How do you handle competing stakeholder OKRs or incentives that misalign with the GTM strategy, and how do you reset them?

Answer

5 Answers

Stakeholder Management

Susan Chaika

Apollo.io Head of Product Marketing | Formerly Apollo.io, Zendesk, LiveRamp, Nielsen • 2mo

Here’s the thing - competing goals/OKRs/incentives across teams is a structural problem that PMM will rarely be able to solve alone. The best you can do is to make the tradeoffs explicit and push for a metric that can be shared across teams, but the ultimate decision may be outside your scope of authority. Name the problem: First step is to explicitly name the problem that different teams are working towards different goals. E.g. Product built this feature to increase ACV by selling into new per ...Read More

11,177 Views
Desiree Motamedi

Salesforce CMO - Next Gen Platform • 2mo

One of the things I appreciate most about Salesforce is the V2MOM framework — Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Measures. It sounds like a planning doc but it's really an alignment system. Every month we're in a leadership review giving a real status on our methods and measures — are we on track, is something complete, or does something need to change because the business moved. And that's actually where it becomes most powerful when it comes to competing priorities — it gives you a natural, s ...Read More

1,840 Views
Justin Fink

Freshworks Sr. Director of Enterprise Marketing • 2mo

In the enterprise, misalignment usually stems from activity-based OKRs (counting tasks) rather than outcome-based OKRs (measuring impact). For example, PR may be incentivized by media mentions, while Product is judged on shipment velocity. If your GTM strategy is to, for example, "dominate the ITSM sector," but PR is chasing broad headlines for reach, the teams are effectively working against each other. To handle this, you should map every department’s KPIs to a single Objective Hierarchy, wher ...Read More

465 Views
Sarah Khogyani Wolf

Anthropic Startup Marketing Lead | Formerly Lyft, Atlassian • 1mo

Get everyone in the same place.. a room, a doc, a Slack channel, whatever works and have a direct, honest conversation about what you're actually trying to accomplish together. I have found that most misalignment isn't really disagreement, it's just a symptom of not zooming out far enough.

When goals conflict, peel them back until you find the bigger goal underneath that everyone can get behind. Once that's shared and explicit, the smaller trade-offs get a lot easier to work through.

448 Views
Ankit Shah

Braze Director, Product Marketing | Formerly Intuit, Quickbase, Acquia • 2mo
- I prioritize based on business impact, customer needs, and alignment with strategic goals.
- I make sure the team is clear on both short-term OKRs and long-term vision, so we can balance quick wins with larger initiatives.
- I also ensure we’re regularly revisiting our priorities to stay agile and adapt to any changes in the business landscape.
480 Views