McKinsey’s Organisation Blog put a number on something CPOs already feel in the field: roughly 72% of employees cited goal setting as a strong motivator for performance. The piece — “Four considerations for better goal setting and performance” (13 Jan 2025) — is not a product pitch. It’s a reminder that goals still move people when the system treats them as live work, not annual paperwork.

Separately, McKinsey’s people-first performance research has long noted that companies focusing on people’s performance are 4×+ more likely to outperform peers. Motivation is not the scarce resource. Operationalising goals is.

What McKinsey asks leaders to consider

Paraphrasing their four considerations in plain language:

  1. Connect individual and team goals to strategy — people should see a clean line from their work to what the company said matters this quarter.
  2. Keep goals agile and coachable — don’t freeze a once-a-year list; update and coach as conditions change.
  3. Use tech and gen AI strategically — for example, to summarise peer feedback — without letting tools replace managerial judgment.
  4. Pair financial with nonfinancial rewards — career paths, development, and recognition sit beside pay if you want the signal to stick.

None of that is exotic. Most mid-market People stacks fail the first two before they ever reach AI or rewards design.

The hurdle: goals stuck in slides / annual theatre

For mid-market CPOs, the pattern is familiar. Company priorities live in a kickoff deck. Departments rewrite them into local OKRs. Individuals keep task lists in a different tool. At review time, managers invent a narrative that connects the three — then everyone waits twelve months to try again.

  • Slideware cascade — strategy never reaches the system managers open weekly.
  • Frozen annual goals — no coaching rhythm; underperformance compounds until the big review.
  • Reviews without goal evidence — deliverables scoring becomes vibes and recency bias.
  • Rewards without line of sight — promo and recognition debates feel political because nobody shared the same goal thread.

McKinsey’s 72% figure cuts both ways: employees are ready to be motivated by goals. The stack often isn’t ready to host them.

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How Revolut People Goals operationalises this

The primary product surface for this hurdle is Goals — not a parallel OKR wiki.

  • Cascade company → team → individual — the same thread managers and ICs open, so strategy connection is structural, not slide theatre.
  • Live goals, not frozen annual lists — progress stays visible through the quarter so coaching has something concrete to adjust.
  • Coaching rhythm — goals sit where 1:1s and review evidence meet, which is how “agile and coachable” stops being a workshop slogan.

That maps cleanly onto McKinsey’s first two considerations. Tech/gen AI (their third) and nonfinancial rewards (their fourth) still matter — but they only compound when the cascade and live tracking already work. Method context lives in the playbook summary and Week 3 — Goals that don’t cascade; Goals is how teams run the cascade instead of presenting it.

A 30-day start

  1. Publish a small set of company goals (5–6) that can actually cascade — kill the slide-only extras.
  2. Map every team and individual goal to a parent; orphan goals get deleted or rewritten.
  3. Switch the next coaching cycle to live goal progress (not a retrospective deck) for two critical teams.
  4. Require the next review’s deliverables lens to cite cascaded goal evidence — reject grades that can’t point to it.
  5. Name one nonfinancial reward signal (recognition, development slot, or career conversation) that will fire off goal outcomes this quarter.

Motivation is already there for most employees, if McKinsey’s read is right. The job for mid-market stacks is to stop burying goals inside the annual review and start running them as live work.