How The Leadership Team At Vicimus Uses Hive to Track Objectives

One of the most common leadership problems is tracking progress towards company-wide objectives. Everyone is working towards several common goals, but each team uses different processes, workflows and tools to get there. 

We’ve all been at organizations where the engineering team uses Jira, the sales team is using Salesforce, the ops team is using excel – but there is not a centralized place to track the variety of workflows and track objectives across the entire organization. This creates communication issues, objective alignment challenges and things fall through the cracks. 

It can be frustrating and time-consuming when one team duplicates the work of another team or simply misses a deadline because they are working in different project management systems. And when you’re head-down working on day-to-day tasks, it’s easy to lose sight of larger objectives and prioritize tasks that might not move the needle. 

While it may seem like a no-brainer to use one system across the board, workflow silos are more common than you’d think. Sometimes each team needs to use different tools, or migrating everyone to one platform just isn’t an option. This is a problem many leadership teams face, but our friends at Vicimus, an Automotive Saas company, prove that this doesn’t have to be the case. 

From a value proposition standpoint, the big thing we hope to accomplish with Hive is to reduce the amount of time we spend on work not tied to an objective. We are all busy. I just want to make sure all of our work is tied to an objective. – Craig Hooghiem

Here’s how the Vicimus leadership team uses Hive to track company-wide objectives across different teams. 

Vicimus tracking objective in Hive

Creating parent projects for each objective and sharing across departments

In their Hive workspace, the leadership team has created parent projects for each company objective. Within a parent project, teams can create individual child projects or individual action cards for each tactical step they are taking to meet the objective. Everyone shares responsibility for the completion of the parent project – the overall objective – while teams own their child projects or action cards as individual responsibilities. 

parent project

Because everyone on the leadership team has access to the Parent project and can see what is being done across departments to meet their objectives, they have reduced redundancies and can keep everyone accountable for their actions. Creating this hierarchy of projects and actions also ensures that each team member has access to just the right amount of information they need to do their job – whether that’s a high-level overview or a breakdown of a specific task at the action card level.

Project Completion Widget

Hive has also reduced the amount of time spent on tasks that aren’t related to objectives. Everyone knows the feeling when you put out fires all week, only to realize you haven’t done any of the important tasks related to those larger initiatives. That’s where Hive helps.

Because all Action cards are nested under objectives, and due dates hold people accountable, everyone has a clear view of what needs to be done, and when, to reach goals. Now team leads look at new ideas from a big picture lense – if it doesn’t fit under one of the objectives, it probably isn’t a priority.

Adding Action cards for each objective 

While high-level views are critical to giving updates and tying your team’s hard work to the big picture, accomplishing goals requires focus on details. Action cards provide all the necessary details needed for collaboration, prioritization, and objective alignment. Tailor views by the level of granularity needed, while easily moving from parent project to child project to action cards. 

We use Hive as an objective tracker first, with an action plan one layer below that. I think a lot of companies would benefit from using Hive this way. When you meet with an investor or someone on the leadership team, they often say ‘I want you guys to do ‘this,’ and that’s typically an abstract goal, not a specific action. – Craig Hooghiem

Within the leadership team, each department adds their Action cards to parent and child projects. Action cards foster a more collaborative work environment, hold everyone accountable, and keep all task-related information in a single place. Action cards remove the need to constantly send email reminders or go searching for something in an email. Action cards can be shared, followed (and unfollowed), commented on, and easily moved through the phases of your project. 

One of the most useful features for turning ideas into Action items is Hive Notes. The leadership team has regular meetings where they discuss the next steps and come up with ways to reach their objectives. With Hive Notes, they simply create an agenda before the meeting, share it with participants and then collaborate in real-time by adding ideas and fleshing out the note. 

Within the meeting note itself, the team can turn ideas into Action cards, assign them and give them a due date. This means that everyone leaves with clear next steps and Action cards waiting for them in their Hive dashboard. Utilizing Hive Notes during their meetings removes the need for follow-up emails and ensures that no task gets left behind. 

Sharing progress updates with stakeholders

When sharing progress and reporting to stakeholders, the team didn’t need to include every granular detail. That’s where Hive’s flexible project layouts come in. Project views can be changed anytime to layouts including Gantt, Kanban, Calendar or Table view. This allows teams to visualize projects in whatever way makes the most sense for the project or viewer. Depending on who needs the information, they can zoom in or out to show high-level progress or break down every single detail.

When you start to put your goals on a Gantt chart, it’s completely different from putting a project on a Gannt chart. We’re trying to achieve an objective by a specific date, not release something or complete a project. This keeps everyone very focused on objectives as opposed to actions. But the actions are the second most important part, because that’s how we’re going to achieve the objective. – Craig Hooghiem

Gantt view is especially useful for reporting to stakeholders, as it shows objectives spanning over time and gives a great visual for how work is tracking within those time frames. Whenever a stakeholder needs to be updated on their organization’s progress, a Gantt view can be exported and shared as a PDF or with a public, un-editable link.  

This not only creates transparency and improves communication with internal and external stakeholders, but it also reduces the need to constantly pull reports. 

Track your objectives with Hive

Hive aims to simplify your workflow, bring teams together, and make tracking company-wide objectives easier. In fact, Hive’s objective is to help teams move faster. Want to join thousands of teams who already move faster with Hive? Get started for free and try it out for yourself today.