Align sessions and objectives

Learn how to align objectives – set a parent-child relationship between them

Neli Ivanova avatar
Written by Neli Ivanova
Updated over a week ago

Overview

Use this article to learn how to align objectives. You need this when the achievement of one objective is dependent on the achievement of another objective.

You can do the following:

  • Align the objectives within a session

  • Align objectives from their child sessions

NOTE: One child objective cannot have more than one parent objective. You can align the objectives of sibling sessions one under the other.


Prerequisites

Before aligning objectives from different sessions, you must align the sessions themselves.


Align sessions

To align one session under another, perform the following:

  1. Decide what your session subordination will be.
    For example, you can have one annual session and four quarterly sessions.

  2. Create the sessions that you need to align or use existing ones.
    For more information, see Create sessions.

  3. In the navigation pane, under OKRs, click All sessions.
    A list of all sessions appears.

  4. Expand the menu of the session that you want to make a child of another session.

  5. Click Edit.

  6. In Parent session, click + Select parent session.

  7. In the list of all sessions, click the desired parent session.

  8. Click Save session.

  9. The child session is now aligned under the parent one.


Align objectives from one of your child sessions

Once you have aligned your sessions, you can align an objective from the child session with an objective of the sibling sessions.

To do this, perform the following:

  1. In the navigation pane, under OKRs, click All sessions.

  2. Click the session whose objective you want to align.

  3. Click the objective that you want to align.

  4. Click the parent field to bring up a list of objectives.

  5. From the parent field, select or search for the objective you would like to set as the

    Parent objective. In this case I will select an objective from my 2023 Yearly "parent session".

  6. Click on the objective that you want to align with.

    The objectives are now aligned across sessions.

  7. Navigate back to All sessions page.


Align objectives from the same session

You can also create a hierarchy of objectives within the same session.

Perform the following:

  1. Open the session that you want to reorganize.

  2. Open the objective that you want to align.

  3. Click the parent field to bring up a list of objectives.

  4. Choose the objective that you want to align with.

  5. The objectives are now aligned.

  6. Navigate back to All sessions page.

NOTE: Although you can cross-link objectives without any preset key results, it is a good practice to assign several key results per objective. This way you can track progress, improve alignment, and focus on executing top priorities in a meaningful way.

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