Add Nested Objectives to your Objectives

When the parent objective is a complex one (based on the scope and breadth), you can create broken down or nested levels of that objective, so that they are focused and actionable, and can be executed by specific individuals in a team. These, along with the other success criteria aggregate to the progress and health of the parent or high level objective. For example, an objective "Explore usage of AI and ML in operations" can be a nested objective for the parent objective "Use technology advancements to improve operations".

How to add nested objective?

You can add a nested objective from

• Planner page: click the + icon under the parent objective, and click New objective.

• If there is no success criteria defined, click New objective under + Add success criteria from the inline Objective row or from its Sidebar.

• Objective's sidebar: click the three dots against the objective title, and click New Objective. 

Enter the details like due date, collaborators, and description. You can then create its own success criteria - objectives, measures, projects and actions. These nested objectives with their own success criteria and the success criteria of the high level objective aggregate to the progress and health of the parent objective.

Visual representation of the added nested objective:

In the Planner, they'll look similar to the high level or parent objective.

In the Sidebar, this objective will be displayed in the Success criteria tab.

In the Alignment page, you'll see the nested objectives displayed as child nodes to the parent objective.

In the Drilldown view, you'll see the nested objectives displayed as child nodes on the right side of the parent objective.

See Add Objectives to the Focus Areas to know more on managing objectives.

How does progress and health transfer to parent objective?

When you add a nested objective, there's the usual flow of progress and health to the parent objective, i.e., average of all the success criteria - actions, measures, projects, nested and contributing objectives.

You can customize the progress calculation with the custom weighting option in the Success criteria tab of the parent objective's sidebar. Include or exclude a nested and contributing objective or in case of Essentials and Enterprise+ tiers, assign a scale of 1 to 5 to determine how the progress of the nested and contributing objective impacts the progress calculation and thereby the health of the parent objective.

See Add Weights to define the Progress of your Objectives for more information.

How to change a high level objective to a nested objective in another plan?

If you've created an objective at a high level but now you want this to be nested under another objective, then you can do it this way:

1. Edit that objective from its sidebar.

2. Under Parent in the Contributes to section, click Edit against the plan details.

3. From the dropdown, select Objective. And, select the relevant objective from the list.

1. Click Save. You'll see that this objective is now nested under the objective you chose from the list.

If the high level objective is a "shared objective", then, from the Contributes to section, you need to first unlink the plans and focus areas with which they're shared, and then go ahead to choose the relevant objective under which it needs to be nested. But, once nested, they cannot be shared. So, the best practice in this case, would be to add that objective as a contribution to the relevant objective, thereby still having it shared across plans and focus areas.

Or, you can do the same with the easy Move flow. Click the three dots against the relevant objective, and click Move.

In the Move this objective modal, click Under another objective option.

Search for the relevant objective from the list, and click Confirm. The objective will now be nested under the chosen objective.

How to change a nested objective to a contributing objective?

If you wish to move a nested objective to a top-level objective in another plan, but contributing to the same parent or original objective, then:

1. Edit that objective from its sidebar.

2. Under Parent in the Contributes to section, click Edit against the objective details.

3. From the dropdown, select Plan. And, choose a plan and focus area to move the nested objective to.

   

4. Click Save. The nested objective will be moved to the chosen plan under the selected focus area as a top level objective.

5. Now, edit the objective from its sidebar.

6. Under Other contributions in the Contributes to section, click the + icon.

7. From the dropdown, select Objective, and choose the same parent objective from the list.

8. Click Add. You'll see that the objective which was nested earlier under the parent objective is now a contributing objective to the same.

How to delete a nested objective:

You can delete the nested objective in the same way like you delete a regular objective. First, delete its associated success criteria, and then from the three dots against it, click Delete.

FAQs

How many levels of objective nesting are supported?

Though you can add any number of objective nesting, we recommend you to be judicious and limit the number of layers to avoid the plans becoming too deep and siloing work into a single team.

Can nested objectives be shared to other plans?

No, nested objectives must inherit the plan and focus area of its parent objective. It’s not currently possible to move nested objectives to another plan without breaking its contribution to parent objective.

Can nested objectives be pulled into reports?

Different types of report tables pull in different levels of nesting information. For example, the Objectives table does not pull in more than one level of nesting while the Measures table do not bring in any measures at all created under nested objectives. Refer the articles on different report types to know in detail.

Will nested objectives that're due be listed in the My upcoming goals section of the Home page?

Yes. These're just different terminologies of objectives and all the objectives that're due will be available under the My upcoming goals section.

Can a nested objective also be a contributing objective to the same parent objective?

Yes, it is. But in such cases, our recommendation would be to just have them as a contributing objective rather than nested to avoid clutter.

Can a shared objective be added as a nested objective?

If the high level objective is a "shared objective", then, from the Contributes to section, you need to first unlink the plans and focus areas with which they're shared, and then go ahead to choose the relevant objective under which it needs to be nested. But, once nested, they cannot be shared. So, the best practice in this case, would be to add that objective as a contribution to the relevant objective, thereby still having it shared across plans and focus areas.