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First steps for a new TG customer

You are the administrator of a new TG system, and you need to get started. What do I need to consider and do when starting with TG?

Getting Started with Tangible Growth

A guide for new customers. This walks you through your first onboarding cycle, mapped to the TG Way of Working: Plan → Align → Execute → Learn → Adapt.

Expect to see first visible execution clarity within a few weeks, not days. The setup is fast; the value comes from building the rhythm.

Executive Advisor (if available)

If your subscription includes TEA, leaders can ask it questions across Game Plans, OKRs, Interlocks, and connected systems. Use it to help you get started, prepare for Check-ins, steering reviews, and Align sessions instead of compiling status by hand. Once you are up and running with multiple teams, use TEA to understand what the changes around you mean to your execution. 

Before you start

Confirm these are in place. They matter more than any configuration step.

  • Executive sponsor. A leader who owns the rollout and unblocks decisions.
  • Champion / Coach. Someone (internal or from TG / a TG partner) who runs the first Check-ins, helps teams draft Game Plans, and gradually hands the practice back to team leaders.
  • Admin owner. Whoever will manage users, teams, and integrations in TG.
  • Materials ready (if you have the Strategic Choices module): your current strategy, culture, and leadership documents in digital form.
  • Review also the questions at the end of this page to understand what needs to be considered.

If any of these are missing, talk to your TG contact or partner before going further.

Step 1 — Set up admin and your first users

After logging in, go to the Admin section and add your first users. You may want to keep the initial group small: the people who will draft the leadership Game Plan and the Champion / Coach.

While in Admin, also consider:

  • SSO and SCIM. Enable both early. They improve security and remove manual user administration as you scale.
  • Integrations. If you plan to connect Jira, HubSpot, Asana, Planner, Signavio, or other systems, line those up now so they are ready when teams start working.

Step 2 — Upload strategy materials (Strategic Choices module only)

If your subscription includes Strategic Choices, upload your strategy, culture, and leadership materials. The system will then guide you through crafting your choices using the extended Playing to Win model (Winning Aspiration, Where to Play, How to Win, Required Capabilities, Management Systems, People).

If you do not have the Strategic Choices module, skip this step and go straight to Step 3. Your existing strategy still anchors the OKRs you define next; you just will not be drafting it inside TG.

Step 3 — Define Organization OKRs

With your strategic direction set, draft the Organization OKRs. These are the top-level Objectives and Key Results that every team Game Plan should ladder up to.

Cadence. Run Organization OKRs annually and team OKRs quarterly/in tertiles. The annual horizon gives the organization a stable target; the quarterly/tertile horizon gives teams the chance to adapt, learn, and re-plan four/three times a year. This is the cadence TG recommends and how the Way of Working is designed around.

Step 4 — Create your organization in TG

You do not have to model the whole organization on day one. Starting with a single team — typically the leadership team — and expanding from there is a perfectly valid entry point. It lets you build the rhythm with one group before cascading.

When you are ready to go broader, the structure you choose shapes how plans, OKRs, and Interlocks flow through the system.

Line vs. Virtual Teams

  • Line Teams. Use if each person belongs to one and only one team. Simple, fast to set up.
  • Virtual Teams. Use if people belong to multiple teams (matrix structures, programs, transformations). Every user still needs to sit in a single Line Team, typically named something like "Users". If a Virtual organization has not been created for you, ask your TG contact to set one up.

Multiple Virtual structures

You can run several Virtual structures in parallel, for example one for the organization, one for business lines, one for major transformations. Use this when the same people need to be grouped differently for different planning purposes.

Security and administration

If you skipped it in Step 1, enable SSO and SCIM now. They get more painful to retrofit as the user base grows.

When to ask for help

If the structure is not obvious, reach out to Tangible Growth or your TG partner before you commit. Reshaping the organization later is possible but creates noise in the historical data.

Once the structure is in place, add the remaining users and teams you need to get started.

Step 5 — Draft the first Game Plans (Plan phase)

A Game Plan is a living strategy translation surface for a team: identity, Objectives, Key Results, Commitments, Interlocks. It is not a charter and not a dashboard.

Start with the leadership team Game Plan, then cascade to the next level. Each team:

  1. Defines team identity, role and ways of working: including how the team wants to behave, make decisions, and work together internally and with other teams. This is not a soft step; it is what makes the Game Plan stick when pressure rises.
  2. Drafts Objectives, Key Results, and related Commitments that align up to the Organization OKRs.
  3. Identifies initial obstacles and dependencies, and creates Interlocks where another team is needed. An Interlock is a mutual obligation between two teams, not a one-way dependency.
  4. Reviews the draft with the sponsor. 

The implementation playbook has detailed templates for this, including a Digital Facilitation script for getting team feedback on the draft.

Typically as a leader you would discuss with your manager and colleagues of your priorities and expectations, then draft the initial Game Plan and review with your manager and finalize with the team. 

Leadership behaviour

  • Be clear about your targets and ways of working

  • Assign and ensure clear ownership

Step 6 — Run the first Align & Untangle session

Once the leadership and next-level Game Plans are drafted, run a short Align & Untangle session between the leaders. The goals:

  • Share each Game Plan as a short story.
  • Surface overlaps, gaps, and shared dependencies.
  • Resolve or schedule the first Interlocks.
  • Agree on priorities where teams compete for the same resources.

This is the moment where strategy stops being a document and starts being a practice.

Step 7 — Run the execution rhythm (Execute phase)

You now have goals to achieve: Organization OKRs and team OKRs. Build the rhythm to keep them alive.

Check-ins

  • Bi-weekly, 15–30 minutes. Add to an existing meeting, do not create a new one.
  • The owner of each Key Result updates Confidence before the meeting: All OK, Some hickups, Help needed, or No status. Confidence is forward-looking — it signals whether you expect to hit the KR, not a backward-looking status report.
  • Use the appropriate Activity View for your meeting type.
  • Spend time on the KRs that need help, not on the green ones.

Leadership behaviour

  • Set clear expectations for updates.
  • Be patient. It takes a few cycles before the conversation shifts from status reporting to forward-looking decisions.
  • Show the example yourself. Teams copy what leaders do, not what leaders say.

Step 8 — Reflect & Learn at the end of the period

Before the period ends, schedule:

  1. A Reflect & Learn session to review outcomes, decide which Objectives continue, and capture what to change.
  2. A planning session for the next period to draft updated Game Plans.

Use Digital Facilitation to gather team input asynchronously before the session so the meeting time goes to decisions, not collection.

Cover three things as a full organization: direction, target setting, and ways of working.

Leadership behaviour

  • Be open for learning, do not assign blame, find solutions and update ways of working to address challenges. 

Step 9 — Adapt and start the next cycle

Update Game Plans based on what you learned. Create any new Interlocks before the next Check-in. Prepare each Game Plan to be shared in the next Align & Untangle session.

You are now in the steady-state cycle.

What else should I consider?

These questions are not optional add-ons. They shape whether TG becomes a system of record or a system of decision-making.

  • Leadership culture and capability. Do your leaders need support to lead in this more transparent, forward-looking, outcome-oriented model?
  • Operating model fit. How does TG slot into and improve your existing operating model? What changes, what stays?
  • Annual clock. What is your planning and budgeting rhythm today? How should it shift to fit a more agile cadence without breaking finance?
  • Decision-making. Where are decisions made today, and how should the visibility in TG change that?
  • Prioritization. How do you balance work that comes from strategy and OKRs against business as usual?
  • Planning and budgeting. How do OKRs and Game Plans connect to the yearly plan and budget?
  • Programs and projects. How do you lead development programs now that the strategic intent lives in TG?
  • Interlocks at scale. How do you handle unclarity, dependencies, and obstacles across the organization? What is the escalation path?

Transformation Canvas provides a structure for thinking these through, you can invoke the Transformation Advisor from TEA by asking for advice on leading your transformation.

Or bring these questions to your TG contact or partner. They are the most common reason customers either accelerate or stall in the first two cycles.

Where to go next

  • Implementation Playbook — phase-by-phase tactical guidance for Champions and team leaders.
  • Training and coaching — TG and partner-led sessions for your first Check-ins, Align sessions, and Reflect & Learn.
  • Executive Advisor — if available in your subscription, start using it from day one.

If anything in this guide is unclear, reach out to your TG contact or partner. Getting the first cycle right is the highest-leverage thing you can do. Learning from it and making the second better, is where you start to see real value.