Summary
Alignment is what separates a real OKR system from a collection of independent spreadsheets. Learn how Brev's parent-child goal structure connects company-level strategy to team and individual execution.
Why Alignment Matters
When a sales team's revenue goal doesn't connect to the company's growth objective, you get effort without direction. When every team goal visibly links to company priorities, people understand why their work matters — and leadership can see if execution is actually moving the needle.
Brev's parent-child goal structure makes this alignment explicit and visual, not something you have to manually trace across decks.
How the Hierarchy Works
Brev supports a flexible goal hierarchy. A typical structure looks like this:
Company Objective
Department Key Result (Metric)
Team Project
Individual Action
And so on...
Department Key Result (Milestone)
Team Objective
Team Key Result
Every goal can have one parent and multiple children. Progress rolls upward — when a child goal moves, it contributes to the parent's progress score.
You can go as deep or as flat as your organization needs. Most teams use 2–3 levels: Company → Team → Individual.
Setting Up a Parent-Child Relationship
When creating a new goal:
1. In the goal creation form, find the Parent goal field.
2. Search for the parent goal by name.
3. Select it. The new goal will appear as a child in the hierarchy.
For an existing goal:
1. Open the goal's detail view.
2. Click Edit (or the pencil icon).
3. Find Parent goal and search/select the parent.
4. Save.
From the parent side:
1. Open the parent goal.
2. Click + Add Key Result or + Add Child Goal.
3. Create a new goal or search for an existing one to link.
How Progress Rolls Up
When a parent goal has children, Brev calculates its progress as a weighted average of its children's progress.
A child Metric at 60% of target → contributes 60% to the parent's score.
A child marked at 100% → contributes 100%.
A child marked at 0% → contributes 0%.
You can customize weights if some Key Results matter more than others. Open the parent goal, click the weight icon next to each child, and adjust.
Pro tip: For company-level Objectives with 4–5 Key Results, review the weights at the start of the quarter. Equal weighting is fine most of the time, but if one Key Result is truly the headline number, weight it higher.
Viewing Alignment in the Goals Hierarchy
The Goals view in Brev shows the full hierarchy tree by default. Use it to:
See which company goals have full team coverage (lots of children) vs. gaps (no children yet)
Identify orphan goals — goals with no parent that may not connect to strategy
Review alignment before a board meeting or quarterly review
Switch between Tree view and List view depending on whether you need the full picture or a filtered slice.
Misalignment Signals to Watch For
Brev surfaces a few alignment health signals:
Orphan goals — No parent assigned. Might be intentional (standalone KPI), might be a missing link.
Overloaded parents — One Objective with 10+ children is hard to review meaningfully. Aim for 3–5 Key Results per Objective.
Mismatched time periods — A child goal with a longer time period than its parent will outlive the parent's review cycle. Fix the date.
⚠️ Note: Changing a parent goal's time period doesn't automatically update children. Update child time periods manually if the quarter shifts.
Cascading Goals Across Teams
For cross-functional goals, you can create a company-level Objective and have multiple teams create their own Key Results beneath it. This gives each team ownership while maintaining visibility at the top.
Example:
Company Objective: Reduce customer churn below 5%
CS Key Result: Decrease time-to-first-value from 14 days to 7 days (CS team)
Product Key Result: Launch proactive health score alerts (Product team)
Sales Key Result: Increase ICP deal mix from 40% to 60% (Sales team)
Each team owns their slice; the Objective owner sees the whole picture.