OKRs as Global Design Engine
Orchestrating Alignment and High-Impact Output for 110+ Practitioners
CLIENT: Backbase
SERVICES: UX Strategy & Operations, Organizational Design Alignment, Design Maturity & Talent Scaling
The Mission:
Beyond the Silo
Timeline: 2023 – 2024
Stakeholders:
Gaia Armellin, CS Delivery Director, and CS Design Leads: OKR planning and management for the CS Design Team, with active contributions to the OKRs.
Backbase Design Director, R&D Design Ops, and R&D Design Leads: OKR planning and management for the R&D Design Team, with active contributions to the OKRs.
At a B2B2C giant like Backbase, “Design” isn’t a single department. It’s a choir of five distinct units (CS, R&D, Marketing, Pre-Sales, and Innovation) trying to sing the same song. In 2023, the song was out of tune. My mission was to architect a unified Global OKR & KPI Framework to move from “hero culture” in local hubs to a standardized, high-velocity global unit.
The Goal: Transform design operations into a traceable, strategic powerhouse.
The Scale: Aligning 110+ designers across 5 global teams.
The Challenges:
Daily Friction, Blood, and Sweat
This wasn’t a clean corporate rollout. We faced the “Black Swan” of organizational inertia:
- The Product Evolution Blockers: As Backbase evolved its core suite, our targets moved. We learned the hard art of Strategic Agility: knowing when to Pause, Accept, or Mitigate blockers in real-time.
- The Mindset Gap: Designers were buried in “daily firefighting.” OKRs were seen as “extra work,” not the solution. I had to pivot from Director to Evangelist, showing the team how these goals were their “evolution” from chaos.
- The Duplicate Noise: In a global org, three people often solve the same problem in three different ways. We found massive overlaps. I had to “prune the garden”, merging tickets and teams to stop the waste of talent.
Our Strategy:
We Built the Success Infrastructure
Instead of top-down mandates, we co-created a system of participation.
- The Protocol: I rebranded OKR work as Personal Development. By fixing the system, the designers were fixing their own future.
- The Workshop Series: Global sessions to identify “High-Value Signal” vs. “Low-Value Noise.”
- The Jira Architecture: We translated abstract dreams into tangible, traceable subtasks. This provided Radical Transparency: a designer in any hub could finally see their thumbprint on the global strategy.
samples of OKR workshop
The Results: The Evidence of Excellence
Our strategic approach yielded impressive results. The impact wasn’t just “feel-good”; it was a factory of high-value assets.
- 2023 OKR Success: Achieved 90% of the 2023 OKRs, delivering valuable assets to the global Customer Success Design and Delivery Teams, Academy, and R&D.
- 2024 OKR Progress: By mid-2024, we reached 70% of the planned 2024 OKRs.
What We Delivered:
- Academy CS UX Learning Path & Onboarding: Standardizing the entry-point for every new global hire.
- The CS UX Visibility Index: A data-driven tool that made design impact “visible” to the C-suite.
- Ways of Working (WoW) for Adopt & Build: The definitive playbooks for elite client delivery.
- CS Design Career Framework: A transparent ladder for growth.
- Localization Overview: Mapping local suite differences to prevent global friction.
The Human ROI:
- 90% Achievement: We hit 90% of our 2023 targets and 70% by mid-2024, a rare feat in a complex B2B2C environment.
- The Ultimate Win: The visibility and leadership demonstrated through this framework directly led to the promotion of three key team members. We didn’t just build a system; we launched careers.
samples of deliverables
The “Must-Haves” for the Future
Through this experience, we emerged with three non-negotiable truths:
- Optimize for Flow, Not Just Output: Moving forward, the focus must stay on UX Operations & Costs, ensuring that we are shipping the right things with zero wasted energy – which ensures support from C-level stakeholders.
- Shared Ownership is the Only Ownership: If the team doesn’t feel they “own” the OKR, it’s just a chore. We fostered a culture where accountability was a badge of honor.
- Alignment is a Living Breathing Thing: You don’t “align” once and stop. It requires a constant, transparent feedback loop across stakeholders.
