Latest news with #OKR
Business Wire
27-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
WorkBoard Announces General Availability of Its Digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach Agents, and Expanded Capabilities for Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--WorkBoard Inc., provider of the leading enterprise strategy execution and OKR platform, WorkBoardAI, today announced general availability of its Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents, expanded functionality in its Microsoft 365 Copilot agent, and broader integration with next-generation agentic ecosystems from Microsoft and Workday. 'The digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents are a force multiplier that helps managers operate at a more strategic level and marshal company resources more effectively,' said Erik Huddleston, CEO, Aprimo. WorkBoardAI's Digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach Agents Now Generally Available WorkBoardAI's Digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents are now generally available to enterprise customers, marking a paradigm shift in driving predictable and profitable strategy execution. Effective managers are the lynchpin in strategy execution and how organizations align efforts on the most important outcomes, sustain focus, and create performance accountability. While the top 2% of leaders often have a chief of staff and executive coach to elevate their effectiveness, the other 98% of managers have less skill, capacity, and resources for peak performance. With these agents, enterprises can afford to extend these resources to all managers, tripling their competency and productivity. Built to help managers perform at their best, the digital Chief of Staff proactively drives strategic alignment, creates team operating rigor, and reinforces accountability on behalf of the manager they serve. The Leadership Coach agent helps managers navigate difficult conversations, be better coaches themselves, and lead more skillfully. Unlike ChatGPT, WorkBoardAI agents have deep context on company strategy, ever-changing strategic priorities, the org structure, team member responsibilities, current objectives and historical performance. With this continuous context, agent insights and actions are grounded in company and manager reality as they: Orchestrate OKR alignment and accountability for managers and teams, reinforcing habits many managers have not yet built Manage the operating, meeting and reporting cadence for managers, freeing them to do more meaningful, nuanced work that requires their judgment Suggest crucial follow through and take follow up actions at the manager's direction to improve execution quality and speed Identify where feedback is needed, suggest messages, and guide managers through difficult conversations so team friction is quickly addressed Prepare managers with the facts, issues and talking points ahead of every 1on1 and operational meeting to maximize time and progress Thought partner on OKRs, operational issues, and team dynamics with the context of team members and responsibilities 'The digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents are a force multiplier that helps managers operate at a more strategic level and marshal company resources more effectively,' said Erik Huddleston, CEO, Aprimo. 'Unlike chatbots, WorkBoardAI agents behave proactively and, because they are embedded in our strategy execution system, they know the ever-changing strategic priorities which makes them a powerful way to scale the workforce.' New Features in Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent WorkBoardAI also released two new capabilities in its Microsoft 365 Copilot agent, bringing strategy execution into daily workflows with even more intelligence and actionability: OKR Suggestions: Based on the teams you manage or co-manage, the agent now proposes relevant OKRs to kickstart the goal-setting process. This makes it easier for managers to draft aligned and impactful objectives. Update Key Results: The agent highlights overdue key results and provides one-click access to update them directly in WorkBoard. This helps managers stay on track and reduce slippage without switching context. These additions make it even easier to align and drive OKRs directly from Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, reducing friction and accelerating execution across the organization. Modern Architecture in the Agent Ecosystem: A2A, Workday, and Microsoft Ecosystem WorkBoardAI continues to lead in open, interoperable AI by adopting the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol and supporting the Multi-Agent Communication (MCP) protocol – both vendor-neutral standards embraced by Microsoft and Google that enables agents to discover, communicate, and collaborate securely across platforms. While A2A facilitates secure cross-platform communication, MCP adds orchestration capabilities, allowing agents to coordinate complex, multi-step workflows across distributed systems. With these protocols, WorkBoardAI agents can participate in multi-agent workflows. This enables actions to be chained across HCM, CRM, ERP, ITSM, and more; the WorkBoardAI Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents will incorporate information from Microsoft Teams and Slack channels, Jira, and Salesforce in their actions, suggestions, and responses. By combining conversational AI, agentic orchestration, and deep integration across enterprise platforms, WorkBoardAI makes it easier for organizations to align on strategy, drive progress, and adapt faster in a rapidly evolving world. 'Our agents learn from their managers and become more helpful over time, just like a human team member would,' said Daryoush Paknad, WorkBoard's CTO and Co-founder. 'Combined, the WorkBoardAI architecture and agent capabilities bridge skill gaps, save time, and connect disparate enterprise systems to profoundly improve how organizations operate.' WorkBoard is an inaugural design partner with Workday on its Agent System of Record. With unique digital Chiefs of Staff and Leadership Coaches for each manager in the enterprise, customers will be able to see and manage the thousands of WorkBoardAI agents as part of their digital workforce via Workday's Agent System of Record. WorkBoardAI is available for purchase via the Azure Marketplace and its Copilot agent is rapidly increasing its skills to bring strategic priorities into day-to-day work across M365 applications people use daily. The Copilot agent was included in Satya Nadella's keynote at Microsoft Build 2025 and is available in the new Microsoft Agent Store. Availability and More Information The digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents are available to WorkBoard customers who have purchased or upgraded to the WorkBoardAI platform. Pricing is based on usage. See a demo of the Chief of Staff agent and Leadership Coach agent and learn more about WorkBoardAI's capabilities, architecture and impact at Get the M365 Copilot agent in the new Copilot Agent Store, the full WorkBoardAI solution in the Azure Marketplace and in the Workday AI Marketplace. About WorkBoard WorkBoard is the leading provider of enterprise strategy execution and OKR software. The platform enables high alignment, accountability, and transparency across global organizations. Enterprises have trusted WorkBoard with their strategic ambitions and the actions to achieve them for a decade. WorkBoard counts 3M, AstraZeneca, Boeing, Cisco, Elevance, Ford, Humana, Renault, State Street, UBS, Unilever, UnitedHealth, and their peers as customers. Its investors include M12 Microsoft's Venture Fund, Workday Ventures, SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz, Notable Capital, and others.
India Today
01-05-2025
- Business
- India Today
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan announces major restructure, confirms job cuts and new work from office mandate
Intel is preparing for a major internal shake-up as its newly appointed CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, sets out to transform the tech giant's operations. In a candid letter to employees following the company's Q1 2025 results, Tan confirmed that Intel will reduce its workforce and overhaul its organisational structure. The company, which has been facing growing challenges in recent years, will now shift focus back to its engineering roots, cut down on bureaucracy, and increase productivity across the board. This marks the first major restructuring effort since Tan took over as CEO last the detailed memo, Tan expressed satisfaction with Intel's Q1 performance, but stressed that much more work needs to be done. 'We need to confront our challenges head-on and take swift actions to get back on track,' he said. Highlighting internal feedback from employees and customers, Tan admitted that Intel is currently seen as 'too slow, too complex and too set in our ways.'To address these issues, the CEO has laid out several key changes, starting with a return to an engineering-first mindset. 'We need to get back to our roots and empower our engineers,' Tan said, confirming that core engineering roles have been elevated to the executive level. He also revealed plans to reduce operating expenses and capital spending in order to invest more in innovation. One of the most significant steps is Intel's plan to flatten its organisation. With some teams reportedly eight or more layers deep, Tan said the company needs to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and empower top performers. 'I've been surprised to learn that, in recent years, the most important KPI for many managers at Intel has been the size of their teams,' he stated. 'Going forward, this will not be the case.'advertisementThese structural changes will unfortunately lead to job losses. 'There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce,' Tan confirmed. The job cuts are expected to begin in Q2 and continue over the coming restructuring, Intel will also reduce administrative burden by eliminating non-essential meetings and streamlining internal processes. OKR requirements and Insights reporting will be made optional, and the company aims to simplify time-consuming corporate tasks such as training and major change is coming to Intel's hybrid work policy. From September 1, employees will be required to work from the office at least four days a week. 'When we spend time together in person, it fosters more engaging and productive discussion and debate,' Tan CEO ended his message on an optimistic note, stating, 'We have opportunities ahead that most people don't get in their careers. I'm talking about the opportunity to fundamentally reinvent an industry icon.'
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Intel CEO announces layoffs, restructuring, $1.5 billion in cost reductions, expanded return to office mandate
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Intel CEO Lip Bu-Tan announced a series of sweeping measures today, including an unspecified number of layoffs, a company restructuring, the elimination of non-core products, and an expanded return-to-office mandate. The announcement comes as the company presented its disappointing first-quarter earnings report today, causing the stock to decline by 5%. Tan has only been at the helm of Intel for five weeks, but his core message is that the transformation of Intel's culture will be an extended process and requires eliminating the "bureaucracy suffocating the innovation and agility that we need to win," citing that many teams are "eight or more layers deep." Intel has not yet specified the number of employees it expects to lay off in the coming months, but stated that the company will begin the adjustments in Q2 and will implement them over several months. Intel last laid off 15% of its workforce, approximately 15,000 employees, in August 2024. It has been rumored that Intel plans to lay off 20% of its workforce in this round, which could equate to nearly 20,000 more is also reducing its operating expense target by $1.5 billion over the next two years. Intel will reduce its operating expenses to $17 billion in 2025, a $ 500 million cut, and aim for $16 billion in 2026, a further $1 billion reduction. Tan restructured the upper echelon of the management team late last week, but says he will continue to eliminate more layers of the management structure, noting that "many teams are eight or more layers deep, which creates unnecessary bureaucracy that slows us down." He also noted that the most important KPI for managers at Intel has been the size of their team. Tan will eliminate that strategy, instead focusing on creating a leaner and more efficient structure that prioritizes engineering and action. Tan also noted that the current policy, which requires employees to be on site for three days per week, has not been followed consistently. The company will now require all employees to be in the office for four days per week, effective September 1. The focus on efficiency will also extend to significantly reducing internal administrative work, including eliminating unnecessary meetings and reducing the number of attendees. Tan is also making Insights and OKR requirements now optional instead of mandatory. OKRs are a goal-setting method pioneered by company legend Andy Grove that was later discarded, but then loudly resurrected by ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger. This policy shift is yet another sign that a new leader with a different philosophy is now in charge. While Tan has only shared the broad outlines of his plans, they are expansive in scope. "I'm talking about the opportunity to fundamentally reinvent an industry icon. To pull off a comeback that will be studied in business schools for generations to come. To create new technologies and deploy them at scale to change the world for the better," Tan said. "It's going to be hard. It will require painful decisions. But we will make them knowing it's what we must do to serve our customers better as we build a new Intel for the future – and I have great confidence in the power of our team and our people to make it happen." Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button. Sign in to access your portfolio
Forbes
24-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Bias Thrives In Ambiguity—OKRs Can Change That
Image of Sara Lobkovich on a sofa Sara Lobkovich In most organizations, the road to 'equity' is paved with good intentions—but littered with unclear goals, vague expectations, and shifting accountability. These conditions don't just lead to missed deliverables; they fuel invisible bias, gaslighting, and burnout—especially for historically marginalized employees who are already navigating structural inequity at work. OKR (objectives and key results) expert Sara Lobkovich, offers a powerful thesis: if we want to care for underserved employees and drive real progress at a time when our civil rights and free speech are under attack, we need to stop using vibes and start using data. This way of working can shift power into the hands of neurodivergent professionals, women of color, introverts, and folks who don't conform to dominant norms. In a landscape where DEI efforts often get reduced to checklists—heritage month events, implicit bias trainings—a modernized approach to OKRs offer a much-needed shift: from activities to outcomes. That means defining success as progress toward justice, not just activity on a calendar. This isn't just semantics. It's a systems-level intervention. When equity efforts are tied to strategic goals—and when those goals are tracked, reviewed, and adjusted with the same rigor as revenue targets—we stop treating inclusion as charity and start treating it as leadership. Her approach doesn't just improve organizational performance—it fundamentally redistributes power. Bias in the workplace isn't always overt. It often lives in the cracks: a performance review based on 'gut feelings,' a DEI plan with no clear outcomes, or goals that shift mid-quarter without explanation. Lobkovich experienced this first hand leading diverse teams in corporate America. 'We had hard data. We had expectations we thought were agreed on. But when it came time for evaluation, leadership had moved the goalposts on the objective success criteria. That disconnect cost good people their jobs,' she shared during a recent conversation. What makes her approach different isn't just that it helps organizations meet goals—it's that it reframes OKRs as an anti-gaslighting tool. Traditional OKR systems often focus on alignment and ambition but rarely yield clarity, changed behavior, or appetite for the hard work of practical application. Lobkovich's fill in those gaps with a structure explicitly designed to protect workers from bias, power hoarding, and subjective evaluation. Traditional OKR systems are often implemented top-down with most of the benefits accruing to senior leaders (pretty dashboards, more control over the organization's activities). Lobkovich's approach applies the same standards and rules to every person in the organization—from the CEO to the summer intern. 'In my earlier career it was routine to have goals change mid-cycle or even arbitrarily at the time of evaluation: suddenly, a completed goal was not exceeded by enough, and there were patterns to who was harmed by those moving goal posts and arbitrary evaluations. When the entire organization follows the same rules, behavior like that is out in the open, where it can be questioned or corrected.' Her approach was developed through years of hands-on experience working with thousands of leaders and practitioners across 300+ organizations globally. Her work builds on the foundation laid by Christina Wodkte's Radical Focus, Paul Niven and Ben LaMorte's Objectives and Key Results, and fills in the gap between the potential and the practical reality of OKRs left by the best-known book on OKRs, John Doerr's Measure What Matters, evolving the practice of OKRs from a silicon valley mainstay to a universal framework accessible to organizations of all sizes and types. Here's how this new approach to OKRs disrupts the status quo: And perhaps most powerfully, the framework treats failure as a feature, not a bug. Missing a key result isn't a sign of personal failure—it's an opportunity for learning, iteration, and honest reflection. That mindset shift alone can change the emotional texture of an entire organization. While many orgs relegate OKRs to project managers or HR, this approach positions them as core to leadership. It's not just about hitting quarterly numbers—it's about how power is distributed, decisions are made, and truth is surfaced. According to Lobkovich, here's what that means in practice: Sara shares the experience of working with a leader with a monumental modernization and innovation mission in a large, legacy organizational culture. While discussing the organization's resistance to calculated and thoughtful risk-taking, the leader asked: 'What if we set a goal to fail more often?' And that's exactly what they did. For a leader to get up in front of the organization and hear a goal that: 'We're going to achieve a 50% success rate on our innovation projects this year (½ succeed, and ½ fail)' is certainly unconventional: and it required the leader to both model comfort with failure and learning through failure; and, to create the actual psychological safety in how the organization operated to back it up. Lobkovich sums it up: 'The responsibility for setting and achieving OKRs ultimately lies with leaders. They're in the big chair. The buck stops there.' As authoritarianism creeps into politics and public institutions crumble, some leaders are realizing that workplaces might be one of the last semi-stable institutions where people can experience fairness, clarity, and care. That's a heavy lift. But it's not out of reach. Lobkovich sees this shift in her clients. 'They're asking: How do we make our workplace one of the few places where people can function—especially those most impacted by chaos outside?' And that's what You Are A Strategist offers: not just a playbook for hitting KPIs, but a pathway to design workplaces that work—for everyone. Ultimately, this isn't just about OKRs. It's about power, clarity, and accountability. It's a challenge to leaders: If you say you care about equity, your systems need to show it. Your goals need to be clear. Your accountability needs to be real. And your leadership needs to create conditions where everyone—not just the well-resourced or well-spoken—can thrive. Because equity isn't a side hustle. It's the job. 📘 Sara Lobkovich's book, You Are A Strategist, is available now as an eBook via all major eBook platforms. The print edition launches June 6, 2025. For more information and to purchase, visit
