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Live from the Accelerate 2025 Conference, Terrence Jones, Organizational Transformation Manager at Mercedes-Benz, shares how he led the rollout and scaling of an outcome-driven strategy program using OKRs and WorkBoardAI. Terrence explores how his team tailored the language and operating model, built a change-advocate network, and established leadership routines to drive adoption, simplify measurement, and strengthen alignment across the organization.
The Challenge
- Unclear strategic priorities:
Employee survey feedback showed teams lacked confidence they were “headed in the right direction,” and struggled to measure progress against key strategic pillars.
- Low accountability and limited transparency across teams:
Teams resisted visibility, and leaders faced difficulty holding groups accountable—creating confusion, misalignment, and “chasing its tail” dynamics.
- Overcomplex performance measurement and reporting overload:
Business areas operated with excessive KPIs and dashboards (e.g., “70 KPIs per team”), with limited real tracking—driving noise instead of actionable focus.
- Fragmented alignment across functions and redundant work:
Cross-team friction (notably business-to-IT translation gaps) created duplicated effort, slower execution, and unnecessary capacity drain.
The WorkBoardAI Solution
- Material capacity and cost savings:
Resolving cross-team execution issues through aligned OKRs freed 9,000+ hours of team capacity and was estimated to translate into over $1M in savings, effectively paying for the program.
- Executive-grade visibility and faster decision cycles:
Leadership gained a real-time “state of the business” briefing (EXCOM cockpit), enabling rapid unblocking and shrinking EXCOM time from a full day to hours or minutes per topic.
- Simplified, automated measurement tied directly to execution:
Teams consolidated bloated KPI sets (e.g., 70 → 7) and automated dashboards that fed directly into WorkBoard—supporting ongoing performance conversations with documented, living data.
- Stronger operational and employee outcomes through alignment:
Customer Services implemented new workflows/systems and vendor improvements, becoming the #1 Mercedes-Benz U.S. call center for the first time in ~40–45 years, while broader adoption helped drive a 20% lift in employee engagement.
Conclusion
By operationalizing strategy in WorkBoardAI with standardized visibility, automation, and simplified metrics, Mercedes-Benz unlocked measurable impact: 9,000+ hours of capacity freed, an estimated $1M+ in savings, faster executive decision cycles that reduced EXCOM meeting load, a 20% engagement lift, and step-change operational outcomes such as becoming the #1 U.S. Mercedes-Benz call center for the first time in decades.
