okragile-managementalignment Antonio Polo

OKR to Remove Invisible Fences

How OKRs promote alignment between teams, remove organizational barriers, and transform tacit mindset into explicit collaborative practices.

One of the characteristics of OKRs is the alignment they promote between teams. This reinforces a culture of critical thinking and cross-functional collaboration.

For example, a team developing a given product may have a shared OKR with the Marketing and Customer Success teams, with combined efforts to increase the number of paying users.

To achieve the common goal, these departments will need to work in synergy. They will also need to establish constant interactions. Each department contributes a piece of the result of that OKR. Each has its own Key Result that drives the central Objective.

360-Degree Alignment Meetings

The departments involved can establish 360-degree alignment meetings, focused on resolving dependencies and removing impediments. Below is a basic script for such meetings:

  • Validate OKR progress based on quantitative evidence
  • Assess the confidence level to achieve the OKR by the end of the cycle — this approach encourages qualitative assessment (what is not explicit in the numbers)
  • Address interdependencies and impediments using scaling methods
  • Start with what is working well, then move to the challenging OKRs

Transparency as a Prerequisite

To achieve this objective, it is necessary to follow one of the basic principles of OKRs: they must be transparent and published to the entire organization.

But not everything is as simple as it seems. For this to happen, a few execution cycles will be needed, until OKRs become the glue that binds organizational structures and transforms tacit mindset into explicit practices — what we could call organizational “plumbing.”

Start Small

Therefore, in the first cycles, it is perfectly fine to create OKRs that depend solely on your own department to be achieved. This approach is part of the start small strategy, minimizing the risk of failure in framework adoption.

As usage maturity grows, it is recommended to pursue shared OKRs, using them as powerful tools of organizational articulation. They will help remove the so-called invisible fences between departments.

In Summary

OKRs are fundamentally a tool for intra-organizational alignment and communication. Not just a way to measure results — but a way to connect people, departments, and purposes around objectives that truly matter. To learn how to write them correctly from the first cycle, see Writing and Managing Good OKRs. And if questions remain about what OKRs are — or are not — the article 7 Myths About OKRs answers the most common questions.