryone to minimize blind spots.

For a technology company, strengthening continuous innovation might be most pressing. For a regulated industry, the ability to always be ready to recognize regulatory changes might be a priority.

Then redesign your OKR process to explicitly link quarterly goals to these north stars. Each OKR should clearly support progress in one or more areas of the North Stars.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you should communicate these 3 universal outcomes throughout the organization in different ways depending on the target people.

They should become part of the everyday language of the company. When making decisions, employees should naturally ask themselves: "How can this decision help us become more innovative, better prepared or more responsive?"

A last example...

A global retail chain was struggling with the rise of changing consumer habits. The different regions had developed their own strategies: Some relied on traditional retail expertise, others on online approaches, leading to organizational confusion.

This is how the 3 universal outcomes helped them. Within six months, the entire global organization had a common understanding of the direction: always innovative in terms of customer experience (whether digital or physical), always ready for changing consumer preferences through improved data capabilities, and always responsive in terms of supply chain and merchandise assortment.

Something important is that regional OKRs still varied depending on local market conditions, but everyone understood how their goals related to these universal outcomes. The CEO later told me that for the first time in years, leadership team meetings focused on how to strengthen these capabilities together, rather than discussing competing strategic visions.

The company weathered the pandemic far more effectively than its competitors and emerged with stronger customer loyalty and market position. And the most important... ALIGNED WITH A UNIFIED STRATEGY!!!!

As you can see, these 3 universal outcomesshould become part of the everyday language of you, your body language, and your company. When you make decisions, your employees should naturally ask themselves: "How can this decision help us become more innovative, better prepared or more responsive?"

In a world where geopolitical tensions are changing trade patterns, conflict is disrupting supply chains and AI is rewriting the rules of business almost daily, organizations need more than just well-formulated OKRs. They need a lasting direction that provides guidance regardless of the next disruption. And this is where the Three Universal Outcomes in Enterprise Agility start to make sense.