Hosted by Deidre Paknad, WorkBoard CEO
The OKR Podcast is designed to help leaders-from-home use the OKR technique and other cutting-edge strategies to keep their distributed teams connected, aligned, and moving toward results.
While many recognize the power of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to foster trust based on transparency, not proximity, there is a dearth of information on how to do them well and reap their full benefit. That’s where this podcast comes in!
Denise Kanfield drives the OKR and results program at Cisco. Before that, she was a business agility and transformation leader at Thomson Reuters for three years. Denise has done OKRs at three different companies, and she intentionally sought out a role to lead OKRs and results management. We sat down with her to tap the breadth and depth of her knowledge in the OKR space.
OKR Podcast host and WorkBoard CEO Deidre Paknad first met Rob Frohman, Co8 Group Cofounder and CEO, when he was working with Cisco on their move to Agile and she was working with them on the move to OKRs — peanut butter and chocolate! Deidre and Rob discuss how strategy and execution improve and accelerate with these frameworks.
Erin Rifkin, General Manager at Microsoft, talks about alignment and measurement muscle, how shared OKRs drive the One Microsoft vision, and why learning is the key to, well, everything.
Deidre Paknad, CEO and co-founder of WorkBoard, joins Jeff Richards, Managing Partner, GGV Capital, for an unscripted and honest conversation about purpose-built software, iterating rapidly on strategic priorities, operating with an acceleration mindset instead of a safety mindset and so much more.
Tony Merritt talks about the cost of drift and the power of time and purpose to accelerate transformation. After more than two years with OKRs and WorkBoard, he shares how Secureworks shifted from reporting results to elevating them and how his team increased their own velocity. What started as "ivory tower OKRs" in a spreadsheet has become a business and transformation accelerator.
Artificial harmony leads to artificial alignment — hard discussions and risks are avoided, passive decisions are made and choices aren’t. Exec coach Jocelyn Kung offers simple steps leaders can take to create trust, healthy conflict and better outcomes.
Chris Cravens, former CIO of Zynga and Uber as well as former VP, Software Engineering for Splunk shares what he learned about OKRs from Zynga, his passion for clarity, and how servant leadership leads to better business outcomes. Chris is one of few people who has ridden three high growth rockets — his lessons are worth learning, including how ruthless prioritization helps people thrive as fast growth companies scale.
Sarah Frew, Senior People and Culture Generalist at Plenty of Fish, shares how this fast-growth startup drives fast, full cross-team alignment from the leadership team to squads and functional teams with OKR themes and a formal OKR Week in which the whole company gives attention to purposeful alignment. She shares what they’ve learned over 2 years and how their feedback loop improved their process.
Nanci Taylor, VP of Business Agility at IBM, talks about aligning on strategic imperatives, competing to win, and better business reviews. She explores the Capacity-vs-Ambition Gap and how sharp focus on it drives smarter decisions and outcomes.
LexisNexis Special Services & Risk Solutions Government CEO Woody Talcove talks about creating rapid competitive advantage with alignment and focus — creating customer value faster than competitors. He shares the fast wins and culture building experience OKRs enabled and how he got great outcomes in tough conditions.
Michael Marcellin, CMO at Juniper Networks, talks about the power of their OKR practice and platform during the sudden move to work from home Spring 2020, what his personal leadership essentials are, and how his team achieves its best possible outcomes.
Deidre Paknad, CEO and co-founder of WorkBoard, discusses how leaders can turn current events into a catalyst for revisiting and improving the way teams come together, create value, and drive strategic priorities.
David Kreiger, CEO of SalesRoads, talks about how OKRs have helped his autonomous teams stay aligned, avoid the meeting trap, and drive results.
Sarah Davis, Director of Portfolio Programs - Data and AI at IBM, discusses how she’s using OKRs to enable a very global organization to do its best work for customers.
Ryan Padilla, Head of Global Planning at GHX, discusses the organization's experience with implementing the OKR practice and how OKRs helped give the GHX team the clarity to stay focused on value to customers.
WorkBoard CEO and OKR Podcast host Deidre Paknad appears on the Build Podcast to talk about why OKRs matter, how to use them, and how to get the doubters on board.
Cisco Security Business Chief of Staff Anna Birch discusses the importance of alignment to drive growth in large enterprise.
There’s often an inverse relationship between a company’s growth and its alignment. As a company scales up, alignment far too frequently goes down just as quickly. Tien Tzuo, CEO and Founder of Zuora, shares ways that a company can maintain its alignment and objectives as it undergoes hypergrowth.
In this fun interview Marcin Kleczynski, CEO and founder of Malwarebytes, tells the fun story of growing his company from its start when he was a teenager to $30 million in revenue from a college dorm room to $200 million and 800 people today.
Mark Organ is a visionary who founded both Eloqua and Influitive and is the author of the best-selling book The Messenger is the Message. In this episode, Mark talks very candidly about the challenges Influitive faced in 2017 that led him to adopt OKRs and the WorkBoard platform – they’d hit a growth wall and the great people in the org didn’t have great clarity on how best to contribute.
For executive leaders, OKRs represent a communication opportunity. They can provide direction and motivation, clarity and inspiration – a motivated, inspired organization wants to achieve its best possible impact.
