Viva Goals Is Dead. Now What?

Microsoft killed Viva Goals on December 31, 2025. If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of the thousands of teams scrambling for a replacement.

Every list you’ve found recommends the same tools: Betterworks, Teamflect, Cascade, Mooncamp. They’re fine. They track OKRs. They have dashboards. They’ll slot right into where Viva Goals was.

But I’d push you to ask a harder question first: was Viva Goals actually working?

Were your strategic priorities showing up in what people did every day? Or were they just showing up in dashboards that leadership looked at once a quarter?

If Viva Goals was a place where goals went to be tracked and mostly ignored, replacing it with another tracker gives you a nicer-looking version of the same problem.

The Viva Goals Replacements Everyone Recommends

Quick rundown so you don’t have to read ten comparison articles:

All solid products. All do roughly the same thing: help you set goals, track progress, run check-ins.

None of them answer the question that matters: why does the strategy keep dying between the town hall and the Tuesday standup?

Systems of Record vs. Systems of Action

Enterprise tech went through this exact evolution before.

Salesforce started as a system of record for customer data. But knowing who your customers are didn’t make sales reps sell better. So a whole category of sales engagement tools (Outreach, Salesloft, Gong) emerged to drive action from that data. The system of record told you what you had. The system of action changed what people did with it.

ERP followed the same arc. SAP held the data. But companies still needed workflow tools, automation layers, and process engines to turn that data into different behavior on the ground.

Strategy execution is stuck in the system-of-record era.

Viva Goals, Betterworks, Cascade: they’re systems of record for strategic intent. They capture goals, track progress, store check-ins. Valuable? Sure. But a system of record doesn’t change what happens on Monday morning.

What’s missing is the system of action. Technology that takes strategic priorities and drives them into daily operations. Not by tracking whether people reported progress, but by actively reinforcing the behaviors that make the strategy real.

As AI reshapes how we work in 2026, the gap between recording strategy and implementing it is only getting wider. The organizations that close it won’t be the ones with the best dashboards. They’ll be the ones that built the action layer.

The 59-Point Gap

A Harvard Business Review study surveyed over 500 employees across 12 organizations and found that people at every level felt strategic alignment was around 82%. When researchers measured actual alignment, it was 23%. That’s a 59-point disconnect between what leadership sees in their system of record and what’s actually happening on the ground.

We’ve written about why execution breaks down before KPIs ever reflect it, and this is exactly that pattern. The system of record shows green. The ground truth is red. Nobody catches it until the quarterly review.

Training doesn’t close the gap. Research published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology found that only 10-15% of what’s learned in training actually transfers to the job (Ford et al., 2018). Communication doesn’t close it either. Awareness isn’t action. And dashboards? Nobody ever changed their behavior because a progress bar turned yellow.

What a System of Action Actually Looks Like

If strategy execution needs to evolve from record-keeping to action-driving, what does that actually mean in practice?

A system of action would need to do three things:

1. Translate strategy into specific behaviors. Not “improve customer centricity” as a goal, but the concrete daily actions that need to change for it to happen.
2. Reinforce those behaviors where people work. Inside their existing tools, every day. Not in a training session they forget by Thursday. Not in a quarterly check-in. In the actual flow of work.
3. Show whether the change is real. Not self-reported progress. Actual data on whether teams are doing the new thing or still doing the old thing, and why.

If you want to dig deeper, we break down the difference between behavior measurement and engagement metrics and why most orgs are tracking the wrong thing.

This Is What We’re Building

At GWork, this is the problem we set out to solve. We’re building strategic implementation technology: the action layer between where strategy gets defined and where work actually happens.

It’s early. We’re running 90-day pilots with enterprise teams to prove the model. One strategic priority, one team, measurable behavior change within 30 days.

If your organization is stuck in the gap between “strategy announced” and “strategy implemented,” we’d like to talk.

Start a conversation →

Who Should Be Thinking About This

• Heads of Organizational Effectiveness who keep getting asked “why hasn’t this landed yet?”
• CHROs who need proof that leadership programs actually changed behavior, not just performance metrics that look good on paper
• COOs tired of the gap between what the board approved and what’s happening on the floor
• Enterprises with 300+ people, where you can’t just walk around and check

Viva Goals Migration Checklist

If you’re moving off Viva Goals, here’s what you need to handle before your replacement goes live:

Before You Switch

• Export your OKR data. Viva Goals allowed CSV exports of objectives, key results, and check-in history. Do this now if you haven’t already.
• Map your current workflows. Document which teams used Viva Goals, how often, and what they actually did with it (vs. what they were supposed to do).
• Identify what was working. Some teams may have built real habits around check-ins or alignment reviews. Don’t lose what was working when you swap tools.
• Identify what wasn’t. Be honest about adoption gaps. If 60% of your teams never logged in, a new tool won’t fix that. The problem is behavioral, not technical.

Choosing Your Replacement

• If you need OKR tracking: Betterworks, Teamflect, or Cascade are solid options.
• If you need Teams integration: Teamflect is the closest to the Viva Goals experience inside Microsoft Teams.
• If you need executive dashboards: Cascade gives leadership the visibility layer they want.
• If adoption was the real problem: You need a system of action, not another system of record. That’s what GWork is built for.

After You Switch

• Set a 30-day adoption checkpoint. If usage patterns mirror what happened with Viva Goals, the tool isn’t the issue.
• Measure behavior, not logins. Track whether strategic priorities are showing up in daily work, not just whether people opened the app.
• Connect strategy to daily operations. The tool should change what people do on Monday morning, not just what they report on Friday afternoon.

Feature Comparison: Viva Goals vs. Alternatives

Common Questions

Does a system of action replace Viva Goals?

No. They solve different problems. If you need OKR tracking, grab Betterworks or Cascade. A system of action works alongside your goal-tracking tools to make sure those goals actually translate into changed behavior. Most teams will need both.

Does GWork work with Microsoft 365?

Yes. GWork plugs into Teams, Outlook, and existing workflows. Reinforcement happens where your people already work. No new app to adopt.

How is this different from an engagement tool?

Engagement tools measure how people feel. A system of action changes what people do. Different problem, different approach. We go deeper on this in our piece on building a feedback culture that actually sticks.

What does a pilot cost?

$15K to $25K for 90 days depending on team size. You see results in 30. It either works or it doesn’t. No 18-month rollout before you find out.