Hosted by Deidre Paknad, WorkBoard CEO
Denise Kanfield drives the OKR and results program at Cisco. Before that, she was a business agility and transformation leader at Thomson Reuters for three years. Denise has done OKRs at three different companies, and she intentionally sought out a role to lead OKRs and results management. We sat down with her to tap the breadth and depth of her knowledge in the OKR space.
About Denise Kanfield
Denise is a Business Agility Leadership Coach and OKR Guru recognized for being an action-biased leader to support leaders and teams through transformational change. She thrives on coaching senior and executive leadership, bringing a ‘meet you where you are’ approach while using data and OKRs to drive meaningful results and lasting adoption. Denise is leading OKR adoption within the Cisco Security Business Group and has experience in OKR adoption in small, mid and enterprise level organizations. She has expertise in training, organizational development, operations, and sales leadership which allow her to quickly understand and align her work to the company’s strategy & roadmap for change. Denise has enabled value delivery across diverse industries and start-ups to large global organizations. Broad business acumen and ability facilitate challenging the status quo at all levels are core to her success driving OKR creation, adoption and execution.
About Deidre Paknad
Deidre Paknad has founded and led three tech startups, acquired companies and been acquired, and led a high-growth business as an executive at IBM for several years; this affords her a unique perspective on using both speed and scale to drive growth. In her role as CEO at WorkBoard, she works with senior leadership teams at some of the world’s largest companies to clarify, align, and drive strategic priorities with greater speed and agility. She is a frequent speaker on Outcome Mindset™ and tapping into ambition.
Deidre has over a dozen patents and has twice been inducted into the Smithsonian Institution for innovation. Goldman Sachs named her one of the 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs of 2019. Deidre hosts The OKR Podcast, which focuses on accelerating outcomes and fostering an outcomes culture.