Leviatan Group, a major player in the Romanian construction industry, used OKRs to connect strategic ambition to everyday work across nearly 250 employees and three business units.
A Builder on the Rise With a Focus Problem
Leviatan Group specializes in complex design-and-build projects with a strong technological edge: BIM, digital twin, mixed reality, and automated processes. Founded in 2012, the company operates across fields like defense, healthcare, and education. With nearly 250 employees spread across three business units (including one for software development) and a turnover approaching €100 million, Leviatan has experienced strong growth in recent years.
But growth brought a familiar problem. Teams were busy. They were performing well. Yet they often lacked clarity on how their work connected to the company’s priorities. Many projects started, but very few finished or had the desired impact. As the team put it, there were too many “open drawers” and not enough follow-through. Teams felt the organization was not prioritizing enough.
The challenge was clear: shift from a reactive, project-driven culture to one that is proactive, aligned, and guided by measurable impact, without stifling innovation or autonomy.
To tackle this, Leviatan partnered with A Tribe Called GaaM, a performance and organizational development consultancy, to design and roll out their OKR program.
What Leviatan Set Out to Solve
Leviatan identified five specific areas where OKRs could make a difference:
- Strategic alignment and operational focus: closing the gap between long-term goals and daily execution, so teams clearly saw how their work contributed to company priorities.
- Vertical and horizontal alignment: making leadership ambitions clearer for each business unit and increasing visibility between teams.
- Team engagement and ownership of results: getting teams to regularly monitor their OKRs and think in terms of outcomes, not just activities.
- Managerial performance capability: equipping managers to track both collective and individual performance better.
- Continuous improvement: building a loop of ongoing optimization together with the performance team and managers.
Building the Performance Infrastructure
Before rolling out OKRs, Leviatan built a broader performance system with several components: a leadership program for managers, a CFR (Conversations, Feedback, Recognition) framework for structured communication between managers and their teams, a community of managers, and the OKR program itself.
A small, dedicated core team drove the rollout: one OKR Lead and two OKR Champions, supported by a dedicated tracking platform. OKRs were introduced simultaneously to the leadership team and all 22 teams in the second half of 2023.
The company defined three distinct levels of OKRs to create a clear line of sight from the boardroom to every team:
- Strategic OKRs set by leadership to frame the organization’s top priorities.
- Team OKRs co-created by managers and their teams, aligned to strategic priorities.
- Individual OKRs connecting personal contributions to team and company goals.
Start Now, Excel Later
Rather than spending months designing the “perfect” system, Leviatan deliberately chose speed and learning over perfection. The first cycles were explicitly treated as test runs: a way to build shared understanding, uncover friction points, and iterate.
This was a conscious choice. As the team described: “It was more important to start using OKRs imperfectly than to wait until every detail was figured out.”
The rollout followed a phased approach. It started with leadership-level OKRs to frame strategic priorities, then supported managers in helping teams localize and translate those objectives. Rather than imposing a rigid, top-down process, the company embraced a participatory rollout where teams co-created their OKRs with managers.
That shift in mindset, from compliance to curiosity, was essential in building internal OKR capability and long-term commitment.
The Rhythms That Made OKRs Stick
Two operating cadences improved execution speed the most.
Regular OKR monitoring at the team level. Teams began reviewing their OKRs regularly, making progress (or the lack of it) visible early and enabling faster course-correction.
CFR-based conversations. The structured communication framework between managers and teams meant OKRs were anchored in ongoing check-ins, feedback, and recognition, rather than handled only in formal reviews.
By embedding OKRs into existing rhythms like planning cycles, retrospectives, and 1:1s rather than treating them as a separate exercise, Leviatan made the methodology part of how teams actually work.
OKR Champions and Managers as Accelerators
OKR Champions served as internal translators for the methodology. They supported teams in drafting and refining OKRs, made sure check-ins and CFRs actually happened, and removed operational friction around the process.
Managers played the key role of localizing strategic objectives for their teams: co-creating team OKRs, prioritizing realistically, and using OKRs in 1:1s and team meetings to make faster decisions about what to start, stop, or change.
Together, they created momentum, kept focus on outcomes, and made sure the OKR system didn’t stay “on paper” but actively drove progress.
How Leadership Made It Work
Leadership contributed to clearer prioritization and faster decision-making in three concrete ways.
Clarifying ambitions and strategic priorities. The leadership team made its ambitions explicit and concrete, making it much easier for each business unit to understand what really matters and align accordingly.
Prioritizing experimentation over perfection. Instead of waiting for a “perfect” OKR design, leadership deliberately chose a learning-first approach. This reduced resistance, sped up adoption, and enabled quicker adjustments based on real feedback rather than theory.
Using OKRs as a decision and conversation tool. Leadership encouraged the use of OKRs to align cross-functional work and surface conflicting priorities early. This turned OKR reviews into structured conversations that directly supported faster, better decisions about what to focus on and what to deprioritize.
What They Stopped Doing
Some of Leviatan’s biggest gains came not from adding new practices, but from dropping old ones:
- Stopped waiting for the “perfect” OKR design. Instead of holding back for perfect cascading and flawless key results, they chose to start imperfectly and learn in real time.
- Stopped treating OKRs as a static documentation exercise. They moved away from OKRs as a form to fill in once per cycle and instead used them as an ongoing conversation tool.
- Stopped running OKRs as a separate, parallel process. Rather than having “the OKR thing” on the side, they embedded OKRs into existing organizational performance processes.
- Stopped pushing a rigid, top-down rollout. They embraced a participatory, manager-led approach where teams co-created their OKRs.
Overcoming Challenges Along the Way
Like any transformation, Leviatan’s OKR journey had its share of obstacles.
Bridging the strategy-execution gap. As the company scaled, there was a widening gap between long-term strategic goals and everyday execution, with a risk of remaining in a reactive mode. OKRs gave the organization a common language and structure to connect the two.
Avoiding overengineering. There was a real danger of waiting for the “perfect” cascade and flawless KRs, which could have slowed adoption and fueled resistance. The learning-first approach neutralized this risk.
Balancing structure with flexibility. A rigid, top-down process wouldn’t fit Leviatan’s collaborative, mission-driven culture. The participatory rollout, where teams co-created their OKRs with manager support, proved to be the right fit.
Improving cross-functional coordination. Using OKRs as a conversation tool helped surface conflicting priorities early. Increasing horizontal visibility between teams made dependencies and overlaps easier to spot. OKR Champions served as internal connectors, making it easier to coordinate across functions without adding bureaucracy.
Results After 18 Months
After 18 months of working with OKRs, Leviatan saw clear improvements across the organization.
Better vertical alignment. The leadership team clarified its ambitions, making alignment easier for each of the three business units. Management direction became clearer.
Higher engagement and ownership. Teams became genuinely committed to their OKRs and regularly reviewed them, increasing energy, discipline, and follow-through on priorities.
Greater accountability. Managers were better equipped to monitor both collective and individual performance, raising the bar on accountability and making conversations about impact more concrete.
Horizontal visibility. Teams gained greater visibility of what other teams were doing, making cross-functional coordination easier.
A more learning-oriented, outcome-driven culture. The shift from compliance to curiosity fostered outcome-oriented thinking, experimentation, and continuous improvement across teams.
What’s Next for Leviatan
Leviatan’s next phase is less about “introducing OKRs” and more about deepening capability and alignment:
- Identify ambassadors within teams to support champions in facilitating rituals and advocating for OKRs.
- Strengthen cross-team alignment. Managers explicitly ask for more alignment of objectives and key results across teams to reduce silos and dependencies.
- Bring OKRs more into day-to-day conversations. Teams want OKRs to show up in ongoing discussions, not just in formal reviews.
- Provide clearer guidance and tools. Better examples, templates, and practical instructions on how to write and use OKRs.
- Invest in targeted training across four areas: writing effective OKRs, tracking and measuring progress, managing progress during the cycle, and aligning business-level and team OKRs.
- Create a community of managers for sharing best practices, challenges, and opportunities, building a virtuous circle around the managers most active in the approach.
Lessons and Insights from Leviatan’s Journey
1. Start imperfect, learn fast. The first few cycles were treated as test runs. Waiting for perfection would have killed momentum and fueled resistance. “It was more important to start using OKRs imperfectly than to wait until every detail was figured out.”
2. Make OKRs a conversation tool, not a documentation exercise. OKRs became a mechanism to align cross-functional work, surface conflicting priorities early, and foster outcome-oriented thinking at all levels.
3. Culture matters. Success depended heavily on tailoring the OKR approach to Leviatan’s collaborative, mission-driven culture. Rather than imposing a rigid process, the company embraced a participatory rollout where teams co-created their OKRs with managers.
4. Embed OKRs into existing rhythms. Integrate OKRs into planning cycles, retrospectives, and 1:1s rather than treating them as a separate exercise.
5. Invest in customized support. Train OKR Champions, coach managers, and build internal capability from the start.
6. Leadership sets the tone. When leadership chose experimentation over perfection and used OKRs as a decision-making tool, it sent a clear signal to the rest of the organization.
Leviatan Group’s OKR journey shows what happens when a company that’s scaling quickly stops waiting for the perfect system and starts building the right habits. By treating OKRs as a learning process rather than a compliance exercise, they connected strategy to execution across 22 teams in 18 months and created a performance system that keeps getting sharper over time.