“It is a pleasure to work where everyone knows the most important things to work on, and there is no question regarding the company’s priorities and direction.”

- Mary Kay Peacock, Chief of Staff, Parallel Wireless

Parallel Wireless is a global telecommunications company building energy-efficient, end to end solutions that leverage OpenRAN and hardware-agnostic technologies to help operators modernize their networks and reduce total cost of operation. Founded in 2015, the company combines software and hardware innovation to deliver flexible, cloud-native network solutions to customers around the world.

With a team of nearly 900 employees across multiple continents, Parallel Wireless believes innovation is driven by keeping people empowered and aligned.

That belief became especially important after a period of organizational change and restructuring. As leadership turned over and enterprise tools were eliminated to reduce costs, the company found itself rebuilding the systems and operating rhythm needed to keep strategy clear, measurable, and actionable.

When Parallel Wireless needed to reintroduce more rigorous strategic planning and OKRs, the reality was familiar to most growing organizations:

• Strategy and priorities lived in different places
• Each department tracked work in its own tool
• Leadership struggled to get a consistent view of progress

“Engineering was using Jira. Marketing was using Aha. Finance was using Excel,” said Brian Jasiak, who leads Strategy & Financial Planning. “Elate became the one place where everyone agreed: this is where we’re managing strategy. That alignment alone was huge.”

Mary Kay had previously introduced OKRs using another tool, but after enterprise tools were cut, the team was back to basics.

“We were back to running strategy out of spreadsheets,” Mary Kay recalled. “The leadership team wanted a more formal process for tracking priorities and OKRs, but we needed something lightweight and easy to adopt.”

The goal was not to overcomplicate things. Leadership wanted a simple way to define priorities, align department heads around them, and build accountability without creating a heavy lift.

At exactly the right time, Elate reached out.

“The timing couldn’t have been better,” said Mary Kay. “I took one look at the platform and thought, this is exactly what we need. It was simple, intuitive, and I knew it would be easy to roll out.”

Parallel Wireless did not run a long evaluation process. After reviewing Elate with a small group of leaders, they moved forward quickly.

The Elate team worked hand-in-hand with Mary Kay to structure objectives, dashboards, and reports around the company’s focus areas. What began as a way to centralize priorities quickly became a foundation for how leadership communicated and measured progress.

“We were really just focused on getting leadership organized and aligned,” Mary Kay said. “Let’s not worry too much about propagating it down to every employee. Let’s focus on getting the highest level aligned. What are the company’s priorities, and what do we need to focus on?”

The initial rollout included 12 to 15 members of the leadership team, centered on company priorities and department-level objectives that supported them.

Early on, the biggest work was not learning the tool. It was building the discipline of clear goal-setting.

“It’s easy to say, ‘write an objective,’ but what does that really mean?” Mary Kay explained. “What is an objective versus a KPI? What is the target value? How do you measure success?”

Because Parallel Wireless does much of its tracking manually (rather than pulling KPIs in through integrations), the team worked closely with department heads to make sure objectives were truly measurable. Sometimes that meant discovering the organization did not yet have the data needed to track success.

“Not all the data is currently available to track a particular objective,” Mary Kay said. “So we break it down. What do you need to do to get that data? Let’s make that an initiative and track it.”

Over time, leaders became more effective at setting meaningful objectives and maintaining stronger accountability.

“We’ve been doing this for three years now,” said Mary Kay. “Those who’ve been with us since the beginning have become much more effective at setting and tracking objectives. It’s been an educational journey.”

Today, Elate is embedded into how Parallel Wireless runs the business.

Parallel Wireless holds a regular operations meeting, and two weeks before each meeting, department heads update their objectives and initiatives in Elate.

“We used to chase people for updates across slides and spreadsheets,” Brian said. “Now, everything’s right there. If something hasn’t been updated, it’s flagged. Nobody wants to be the one with a red flag next to their name.”

That visibility creates a culture of accountability that is both simple and powerful.

“You can’t hide behind the ‘this hasn’t been updated in 60 days’ flag,” Brian added. “It’s very smart visual prompts. Very easy to understand.”

Elate also reinforces ownership in a way spreadsheets cannot.

“If you have an Excel sheet with 60 or 80 line items, something gets lost,” said Brian. “In Elate, once it’s recorded, it’s a priority. It’s assigned to somebody. You have departments, ownership, and history. You can see what changed, when it changed, and who updated it.”

This clarity matters because the leadership team uses these strategic results to drive real business decisions.

Visibility for Leadership: “Are We Still on the Right Track?”

One of Mary Kay’s favorite benefits is the ability to quickly see how the organization is tracking against its goals.

“The analytics feature is one of my favorite parts,” she said. “I love a good chart. The fact that we can take a snapshot and see where we are right now, quickly and easily, is a huge benefit.”

That capability helped leadership validate priorities during a moment of uncertainty.

“At the end of Q2, our President was worried some of the goals we set might no longer be relevant,” Mary Kay recalled. “So I pulled data from Elate, showed him the analytics dashboard, and said, ‘Here’s how we’re actually tracking.’ And it turned out most everything was still on course.”

For a company navigating constant change, having a clear view of progress helps leaders decide whether to stay the course or adjust quickly, with confidence.

Alignment Without Borders: One Shared Language for a Global Team

For Parallel Wireless, alignment is not only about strategy. It is also about communication across a global footprint.

Brian shared one example that stood out: a leader in South Korea who uses Elate consistently and effectively, even though English is not his first language.

“He’s the best at updating it. He always does it on time. They’re clear. I can understand it,” Brian said. “We have people using this tool throughout the globe, all towards a common goal. It’s one language and we all understand it.”

That consistency creates a shared foundation across teams and time zones.

“Elate and strategy are a common language for our global team,” Brian said.