15 ms·

I had an opposite experience. OKRs were a complete waste of time. I was required to waste hours trying to come up with OKRs, none if which had anything to do wi

I had an opposite experience. OKRs were a complete waste of time. I was required to waste hours trying to come up with OKRs, none if which had anything to do with what my actual day to day work entailed. The OKRs were then promptly ignored so I could got back to getting shit done. At the end of the ORK term of course they'd been ignored. This had the effect of being demotivating because I was being asked to make up these OKRs "because at this company we have OKRs" but then having zero time and zero motivation to pursue them since there were people waiting for my real work to be finished. I think discussing this requires getting clear on what OKRs are. At the company I was at they were broad personal goals set every 3, 6 or 12 months related generally to your career at the company. They were not related to any specific project or deadline. An example might be "Do more public speaking". Where as generally I'd speak if the opportunity came up but I wouldn't seek out opportunities and AFAIK the OKR didn't make me seek more out. It was just something I wrote to get management to sign off that I had written some OKRs.

oconnore 8y ago
Why were you unwilling to lean into the process? You could have said: these OKRs have to describe my actual work... here are my attempts to document what that means, and what to look for if I do a good job at that. If they had pushed back on that, I think you would have a leg to stand on, but as described it sounds like you were just unwilling to engage.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
titanomachy 8y ago
Sounds like the process was not done well at your company. I have my OKRs set up so that I spend almost all my time working on them. I do usually have one or two "personal OKRs" like the one you described, but most of them represent the team's core work: "put major feature X into production", "address P1 customer issues with 3 days", whatever. It gives you a nice defense when some seemingly urgent but less important work comes along. "We could do that, but it would cost us this OKR which we agreed at all levels was one of the most important things for our team to do."

oconnore 8y ago

Why were you unwilling to lean into the process? You could have said: these OKRs have to describe my actual work... here are my attempts to document what that means, and what to look for if I do a good job at that. If they had pushed back on that, I think you would have a leg to stand on, but as described it sounds like you were just unwilling to engage.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

titanomachy 8y ago

Sounds like the process was not done well at your company. I have my OKRs set up so that I spend almost all my time working on them. I do usually have one or two "personal OKRs" like the one you described, but most of them represent the team's core work: "put major feature X into production", "address P1 customer issues with 3 days", whatever. It gives you a nice defense when some seemingly urgent but less important work comes along. "We could do that, but it would cost us this OKR which we agreed at all levels was one of the most important things for our team to do."