EP46 - Scaling Excellence: The OKR Lessons from a Bold CIO ?

Hey there, digital warriors! ??

We’ve navigated the chaos of transformation together. Back in Episode 43, we launched a mini-series unraveling a real enterprise use case—one that started with a global IT hub, teetering on the edge of failure. We jumpstarted a radical turnaround through behavioral engineering, socio-technical rewiring, and structured holistic evolution. What began as a fight for survival soon transformed into something far greater—a scalable blueprint for sustained technical excellence.?A smart use of Key Behavioral Indicators (KBIs) - Episode 44 - revealed the hidden dysfunctions eroding progress. The Dojos’ Ecosystem - Episode 45 - built the groundwork for continuous mastery, igniting the cultural shift for excellence ??.

But today, we enter a new frontier:

Scaling excellence to a whole organization, beyond a single remote hub.

Here’s the reality—excellence isn’t a tool you plug in ?? aka purchasing a digital transformation blueprint. It’s something you engineer ????♂?, reinforce ????♂?, and sustain ?? until it’s no longer a goal but your company’s DNA ??.

The reality is that what began as a bold experiment in a remote hub quickly turned into a catalyst for an enterprise-wide transformation. When the CIO executives saw the impact we made evolving the worst site into the best one, the mandate was clear—scale it across the entire organization.

But how do you turn a localized success into a wildfire ?? of global evolution?

Today, we reveal how our OKR formula became the driving force behind this unstoppable wave of change. A story that is still making noise in the stock market!

OKR, the Helm for Modern Technical Excellence ?

At this stage of our story, the CIO organization had undeniable proof—the remote hub wasn’t just surviving; it was thriving ??, setting the benchmark for the entire enterprise. IT had transformed from a cost-draining operational department into a powerhouse of competitive advantage. What was once a site earmarked for annual 10-20% cost-cutting campaigns had now become a hub for innovation and research. The company had finally experienced firsthand what a modern, software-first IT department looks like—higher delivery performance, engaged teams, delighted customers, empowered managers stepping up as leaders, and an ROI that spoke volumes.

Most leaders would have stumbled at this crossroads, assuming scaling success meant force-feeding a rigid, top-down copy-paste playbook, turning organic evolution into corporate stagnation. That’s the kiss of death ??.

But this CIO? They saw beyond the obvious. With us as NEDs (Non-Executive Directors) and coaches, they grasped the bigger picture of modern IT leadership.

They weren’t just curious about how we turned the remote hub into the organization’s best-performing site—they were determined to understand why our OKR system functioned so differently from the usual consultancy-driven approach. And that’s when the realization struck—if they wanted to scale excellence instead of chaos, they needed to embrace a two-tier, social outcome-driven OKR model.

Not the cookie-cutter objectives you see in mainstream consulting, where bold goals get set, only to be measured by traditional KPIs disguised as Key Results. Instead, this was about measuring what truly matters: social behaviors—fueling sustainable growth, aligning teams with impact-driven results, and embedding a cultural shift that would redefine the organization’s DNA.

To truly unlock the power of OKRs, we needed to operate on two levels—one that would transform the enterprise from within, and another that would ensure every team’s work translated into tangible customer impact. Let’s dive into how Strategic and Tactical OKRs became the blueprint for sustainable excellence.

1?? Strategic OKRs: The North Star for Embedding Technical Excellence into the Organization’s DNA ??

At the strategic level, OKRs weren’t just about shipping faster or cutting costs. They were about engineering socio-technical evolution across the enterprise. This meant setting OKRs that focused on:

• ???High technical standards – defining what world-class software craftsmanship looks like and holding teams accountable for reaching it.
• ???Behavioral excellence – embedding collaboration, psychological safety, and the cultural traits of high-performance teams into the company’s fabric.
• ???Mastery as the norm – fostering an environment where continuous upskilling, mentorship, and craftsmanship weren’t optional extras but foundational expectations.

The Key Results at this level weren’t tied to short-term delivery speed. Instead, they measured:

• ?? The DORA metrics as a strategic pulse – providing a clear, aggregated view for elite software development.
• ?? The adoption rate of core?high-quality engineering practices?- supporting teams to integrate modern software craftsmanship rather then agility-by-the-book.
• ?? The KBIs and sociometrics measuring collaborative work, engagement, and burnout – cultivating a workplace where people are highly engaged, love their work, and continuously strive for excellence. ?? The engagement rate in the Dojo’s Ecosystem – encouraging active participation, peer coaching, and knowledge-sharing to ensure teams continuously upskilling to embrace mastery as a collective goal.

Excellence wasn’t commanded from above; it had to rise from within—driven by a shared vision of technical excellence. These?Strategic OKRs didn’t track performance but actively encourage the organization’s cultural shift toward world-class engineering standards. The so called,?Tech Excellence Program, became the North Star ?, giving teams a clear purpose ???? and direction ??.

The SW Craftsmanship Dojo? and its expanding ecosystem became the driving force behind transformation, ensuring that technical excellence wasn’t just an abstract ideal but a lived reality within teams. By fostering structured environments for hands-on learning, collaboration, and mastery, the Dojos' Ecosystem turned these strategic OKRs into actionable behavioral triggers—aligning daily work with the pursuit of engineering excellence and making high performance a natural outcome.

But this was only half the equation—strategy alone doesn’t create elite teams; it takes action and alignment at every level.

2?? Tactical OKRs: Connecting Teams to Customer-Centric Outcomes

Let’s be real—brilliant engineering alone doesn’t sell products.

If the organization was going to scale in the market, it needed to ensure that technical excellence wasn’t just a vanity metric—it had to be tightly integrated into the company’s ability to deliver an unparalleled customer experience.

This is where tactical OKRs, and the other components of the Dojos' Ecosystem came in.

At the portfolio level, OKRs were designed to:

• ???Connect the product/service to a better customer experience.
• ???Shift prioritization towards what truly drives customers' satisfaction and engagement.
• ???Ensure the company wasn't just shipping features, but creating long-term value.

How? By shaping bold product/service centric Objectives with Key Results that were directly linked to customer experience and retention metrics, such as:

• ?? NPS (Net Promoter Score) trends – ensuring customers weren’t just “okay” with the product, but raving fans.
• ??5-star review rates – tracking how many customers were actively recommending the product.
• ???Time-to-value metrics – measuring how fast new features actually delivered real impact to users.
• ???User feedback loops integrated into development cycles – ensuring that teams weren’t building in a vacuum, but were continuously refining based on direct customer insights.

?? The secret sauce

Success leaves clues. The lessons learned from scaling OKRs across this organization provide a replicable playbook for others aiming to embed technical excellence as the foundation for sustained growth and profits. By leveraging strategic and tactical OKRs in tandem ??, any company can align its teams with a higher purpose, ensuring that engineering mastery translates into real business impact. Here's how this formula changed everything:

?? The best products emerge when high-performing teams (shaped by strategic OKRs) are also deeply connected to customer outcomes (measured by tactical OKRs).

?? High-standard software development isn't just an internal goal—it’s the foundation for sustained customer delight.?

?? By rooting tactical OKRs in software craftsmanship, teams were inspired not just to code, but to create products worth loving.

The Legacy of Scaling Excellence

This story wasn’t just about OKRs.?This was about behaviorally?engineering an organization that could evolve indefinitely—one that wouldn’t need a massive “transformation” every few years because it had built a culture of continuous improvement into its DNA.

???Scaling transformation isn’t about forcing teams to comply.

???It’s about making excellence the most natural path forward.

And that’s exactly what we did—helping this CIO turn vision into reality, scaling excellence across the entire organization.

So here’s the real question for you:

?? Are your OKRs truly driving growth, or are they just a cascade of disguised KPIs forcing compliance? Is your framework unlocking innovation and technical excellence, or simply measuring what’s convenient?

Because if it’s the latter, you’re already on the path to becoming the next zombie company—just like the giants that have been swept out of the Fortune 500 over the past two decades. The speed and magnitude of change have never been greater, and AI is amplifying this shift at an unprecedented rate.

DeepSeek R1 is just the first wave of a technological tsunami. High-quality software engineering, once a differentiator, is becoming the baseline expectation. The next few years will see the complete disruption of canonical Agile and traditional development, replaced by small, elite teams of software engineers wielding AI superpowers.

Google has already set the trend, alongside other major players, with 25,000 voluntary buyouts—marking a shift that has already resulted in over 40,000 job cuts in just two years since AI became mainstream. And this isn’t an isolated case. Amazon, Meta, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft are all following suit, restructuring their workforce for an era of AI-driven engineering excellence.

Without a forward-thinking OKR strategy to embrace this change, your organization—or the companies in your investment portfolio—are doomed to stagnate in mediocrity, eroding value and ultimately fading into irrelevance. Adapt now, or risk becoming the next casualty of this rapid evolution.

?? Next up

This transformation didn’t go unnoticed. When the auditors from PwC stepped in to assess the impact, they weren’t just impressed—they saw a blueprint for the future of IT governance.

The verdict? A resounding validation of how OKRs, the Dojos' Ecosystem, and a behavioral approach to excellence not only improved ROI and efficiency but reshaped the entire cultural fabric of the organization.

And the best part?

These results are replicable and built to last. This IT giant didn’t just transform—it thrived. Since embracing this evolution, it has grown by over 300%, proving that when excellence is engineered into the core of an organization, the impact isn’t just sustained—it compounds.?

?? Ready to evolve your organization?

If you’re tired of your IT portfolio being a wasteland of missed opportunities and disillusioned teams, it’s time to join our research. Contact us ?? to turn your desert ?? into a lush forest ?? of passion, innovation, and profitability. Embrace the Unicorns’ Ecosystem—and see how IT can become your company’s greatest asset.

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