How Xactly Built a Culture of Performance and Alignment

The Opportunity to Build Something Better

For many organizations, performance management is something employees complete a few times a year.

For Jasmyn Pearl, Senior Manager of Performance Management at Xactly, it needed to become something much more powerful: a system that helps employees understand where the company is going, how they contribute to its success, and how they can continue to grow along the way.

That challenge became especially important as Xactly, a global leader in sales performance management software with approximately 600 employees worldwide, continued to evolve its business and invest in its people.

"As our business evolved, we needed our performance management to evolve with it," Jasmyn explained. "We had foundational goals in place, but we wanted to move beyond standard check-the-box activities to a dynamic system that truly rewards top performers and helps our people grow."

Employees were asking for more development opportunities. Leaders wanted better visibility into performance and talent. And the company needed a more connected approach to aligning people strategy with business strategy.

The solution wasn't simply implementing a new platform. It was creating a performance culture.

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Creating Alignment Between Individual Work and Business Success

The first step was rethinking how goals were set and managed across the organization.

Prior to Lattice, Xactly relied on a management-by-objectives (MBO) framework. While goals existed, they weren't creating the level of visibility, accountability, or strategic alignment the organization wanted.

Jasmyn led the transition to Lattice Goals & OKRs, helping employees connect their work directly to broader company priorities.

"We transitioned to OKRs because we wanted to drive deeper strategic alignment and give our teams the specificity they needed to execute," she said.

The shift gave leaders greater visibility into what teams were working on and provided employees with a clearer understanding of how their individual contributions connected to company success. Leaders could identify potential execution risks sooner, while employees could see how their goals rolled up to executive priorities.

Adoption was critical. With employees spread across India, North America, and EMEA, Jasmyn knew a one-size-fits-all rollout wouldn't work.

Her team developed region-specific communications, partnered closely with senior leaders, and conducted "roadshows" within functional team meetings and manager forums.

Rather than simply explaining what employees needed to do, they focused on why the new process mattered.

"Here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it, and here's how it benefits you" became the foundation of their approach.

The result was strong adoption from the start. Xactly achieved a 94% participation rate during its first OKR-writing cycle, and an equally high percentage of employees report understanding how their work contributes to Xactly's success.

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Building a Culture of Feedback and Growth

With goals and OKRs providing alignment, Jasmyn turned her attention to the behaviors that sustain high performance over time: feedback and development.

One of the earliest successes came through a campaign called "Give the Gift of Feedback."

Launched during the holiday season, the initiative encouraged employees to recognize colleagues for their contributions, influence, and impact. Rather than framing feedback as an HR process, the campaign presented it as an opportunity to give coworkers something meaningful.

The message resonated because it reflected Xactly's culture.

"Our employees really like each other," Jasmyn said. "People stay because of the connections they have here."

The campaign generated 195 organic feedback exchanges in just two months, while the broader Feedback rollout produced more than 300 feedback submissions within the first 30 days.

The impact extended beyond participation metrics. Employees began building richer records of peer recognition and developmental feedback that could later support performance conversations and growth planning.

Jasmyn applied a similar philosophy when introducing Lattice Grow.

Instead of leading with product features, she focused on employee stories.

For the "Own Your Growth" campaign, she asked leaders across the business to nominate employees who consistently invested in their own development, employees who proactively sought feedback, pursued stretch assignments, and looked for opportunities to grow.

She interviewed these employees and created a series of videos highlighting their experiences.

"I felt like maybe employees were tired of hearing from HR," she said. "I wanted them to hear from people who were already doing the work."

The campaign demonstrated that career growth wasn't the sole responsibility of HR. It was something employees could actively drive themselves.

The approach helped generate a 24% voluntary opt-in rate during the initial rollout of Lattice Grow and contributed to a seven-point increase in employee sentiment around opportunities for learning and career development.

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Transforming Performance Management Into a Business Tool

As employees became more engaged in goal setting, feedback, and development planning, Jasmyn took on another challenge: reimagining performance reviews.

Historically, performance reviews often focused on activities completed or tasks accomplished. Jasmyn wanted employees and managers to think differently.

Instead of asking, "What did you do?" the process increasingly focused on a more important question:

"How did you contribute to Xactly's success?"

To support those conversations, the team embedded AI-assisted prompts into the review process. Rather than generating answers for employees, the prompts encouraged reflection on impact, development, and business outcomes.

"The goal wasn't simply to implement a new platform. It was to build a true performance culture," Jasmyn said.

The result was a more meaningful review experience that connected individual performance to organizational success.

Employees could reference documented goals, feedback, and development plans throughout the year rather than relying solely on memory or recent accomplishments. Managers gained context for coaching conversations and developmental feedback.

Together, those changes helped reinforce the connection between day-to-day work and business outcomes, an important contributor to the company's 94% employee alignment score.

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Equipping Managers With Better Talent Decisions

For Jasmyn, performance management included helping managers become more effective leaders.

As Xactly's performance processes matured, leaders began using Talent Reviews, Nine Box assessments, and calibration sessions to evaluate talent more consistently across the organization.

"Our leaders have really enjoyed the talent review piece," Jasmyn said.

These conversations gave managers a structured framework for discussing performance, potential, and development opportunities.

Rather than waiting until a succession challenge emerged or a role became vacant, leaders could proactively identify high-potential employees, development needs, and future talent pipelines.

The process also helped create greater consistency across management teams. Calibration discussions allowed leaders to compare talent assessments, challenge assumptions, and develop a shared understanding of performance expectations.

The result was stronger talent visibility, better succession planning discussions, and more informed people decisions.