Death by OKRs
Objectives and Key Results. What could be simpler? OKRs promised us alignment, transparency, pragmatism, business results and job satisfaction — the silver gun to fire all silver bullets. Even better, they didn’t require us to take a Certified OKR Practioner course! But do they really work? Of course, just look at the success of Intel and Google and countless others!
OK, ask yourself honestly, do they really work?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
If we take a look at the Product Management Stack from my previous article as an organism, then the Vision & Strategy are the brain, the sprint & backlogs are like the feet and in the middle are OKRs: the backbone that provides structure, strength, stability, balance and a connection between thought and action.
So do we make OKRs work for us, instead of against us? I’m glad you asked. I’m no expert, but let me share what I’ve learned along the way. (I’m going to assume a quarterly planning cycle because that is the most common, but these learnings apply at all scales).
- Strategy first: Most prioritization problems are in fact strategy problems, as Shreyas Doshi puts it so well in this thread[1]. I highly recommend reading the thread and putting up this poster up[2] in your office space (credit: Martin Slaney). Trying to use OKRs without a clearly articulated, coherent and relevant strategy is like trying to row a boat with your hands. You know which direction you want to go in (assuming there is a well-defined vision), but you will be constantly frustrated by the lack of progress.
2. Revisit early, revisit often: Too often OKRs get attention at quarterly boundaries (typically coupled with shock at the previous quarter and overzealousness for the next one). Other than that, they remain tucked away, disconnected from the harsh realities of execution and ever changing market dynamics. To get the most out of OKRs, try to ensure that:
a) OKRs are visible as desired outcomes in product roadmaps
b) Every product backlog item (typically at the intiative level) is connected to at least one OKR
3. Review before pursue: If your OKR planning exercise doesn’t start with a review of the previous quarter, I would advise you to stop reading further because nothing else will work. In order to set meaningful OKRs, it is essential to inspect, learn and adapt.
4. Timing is important: Too often OKR definition becomes a rushed exercise to fill in a mandated template. The process of setting OKRs for the next quarter starts as soon as the OKRs for this quarter have been agreed upon! You are already learning and thinking about what comes next, and if already have a longer-term, outcome-based roadmap in mind[3] then you should already be thinking about alignment with it. The actual exercise of surfacing, filtering and agreeing upon OKRs may be timeboxed, but work that goes into informing that exercise is continuous.
5. OKRs are not unidirectional: If OKRs are solely cascaded top-down from executive leadership, they likely don’t take into account valuable feedback from “boots on the ground”. If OKR definition is highly federated and bottom-up, then executive leadership will likely be frustrated at the lack of progress (unless of course, the company is well-funded with a vague vision like “Do Metaverse” ;) ). The sweet (and elusive) spot is a healthy collaboration between top-down business goals and bottom-up team goals. More importantly, they need to be agreed upon, not defined.
6. Aligment: For companies with multiple teams or departments, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to take the time to ensure OKRs are aligned across the board. You’d be surprised at how often this alignment is assumed or implied, without the implications being fully understood. This becomes even harder to miss when OKRs trickle down multiple levels. It doesn’t matter how hard people are rowing if they’re not rowing in the same direction.
7. More OKRs doesn’t mean more achievements: In fact, it almost certainly means the opposite. I once worked in a company where we had 30+ quarterly OKRs for our team, which averaged out to 3 OKRs per team member. We barely achieved 3 per quarter. Please don’t be that company. As a matter of fact, 3 is a great number to aim for, if you really follow the spirit of the framework[4].
8. Measuring Key Results: I won’t talk about the actual definition of OKRs and what good OKRs look like, because there is plenty of great literature out there[5] and by itself, that part seems to be well understood. What is more important is:
a) You have a way to measure KRs regularly (not just at the beginning and end of the quarter, but at least every month and ideally every sprint). Generally speaking, FAST rather than SMART goals are better suited to OKRs[6].
b) You favour leading indicators over lagging indicators[7].
9. Use OKRs to maintain focus: If you use OKRs only to make commitments, then you’re only getting half their benefit. The other half lies in leveraging them to filter and protect the team from overcommiting, scope creep, priority changes and ad-hoc requests. OKRs are both a sword and a shield. See #2 above.
10. Don’t abandon, adjust: If OKRs aren’t working for you, adjust the number and/or iteration time. I was in this situation once where there was pain and frustration every 3 months. We shortened our OKR cycle to a month, which meant more frequent planning, fewer surprises and ultimately realistic calibration that we were then able to successfully scale back up to a quarterly cycle. On the flip side, you may be doing too much too often, so try stretching timelines to give teams the space to deliver.
Bonus: Want to beta test OKRs or validate some ideas, templates or thoughts? Try setting personal OKRs[8].
Thank you for reading. I hope you find this useful or at least thought-provoking. If you did, please follow The Product Leadership Journal. I’d love to hear your own experiences, thoughts or questions in the comments below, or on Twitter or LinkedIn if you prefer.
Dive Deeper
- Re-read this thread on prioritization problems by Shreyas Doshi at least once a quarter
- Visualization of the advice in the thread by Martin Slaney
- Read about outcome-based roadmaps in this newsletter entry from Gibson Biddle: What do you think about project-based roadmaps versus outcome-based (metric-based) roadmaps?
- Applying OKRs by Dan North
5. This article sums up OKR best practices very well: 10 Tips for Using OKRs Effectively
6. With Goals, FAST Beats SMART, article in MIT Sloan Management Review
7. How to measure the progress of OKRs using Leading and Lagging Indicators by Tim Herbig
8. How to set your Personal OKRs and stick to them (+ examples and free template) by James McAulay
