What can a president and a janitor teach us about achieving big organisational goals?

The story goes that in the early 1960’s, US President John F. Kennedy was on a visit to NASA and passed by a janitor mopping the floor. “Why are you working so late?” Kennedy enquired. “Mr President,” said the janitor, “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.”  

When we talk about the power of purpose. This is it.

For this one employee, a clear line was successfully drawn between the aspirational big picture and the practicalities of daily work. In doing so, they were granted the autonomy to create their own meaning and understand how they could contribute to their employer’s biggest goal. 

Fast forward 60 odd years and this story has significant relevance today.  

The last few years have felt like our own rocket to the moon. The astronomical pace of change is now joined by macro-economic turbulence. Leaders remain on high alert. They’re concerned for their team’s wellbeing with up to 62% of employees in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) reporting they’re burnt out at work. Concerningly, that’s 14 points higher than the global average. With this feeling of overload, it’s not surprising that 86% of ANZ employees report they are productive at work.  

This data would indicate that productivity has reached a point of set and forget.  

Right? Wrong.  

There is a stark disconnect playing out in workplaces across ANZ with just 11% of leaders saying they have full confidence in their employees’ productivity. This struggle is most felt by hybrid managers with 49% reporting a trust issue about employees doing their best work vs. 36% of in-person managers.  

These pressures are creating a productivity paranoia effect. Employees feel the pressure to “prove” they’re working, digital overwhelm is soaring, and leaders can be tempted to track activity rather than impact, further undermining trust.  

This is increasing the risk of ‘productivity theatre’ which presents as undesirable behaviours like sending emails at strategically selected hours and joining meetings unnecessarily. A new research report on the experience of asynchronous work found that: “Digital presenteeism is pervasive, with employees working an extra hour each day to show that they are still online and contributing, due to a fear that colleagues and bosses will think they aren’t working hard enough.” (Source: Killing Time at Work ’22) 

There’s some real trigger topics here for any leader – trust, productivity, and wellbeing – and the findings are reflected in our latest Work Trend Index Pulse Report. They point to three urgent pivots – measure what matters, stay connected in and out of the office, and prioritise learning to retain talent.  

Measure what matters.  

This is about moving from worrying about whether people are working enough, to helping them focus on the work that’s most important.  

Clarity is key.  

Employees need it. 81% say it’s important that their managers help them prioritise their workload.  

People managers value it. 74% say more guidance on prioritising their own work would help their performance, and 80% say they’d personally benefit from more clarity from senior leadership on impactful priorities. 

Clarity is key in a distributed work world

Source: Glint, 2022 

Which brings us back to a president, a janitor, a mop, and one very big goal.  

The power of purpose in this story is reliant on clarity. It enabled that janitor to understand his role in one of the world’s biggest moments of innovation and achievement.  

A Forbes essay on this topic observed that a key step in creating this clarity was that: “Kennedy made the abstract, tangible.” (Source:Forbes) 

This is the exact type of clarity that employees today are seeking.  

A great first step to that tangibility is to align employees more directly to an organisation’s purpose.  

To achieve this, OKRs is a strategy that has been evolving for decades. OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results, a goal setting and leadership tool that makes purpose explicit to drive strategic alignment and measurable results.  

What is an OKR?  

The Objective describes what you want to accomplish, and the Key Results describe how you know you’re making progress. (Source: What Matters: The difference between KPIs and OKRs).  

OKRs’ most important test market is employees and 80% say it helps create a higher performing team. (Source: Boost Employee Engagement | Microsoft Viva) This sentiment could be linked to what John Doerr, author of the iconic book Measure What Matters, describes as the ‘Five Superpowers’ of OKRs.

1. Focus on impact rather than output with employees being empowered to rally behind the work that matters to the business. As people gain clarity around the “Why” of their work, they experience less burnout and help move the business forward more effectively.

2. Alignment connects individuals, teams, and business groups to the company’s broader strategy, which prioritises work across the breadth of the business and gives employees a sense of how their individual work contributes.

3. Tracking enables data-driven decisions and measurable outcomes.

4. Transparency allows all employees to see goals publicly, which inspires accountability and improves collaboration. This can enable increased employee input to foster trust between employees and leadership.

5. Stretch creates the possibility for exponential growth by encouraging people to set goals that are difficult to reach.

[Source: Why OKRs? Microsoft Learn] 

In an ANZ context, Key Performance Indicators are foundational in most organisations, so how do KPIs and OKRs work together?  

When working in an OKR framework, the value of KPIs is amplified when they’re seen as complementary. This is because OKRs add context to KPIs, like overall strategy, direction, and end goal. Which explains why the What Matters organisation co-founded by John Doerr, sees OKRs as ‘KPIs with soul’. It’s not necessarily about changing the role of KPIs, but instead leaning on their ‘indicator’ functionality to measure OKRs progress health directly and consistently.  

Every organisation has a learning stockpile on how to make systems and processes work well for them. At Microsoft, we’ve learned that systems and processes best enable an empowered and high performing culture when they mirror the way employees naturally work.  

That is why Viva Goals integrates OKRs and KPIs directly into the flow of work. Teams and individuals use an enhanced Microsoft Teams app to check in and collaborate on OKRs and a connection to Power BI datasets enables the tracking of Key Results and KPIs. The integration then goes further with Microsoft Planner and Project for automatic project management updates. 

Viva Goals grew out of the need to make it easier to align teams to an organisation’s strategic priorities and unite them around its purpose. With 70% of employees saying they wouldn’t work for a company without a strong purpose (Source – Motivations Matters ), it’s critical to connect the aspirational to the tangible.  

That’s how a janitor understood why his role could help put the first people on the moon.  

And it’s how every single employee in your organisation can be supported in connecting their daily work with your mission and purpose.  

Learn more

1. Viva Goals  
2. Boost Employee Engagement | Microsoft Viva