Cascading goals is the practice of translating high-level company objectives into supporting goals for departments, teams, and individuals, so every level's work rolls up to the strategy. Done well it creates a clear line of sight from a person's task to the company's direction. Done mechanically it produces a brittle tree nobody updates.
There are two ways to cascade. Strict cascading copies a parent goal down level by level, which guarantees alignment but is rigid and slow to change. Aligned cascading lets each level write its own goals that explicitly link to a parent, which is more flexible and is closer to how OKRs are meant to work.
The failure mode is the same in both: the cascade is built once, at planning time, and then frozen. When priorities shift mid-cycle, the tree no longer reflects reality, and the line of sight everyone admired on the slide quietly breaks.
Company: enter the DACH market. Sales: sign 20 DACH logos. Marketing: build a German demand engine. Product: ship German localization and EU data residency.
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