Blob maps / Use cases / OKR & goal alignment
OKR & goal alignment
Connect daily work to strategic goals — and surface what's missing, what's misaligned, and what's just noise.
The problem
OKRs are a good idea executed poorly by most organisations. The reason is usually not a lack of ambition — it\'s a lack of honest connection between the goals set at the top and the work happening at the ground. Leaders approve OKRs. Teams nod along. Then everyone continues doing what they were already doing, while reporting progress against goals that have no real relationship to it. The problem isn\'t motivation; it\'s that no one has ever honestly mapped what the work is.
How BlobMap helps
- 1Contributors map their actual work — not what they're supposed to be doing for the OKRs, but what they're really doing — across activities, outputs, systems, blockers, and goals.
- 2Leaders can see immediately which stated goals have genuine work supporting them, and which are floating without operational backing.
- 3The future time-state blobs show what people intend to do — making aspiration visible and testable against stated OKRs.
- 4The relationship layer lets teams explicitly link activities to goals, surfacing which work supports which objective and which objectives are orphaned.
How a typical engagement runs
Map work first, OKRs second
Start by having contributors map what they're actually doing — before adding the OKR layer. The honest picture first.
Overlay the stated goals
Add your current OKRs as goal-type blobs. Then look at what's connected and what's not.
Surface the gaps
Which OKRs have no work? Which work has no OKR? Which high-frequency, large activities are completely unconnected to any strategic goal?
Review and debate
Use the map to run an honest conversation about what matters. The structured data gives teams permission to challenge the official story.
Revise or realign
Either adjust the work to better support the goals, or revise the goals to better reflect what the organisation is actually capable of doing.
The outcome
An honest, structured view of the relationship between daily work and strategic goals — enabling a real conversation about alignment rather than a performance of one.