Who can use this feature?
Available on:
All Culture Amp subscriptions that include Performance with Goals.
Connecting your high-level strategy to daily execution is essential for keeping your organization aligned. The Cascading Goals feature bridges this gap by allowing individual and team efforts to feed directly into your company’s "North Star" objectives. With auto-update functionality, you get a real-time, automated view of your organizational health without the need for manual progress tracking.
Cascading goals help to:
Bridge the Strategy-Execution Gap: Connect your high-level organizational strategy directly with the daily work of your teams.
Drive Alignment: Ensure every task and initiative meaningfully contributes to your primary company objectives.
Real-Time Visibility: Enjoy an automated view of goal progress across the organization, reducing the need for manual status updates.
Before You Begin: Access Requirements
Only Account Administrators and Goals Full Permissions (including scoped) users can create supporting goals.
You cannot have both Key Results and Supporting Goals auto-update the same goal simultaneously.
Draft goals do not affect the progress of aligned goals; only Published goals will trigger recalculations.
Cascading is enabled by default for all accounts. Account Administrators can turn it off in Settings > Goals if needed.
Setting Up Cascading Goals
Setting up a cascading goal allows progress from "supporting goals" to automatically update the progress of a "primary goal".
From your home page, navigate to Goals > Goals
Select the Create Goal button.
Enter your goal details, such as the title and description.
Under the Goal Progress section, select Use supporting goals to cascade progress.
Connect the supporting goals that you want to contribute to this goal's progress.
Under the Alignment section, select the primary goal you want to link this goal to.
Publish your goal
Tip: While there is no hard limit on how many levels you can cascade, we recommend keeping it to 5 or 6 levels to ensure goals remain easy to track and follow best practices.
Troubleshooting/FAQ's
Can I turn on cascading for an existing goal?
Can I turn on cascading for an existing goal?
No. You cannot retroactively edit an existing goal to use cascading progress. To use this feature for an existing objective, you will need to archive or delete the old goal and create a new one.
Why can't I manually update my goal progress?
Why can't I manually update my goal progress?
When you select Use supporting goals to cascade progress, manual updates are disabled because the progress is calculated automatically from supporting goals. If you prefer manual updates, use the key results default option instead.
Are goals weighted differently in the calculation?
Are goals weighted differently in the calculation?
Currently, all supporting goals are weighted equally when calculating progress, no matter the goal type or key result format they used (percentage or numerical value). A custom weighting feature is planned for release later in 2026.
What happens to progress if I delete a supporting goal?
What happens to progress if I delete a supporting goal?
The progress of any aligned primary goals will automatically recalculate to reflect the change.
Can I update the goal progress of the supporting goals via the primary goal, or do I need to access them separately?
Can I update the goal progress of the supporting goals via the primary goal, or do I need to access them separately?
The primary goal view will show which goals you've set up as cascaded supporting goals, and what their current progress is, but you will need to access the supporting goals separately to make progress updates, which will then feed back into the primary goal progress.
What happens to cascading goals when cascading is turned off in Settings?
What happens to cascading goals when cascading is turned off in Settings?
When an Account Administrator turns off cascading in Settings, any existing cascading goals revert to standard goals and will have key results instead. Their progress remains at whatever value it was at the time cascading was disabled, but will need to be updated manually going forward. Goal alignment is not affected and will continue as normal.