Break Down Department Walls to Solve Big Problems

In a fast-growing software start-up, marketing had OKRs to generate webinar sign-ups, while the product team was focused on shipping a new beta. Both teams were measured at the same time, but never connected on timing. Registrations soared, but nobody was ready to demo the new product, and the webinar flopped. That’s when the vice president of growth realized: Our siloed goals were sabotaging our shared success.

They redesigned their OKRs with a cross-functional lens. Marketing’s key result—hosting a webinar on Feature X—became a shared objective. Marketing would handle promotion KRs; product engineering signed on for two KRs: finalize the demo environment and produce feature documentation. Sales committed to follow-up calls with every attendee.

Each week, the three teams met for ten minutes over video chat. Engineers flagged last-minute bugs; marketers adjusted emails; sales prepared scripts. By the day of the webinar, everyone was ready. They hit their attendance target, and conversion rates doubled from the previous quarter. This small tweak in alignment—bringing peers to the table early—changed outcomes overnight.

This case shows how transparent OKRs can bake alignment into culture. Instead of cascading goals strictly top-down, they foster lateral coordination—exactly the cross-team connectivity Andy Grove and Peter Drucker envisioned. You don’t need a large org chart to break down silos; you need an OKR that refuses to be owned by just one team.

When you choose an objective that involves more than one department, call a quick kickoff—draw out your dependencies on a shared whiteboard, assign each team its sub-objectives, and schedule a weekly stand-up to track their joint progress. Through this cross-team huddle you’ll spot blockers before they derail the project, build ownership at every level, and deliver integrated results that none of you could have pulled off alone. Try it with your next joint initiative.