GOALS.Reference:5 - A connected organizational case
GOALS.Reference:5.1 - Choose the results and their completion basis
A refund service has 100 eligible cases in its opening cohort, all due by the end of a four-week cycle. Customers want the settlement owed and a usable account of the outcome. The service also wants faster handling of new cases and two employees able to diagnose exceptions. The following amounts, terms and outcomes are stipulated for this example. The service’s competent providers supply the case criteria.
The initial KRs are “publish a FAQ”, “launch a bot” and “reduce incoming contacts”. All three could pass with every refund unpaid. The team retains useful information and automation as means and constructs two objectives with different reliance:
| Objective and mode | Key results and their joint meaning |
|---|---|
| O1, committed: By the end of week 4, settle the 100 opening-cohort refund obligations and give every affected customer a usable confirmation of the outcome. | KR1.1: All 100 cases have a completed correct payment or a valid final settlement under their applicable terms, with no unresolved amount, recipient or authorization error. KR1.2: Every customer has received an accurate confirmation through the agreed channel, identifying the actual settlement and any action still required of them. Both KRs are mandatory. A confirmation of a future answer does not satisfy KR1.1. |
| O2, aspirational: Make new eligible refund cases dependable and less costly to handle during the selected service window. | KR2.1: At least 95% of all eligible requests received in week 3 reach a correct payment or valid final settlement within five working days of receipt; every case also meets its individual contractual deadline. KR2.2: Mean manual handling effort for that same complete cohort is at most 12 minutes per request, including exceptions and its allocated checking and maintenance work. Both KRs are required for the stated improvement. Correct amounts, recipients, authorization and agreed customer access remain required conditions. |
Eligibility follows the existing service terms and is checked at receipt. Difficult eligible cases remain in their cohort. In this case the incoming requests’ contractual deadline is ten working days, so the five-day target is an improvement. Requests arriving at the end of week 3 can still receive their full five-day observation by the end of week 4. Any cases open then remain tracked to their actual contractual deadline. O1’s fixed opening cohort and O2’s new cohort are separate; improving the latter leaves the earlier obligations intact.
The preceding comparable service window had 85% completed within five working days and 20 minutes of manual effort per request. The initial O2 forecast falls short of the desired improvement: 90% within five days and 15 minutes per request, against the desired 95% and 12 minutes. The team chooses the ambitious improvement while protecting the current contractual service. Other teams plan on confirmed staffing and contributions, not on the hoped-for effort saving. O1 has funded payments, the required authorizations and a feasible processing arrangement; its initial forecast is all 100 completed by the agreed date. A threatened payment or dependency will reopen that forecast and the response.
Payment confirmations and the existing case register establish financial and communication outcomes. Existing case timestamps and handling-time data cover O2’s whole cohort. The effort calculation includes the service’s manual exception work; omitting difficult cases would change the claim. These adequate sources are reused without a new reporting system. The all-pass test is now concrete: correct final settlements plus usable confirmations establish O1; timeliness plus lower total handling effort under the retained conditions establish O2. The reverse test also matters: a correct manual settlement may satisfy the goal even if the bot is never launched. Faster work with wrong amounts fails O2’s required conditions, and lower incoming contacts alone establishes neither objective.
The separate learning goal is for both employees, by the end of week 4, to frame unfamiliar routine and exception cases in the current refund service, identify missing grounds and route a decision beyond their authority. Their case procedure remains available; an AI-generated diagnosis is withheld only in the episodes used to establish their own diagnostic contribution. The HCD provider chooses representative variations, feedback and assessment for that bounded capability. This goal is not a KR proving customer settlement: a competent bot can improve service while the employees still need the intended practice.
GOALS.Reference:5.2 - Obtain one feasible undertaking
The shared specialist is the limiting resource in week 2. Payment processing needs 12 hours, the full service repair 10, and the preferred learning provision 10: 32 hours against 24 usable hours after protected current service. Payment funds, ordinary service staff, customer communication and the learners’ own time are separately provided. The 24 hours are specialist hours, not the service team’s total working time.
The payment and service owners, specialist provider and learning provider compare a qualified substitute, a smaller useful repair and moving contributions whose receiving dates permit it. They agree this arrangement:
| Contribution | Week 2 specialist hours | Following provision and reliance |
|---|---|---|
| Process the opening-cohort payments | 12 | Existing service staff follow confirmations and unresolved cases; the end-of-week-4 commitment remains. |
| Repair the service | 8 | The smaller repair is useful with the current manual fallback. The final 2 hours are booked at the start of week 3. O2 remains aspirational. |
| Develop the two employees’ diagnosis | 4 | Six more hours are booked in week 3, with assessment before the learning deadline. No current payment depends on unestablished employee capability. |
Week 2 now uses 12 + 8 + 4 = 24 hours. The provider has confirmed ten available hours in week 3 after other commitments: 2 for repair, 6 for learning and 2 held for consequential exceptions. The service owner can revise improvement scope, the payment owner retains the customer obligation, and the learning provider and participants agree the practice arrangement. Their existing work schedule carries the commitments. If that later booking becomes unavailable, the parties reopen the affected contribution and its deadline.
GOALS.Reference:5.3 - Revise the relation that changed
Before week 2 execution, the payment interface changes. The technical owner establishes that all ten repair hours are now needed before the payment batch can run. Repair has become an enabling prerequisite for the committed result. The old 12 + 8 + 4 arrangement no longer works even though its sum still fits.
The holders of the affected contributions agree 10 repair hours first, 12 payment hours next and 2 learning hours in week 2. The specialist confirms that this order fits the batch window. In week 3, the now-unneeded two repair hours join the previously booked six learning hours: 8 for learning and the same 2 for exceptions. Both weeks fit their actual provision. The learning provider uses the two-hour episode for initial case framing with feedback and the booked eight hours for varied cases and assessment; this sequence can still meet the learning deadline. The improvement forecast is reconsidered using the completed repair’s actual scope. If the original four learning hours had an immovable week-2 obligation, the changed set would require 26 hours; two hours of qualified substitute provision or an effective change of that obligation would still be needed.
The decision is made when the interface change is discovered, through the people who can change the affected work. The routine weekly service conversation then uses the revised arrangement.
GOALS.Reference:5.4 - Interpret progress and actual completion
At the end of week 2, payment processing is performed but the case evidence shows 82 completed payments, 8 valid final settlements and 10 payments still awaiting completion. Here the eight settlements are customer-chosen credits that the applicable terms allow as final settlement of the obligation; the case evidence shows the customers’ agreement and completed credit. The ten pending payments retain their next action, responsible service performer and customer contact. Submitted instructions and useful explanations have not yet settled them. The provider’s confirmation information supports a forecast that they will complete before the original deadline; ordinary follow-up remains supplied, with the exception capacity available if needed.
In the completed continuation, by the end of week 4 the remaining ten payments are confirmed. O1 therefore has 92 completed payments and 8 valid final settlements, all with accurate confirmations and the required amount, recipient and authorization checks. Both KRs pass and the original obligation is achieved on time.
For O2, the week-3 cohort contains 40 eligible requests. Thirty-nine reach a correct settlement within five working days; the fortieth, received early in week 3, completes on day six, within its ten-day contractual deadline and before the cycle closes. Thus KR2.1 reaches 39/40 = 97.5%, and every contractual deadline is met. Total attributable manual handling is eight hours: 480 minutes / 40 = 12 minutes, meeting KR2.2. The required quality and access conditions also hold. The service improvement was achieved for the stated cohort and window despite its initially lower forecast. Its eight handling hours count the service team’s work; they are not an additional draw on the specialist allocation already compared above.
The learning provider observes both employees making the specified diagnostic contribution across the chosen unfamiliar routine and exception cases, with the procedure available and without an AI-supplied answer. This supports the bounded learning result under those conditions. The bot’s service output and the number of practice hours were useful contributions, while the human performance supplies the learning evidence.
Keep the contrasting period-end result: if week 4 instead ends with 82 payments, 8 valid final settlements and 10 unpaid cases with agreed next contact, O1 remains unmet. Its communications do not compensate for KR1.1. A newly agreed deadline can govern future reliance while the original delay remains part of performance interpretation. If the eight settlements are only unexplained labels or disputed refusals, their adequacy is unresolved too. A successful O2 and a completed learning goal cannot average away that customer obligation.
GOALS.Reference:5.5 - Continue from what was obtained
At closure, the service owner retires the completed opening-cohort objective. The current service keeps its contractual duties and watches the timeliness, effort and exception evidence through its existing control. The attained improvement becomes a basis for that continuing arrangement; future staffing is revised only as its actual performance permits.
The next service change introduces cross-border cases with different authorization and settlement conditions. The team first commissions a bounded inquiry into those conditions and available payment means. Of the ten specialist hours available next week, two go to this inquiry and eight remain for the already identified service and learning support. The inquiry’s useful result is an evidenced choice of a workable arrangement or the specific obstacle that prevents one. The resulting scope and means will determine a new service objective and its evidence; the old 40-case result cannot establish performance for the new population.
The closing CFR conversation recognizes the specialist’s timely dependency finding and the service staff’s case follow-through as contributions to the shared result. Any remuneration or promotion question returns to its actual terms and personnel evidence through GOALS.8. The group keeps the joint-capacity and all-KRs-together tests in the existing service conversation and drops the separate bot-launch slide report that those decisions have replaced. Goal-work support continues where participants still need it. This first completed cycle supplies a useful arrangement and a basis for judging its continuing burden and value through GOALS.9.