Every scaleup hits the moment when the strategy simply gets too big to live in a slide deck.
Leadership aligns on clear company OKRs, the deck looks strong, ambition is high - and yet within a few weeks, the work happening inside teams no longer maps cleanly to the outcomes leadership committed to.
This isn’t an execution problem. It’s a translation problem.
At 100+ employees, strategy starts breaking down at the seams: more teams, more layers, more cross-functional work, more surface area for confusion. What used to be intuitively understood now needs structure. Without it, teams don’t drift intentionally - they drift inevitably.
The missing link is goal translation: the discipline of turning company-level OKRs into team-level commitments that actually shape weekly decisions.
This is where most scaleups stall. And it’s where the best ones separate themselves.
Why the Translation Layer Breaks in Scaleups
Company OKRs describe where the business must go.
Team OKRs describe what each group must do to make that future real.
The gap between the two widens as headcount grows. We consistently see three structural forces create that gap:
1. Teams can't see how their work connects.
When company OKRs are broad (“Improve retention”, “Accelerate expansion revenue”), teams struggle to interpret what that means for their function. Clarity drops. Output increases. Alignment suffers.
2. Cross-functional dependencies multiply.
Product needs marketing. Marketing needs sales. Sales needs ops. Ops needs engineering. Without a clear translation layer, every team optimizes locally - and the company moves nowhere.
3. Goals are not written in a way that decomposes cleanly.
A company-level Objective may be strategically sound but still too abstract to turn into actionable team outcomes. This is where most OKRs break without anyone noticing.
The result? Teams work hard. Progress looks busy. But outcomes don’t move.
The Path From Strategy Deck → Team-Level OKRs → Weekly Execution
This is the operational chain that high-performing scaleups run consistently.
No fluff. No theory. Just the mechanics.
Step 1: Translate each company Objective into 2–4 strategic questions
This forces clarity.
Instead of jumping to goals, teams answer:
- “What must be true for this Objective to succeed?”
- “Where are the biggest levers we can influence?”
- “What constraints shape our execution?”
These questions turn an abstract Objective into a set of solvable problems.
Step 2: Turn strategic questions into team-level outcomes
Each team identifies the outcome they directly influence.
Example:
Company KR: Increase 90-day retention from 32% → 45%.
- Product: improvements that reduce early churn drivers
- Marketing: qualify users who are more likely to retain
- Ops: improve onboarding throughput
- Support: reduce time-to-resolution for activation-blocking issues
This is goal translation done right: one company Key Result becomes four team-level commitments.
Step 3: Validate cross-functional dependencies before committing
This is where scaleups win or lose.
Before finalizing OKRs:
- Teams review each other’s dependencies
- They confirm sequencing and shared ownership
- They eliminate goals that rely on “invisible work” from other functions
Weak companies skip this step and discover conflicts mid-quarter.
Strong companies eliminate conflicts before execution begins.
Step 4: Convert team outcomes into measurable KR movement
Team leaders now define how success is measured.
Not tasks. Not output. Not “launch features.”
But measurable movement.
- “Reduce onboarding drop-off from 44% → 28%.”
- “Increase sales-qualified opportunities from 110 → 165/month.”
- “Cut activation-blocking tickets from 620 → 300.”
Company OKRs become team OKRs that describe change, not activity.
Step 5: Attach initiatives within the first 7 days
Our benchmark data shows:
Teams that add initiatives early - and refine them weekly - complete dramatically more OKRs.
The translation is incomplete until the work is visible.
Step 6: Build the weekly execution rhythm
This is the final conversion point: where goals become behavior.
Teams should:
When goal translation is strong, weekly execution feels coherent - not chaotic.
What Changes When Goal Translation Works
Teams stop asking “What are our priorities?”
They start asking “What must change this week?”
You see:
- clearer ownership
- fewer derailments
- more predictable execution
- stronger cross-functional collaboration
- better planning next quarter
This is the difference between a strategy that looks compelling and a strategy that becomes inevitable.
The Strategy-to-Execution Translation Model (At a Glance)
A quick summary of how company OKRs move from high-level intent to the weekly commitments teams actually deliver.
When these four stages stay connected, strategy stops living in slides - and starts shaping the day-to-day decisions that determine whether a scaleup actually hits its goals.
Strategy Only Matters When It Reaches the Teams
A CEO can define direction. Leadership can align on priorities. Finance can set targets.
But none of it matters until every team knows exactly:
- their piece of the outcome
- how to measure progress
- what work moves the metric
- how to stay aligned week after week
That translation layer - from strategy deck to weekly execution - is where scaleups win or lose. When goal translation is strong, OKRs stop being an operating burden and become the clearest driver of growth, alignment, and execution discipline inside the company.
