Why OKRs Do Not Come First

The OKR framework as such is straightforward to understand — you set an objective that matters and key results to measure if you have achieved it. What could be simpler? And some things about this framework are simple — it automatically gives some consistency across multiple teams and departments. That consistency is unfortunately just at the communication and presentation level. It adds as much value as any other template you use. If you want to write a good book, knowing that first there is an introduction, then there are N chapters and then there is a table of contents, does not help much.

What happens next? It depends. To continue the book analogy:

• Some people go straight to writing the book. A few of them are naturally good writers, master the topic and get the necessary effort involved right, so they succeed. The rest fail or do the OKR theatre because at least one of those components is missing.
• Some people understand that this is not a silver bullet — they will go through the countless articles of good and bad OKRs, maybe also attend a few pieces of training or hire a consultant. However, no amount of “how to write a good book” training will still result in a good book unless you have a story to tell.

Ok, what’s the point of this? In my opinion, OKRs are dangerous. It is yet another framework that has very good intentions and makes total sense but in reality, it seems to me that more likely people will get it wrong. The vast amount of articles on OKR antipatterns and the consulting business built on getting OKRs right is a sign of that. It may also not be the framework itself that is evil. Since Google used it, everybody wanted to use it to be as successful as Google or at least demonstrate it to their candidates in the interview process. Such trends are especially attractive these days when so many are hoping to replicate a success story by just mimicking the parts that are easy.

Couple of things that I have learned from my own experience. OKRs do have a quick positive effect — they push people to think (not all people of course). Think of what is the actual objective here, what we are trying to accomplish. However, I find this effect somewhat marginal and temporary. If you buy someone a pass to a marathon, they are more likely to show up, but their performance depends a lot more on how much they have been training before. Very few realize as a result of that event that they’re physically in bad shape and start training in order to create a sustainable positive effect. That is why it is temporary. In other words, you should not start by thinking about the OKRs. You should do first the research necessary to understand what is going on and where the problems are, then discover where you want to go and why, and finally create alignment to understand how each team or department contributes to that. Once you have all that, then you can formulate the objectives and key results. If you go too fast to OKRs, you just document what you know in the form of OKRs, not what actually matters (another antipattern, I guess). Make sure you have the story first, it does not matter if it is a strategy for the full product or an individual initiative.

Naturally, everyone wants to build a tree of OKRs throughout the organization. It makes a lot of sense to me as well — everything that is done at level N should contribute to some objective at level N-1, etc. While seeking such alignment is the right thing to do, it is very hard to set the objectives so that each lower-level objective only contributes to one higher-level objective. I can’t rule out that in theory, it is possible (by just formulating the objectives differently) but it takes too much effort compared to its value. I would be happy to have that nice tree if an AI did it for me.

I think setting objectives and measuring them is necessary but there is much more that needs to be done before and after. Objectives communicate what you’re aiming at, and the alignment that is necessary to do it. However, objectives do not identify the problems you need to tackle or create that alignment. And while objectives motivate people, there are other, and perhaps even more important, factors when it comes to success. The fact that winners and losers have often the same goals is a sign of that.