Stop Cascading. Start Aligning.
Why top-down OKRs fail—and how teams can co-create success
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Leadership sets bold company OKRs. Directors break them down for their departments. Managers translate them for their teams. By the time they land in a team meeting, they’re a bland list of tasks everyone nods at but no one truly owns.
Sound familiar? That’s cascading OKRs. And it’s the fastest way to kill ownership and motivation.
Why cascading fails
On paper, cascading looks logical: executives set the big goals, and teams execute them. But in practice?
Lack of context: Teams rarely understand why those goals matter or how they were chosen.
No ownership: When teams don’t help define their OKRs, they feel like compliance checklists, not commitments.
Rigidity: By the time an OKR cascades down, the context may have shifted. But teams can’t adapt—they’re stuck executing someone else’s plan.
The result? Frustration, disengagement, and OKRs that live in a slide deck—not in the team’s daily work.
A better way: alignment, not assignment
Instead of cascading OKRs, try co-defining them.
Here’s how it works:
Leadership sets the direction Broad strategic priorities, not detailed objectives. Think "expand in Latin America," not "hire 50 Portuguese-speaking sales reps."
Teams define their own OKRs They take the strategic priorities and translate them into goals they own. For example, the product team might set: "Optimize mobile onboarding for Brazilian users."
Collaborate for alignment Leaders and teams review and refine together—but teams keep ownership.
This approach keeps strategy aligned across the organization while empowering teams to decide how they’ll contribute.
The Expanding to Latin America example
In the book, I share a real story: a Silicon Valley startup decided to expand into Latin America. Leadership set the strategic objective: "Grow our market in Brazil before Europe."
They didn’t cascade a plan. Instead, they invited teams to define how they’d support the goal:
HR team: Prioritize hiring Portuguese-speaking talent.
Operations team: Secure office space and handle local compliance.
Product team: Localize the app for Brazilian users.
Each team owned their OKRs and adjusted as they learned. The result? Faster execution and stronger commitment.
Common mistake: confusing alignment with control
Leaders often think alignment means telling teams what to do. It doesn’t. Alignment means clarity on direction and trust in your teams to chart their path.
When teams own their OKRs, they’re more likely to:
Commit deeply.
Adjust fast when things change.
Deliver results that actually matter.
Why this matters
Cascading creates compliance. Alignment creates commitment.
If you want OKRs to drive real change, let teams own their piece of the puzzle. You’ll get fewer status updates and more meaningful progress.
—Paulo
🔗 https://caroli.org
💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulocaroli
📘 https://caroli.org/en/livro/team-okr/ (Team OKR – book info & lau