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OKRs will never be enough
- kenjackson 4y agoThe business scorecard just seems like it is measuring a set of key results. If it’s a KPI the team is trying to achieve then how is that different than a key result?
- aerosmile 4y agoThe answer lies in the frequency of updates across the org. KRs in most orgs are reviewed on a quarterly basis, whereas marketing spend, conversions and similar need a weekly cadence. We are currently reporting on KRs on a weekly basis, but that requires a lot of indoctrination for new hires.
- theptip 4y agoI think it’s best practice to monitor your top-level KRs in your weekly/bi-weekly leadership meeting. I have never heard anyone recommend to only use OKRs for retrospective evaluation of a quarter/half. For example I’m sure Doerr recommends regular syncs on the status of your KRs. They are intended to be both a way of reviewing the work in a planning period, and also determining what is red and needing attention within the planning period. Tactical/team-facing KRs could be measured daily if you need to, though the CEO wouldn’t want that report.
- dumbotron 4y agoThere isn't a practical difference between PIs and KRs other than that KRs might be more vague or binary and PIs more like a gauge. It's just semantics around framing goal-setting.
- hgsgm 4y agoKPIs are more operational "is anything broken". OKRs are more aspirational "achieve something new".
- tired_star_nrg 4y agoIn my opinion, one of the best parts of the definition of key results is that when done right, meeting all key results should result in the objective being accomplished. If you can hit all the key results and still not have met the objective, there was an issue in the definition process.
- mndgs 4y agoWhile the article may be good at explaining organizational goal setting, personally I f*g hate anything about this HR bullshit. It's simple: make goals, do them. Don't overcomplicate and annoy people who actually do smth compared to those that just talk.
- derefr 4y agoIt is almost always the people who "just talk" (managers) that are being measured by OKRs, though. It's just that these managers often respond by relaying their OKRs to their teams and making them constantly-aware-of and responsible-for achieving them, rather than having the OKR be something private to the executive level that informs the manager's decisions, while they continue to run the team the way they would without OKRs.
- Keyframe 4y agoYou’d probably be faced with ‘but why are we doing this?’ from the levels ‘below’. Damn if you do, damn if you don’t.
- TideAd 4y agoYeah, personally I like to know what the team & I are being evaluated on. I've been in the opposite situation, where there are priorities and goals that aren't communicated to me until way too late, and I ended up wasting a lot of time on stuff that didn't matter.
- keredson 4y agoThat's in theory. In practice I knew of no ICs w/o OKRs assigned to them.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoI don't know what you mean by assigned to the IC, but at my last job our team's ICs wrote the OKRs for our team.
- hammock 4y agoThe people upvoting this blog can’t have read it, since an HN audience would not possibly think the solution to OKRs is to supplement them with a reductionist income statement and traffic light scorecards
- pcurve 4y agoThe article feels rather incomplete too. I wish the author made it more in-depth and provided more specific examples.
- hammock 4y agoChatGPT can help you
- boulos 4y agoYeah, it's too bad the author didn't choose the title "OKRs don't work for Sales targets" or "You need Sales KPIs separate from (Engineering) OKRs". We would have gotten different discussion.
- pflenker 4y agoI am so happy to work in a company that does not work with this business voodoo (and still delivers great results). All goal frameworks I have worked in, OKRs included, were a colossal waste of time.
- ramraj07 4y agoWhat size is your company? What else can we do when a company has reached 1000+ employees?
- pflenker 4y agoAbout 17.000 employees.
- ricardobeat 4y agoWhat kind of practices are followed over there?
- kmac_ 4y agoThe blog nicely states that OKRs are just a part of a solution. I've seen when OKRs actually worked, and the emphasis was put on the objectives part and later the indicators produced a set of initiatives. Unfortunately, I've also seen really stupid low level "OKRs" (like unit test coverage) absolutely detached from bussines goals and the whole process was just a cargo cult managment.
- marcosdumay 4y ago> a colossal waste of time Oh, that's when they work on the least bad way. They can become much more than that, all it takes is somebody intent on gaming them.
- BugsJustFindMe 4y agoI don't care what managers do as long as it's managers doing their own fucking jobs instead of forcing it on everyone below them. Individual engineers shouldn't have to plan objectives, their own or otherwise. That's literally what management is for in the first place.
- ocimbote 4y agoI've worked with people saying that, and others really wanting to influence upwards and for which defining their own objectives was primordial. To each their own.
- tekla 4y agoI find the same people who think its never worth planning anything are the ones who spend all their time making worthless crap and never get anything done because they think having a goal is beneath them.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoMy experience is that people that plan all the time are the ones that get nothing done.
- drewcoo 4y agoWant do get something done? Only plan some of the time! False dichotomy avoided.
- seanhandley 4y agoProper Planning Prevents P*s Poor Performance
- BugsJustFindMe 4y agoI'm an architect (software, not houses). There's a gigantic fucking chasm of difference between architectural design planning and OKRs.
- mattbuilds 4y agoAll these frameworks for managing people matter much less than creating a team of quality people. Think of it like sports. Sure a good manager or coach can get the most of the players on the team. They might even add tactics and play above their level. But when it comes down to it, what matters the most in the skill set of the players. The best coaching in the world isn’t going to help me and my friends beat a pro sports team. Same thing for teams inside companies. Strategy does matter, but quality matters much more.
- gitfan86 4y agoYes but the MBA, Management Consulting, Agile Coaching industries are based on this not being true. So there will be an endless stream of propaganda to convince people otherwise.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoStrategy can matter a lot. Tactics is mostly irrelevant. Unfortunately the latter is much easier to change so leaders like to modify it constantly to seem like they are adding value. And since it’s mostly irrelevant it’s hard to prove that this is bad.
- mattbuilds 4y agoI was using tactics and strategy interchangeably, as in the sports sense. Probably should have been more clear, but I agree with your point. Also business is much more complicated than sports, where the rules are concrete. I was just using it as an example that what matters is using the talents of the team instead of a framework for management.
- zemvpferreira 4y agoIn my experience you have it right but backwards: These frameworks exist to help management manage teams without quality people. Scrum/agile is exactly the same thing. The stricter and more documented the process, the more fungible actual team-members are. That's important in places like bodyshops and non-software business where no self-respecting engineer with options would want to work, and places where monotonous quality matters more than brilliance. Keep em as far as I'm concerned.
- arkitaip 4y agoDoes anyone use OKRs for themselves? How does it work?
- 2dvisio 4y agoUse it to keep track of personal goals and I use the KR to break it down into chunckable and measurable steps. Have done that intuitively in the past, but now have formalised it a bit more. It helps that for my job we OKR regularly for both the Performance but also the Growth part of the job.
- seanhandley 4y agoYes, for settings personal goals it can be helpful. KRs are just "things you can do to achieve the goal", so my process goes: - What do I wish was different? - What would happen if that thing changed? - What's stopping it from changing? - How can I get over those obstacles? The answers to "how can I get over those obstacles?" become the KRs that help achieve the O ("What do I wish was different?").
- keredson 4y agoKR stands for "Key Result". They're definitely not "things you do to achieve your goal". That's kind of the point of OKRs (in theory): To stop upper managers from dictating process to lower managers. (Which is a big problem.) Instead, ignore their process and evaluate them on how well whatever process they chose delivered. IE, give someone an objective, let them find their own solution, and evaluate them on only how well it worked.
- theptip 4y agoYou can use a different framework here, but you can also just use OKRs too. I argue mixing OKRs and KPIs just muddies the water for little value. Even within engineering, some teams are more geared towards “sustaining quality” than “expanding capabilities”. You can just as easily set a “maintain quality” or “sell our product” objective that may or may not have explicit initiatives, and call the KPIs from the article KRs instead. There is really no difference. You often see this within teams too; it’s best practice to have a quality metric as a guardrail to any growth metric (eg “add users, but don’t increase churn for existing” or “build new functionality, but don’t impact API uptime”). So you end up needing to represent these non-initiative-driven metrics that the article wants to call KPIs in your OKR system anyway. KISS!
- proc0 4y agoThis is the framework beneath the language that as an engineer has gone above my head for a long time. Large tech companies often fail to bridge this language gap, and maybe that contributes to some friction overall. On a slightly different note, it would be great if organizations had no expectations for engineers to learn or know about any of this... and also get promoted. I went to school for so long to be a technical person but it seems every org expects engineers to learn everything about business operations, management etc. It's just a strange expectation, like being a plumber but then you also have to take care of the plants outside and do some gardening.
- mavelikara 4y agoIf you do not contribute more to the business than the job you originally took, why should you be promoted? I can imagine you getting a raise as you demonstrate more proficiency in the job, but promotion seems to imply that you do a different job for the business.
- proc0 4y agoFair point, although remaining in the same position without promotion is usually discouraged and not a real option in the long run. Yes, promotion means more value added, but that can be defined many ways. In tech companies it usually includes having more management and/or other non-technical skills (for technical workers). The value could be more aligned with just having more technical skills. It could even be formally assessed by reviewing code and even test, yet from my experience more technical skills had little impact on promotion chances.
- jkukul 4y ago> When a startup is small, it can be sufficient to run a fairly simple objectives-and-key-results (OKRs) When OKRs were first used at Google it already had tens of thousands of employees. Why would any startup use a tool created by a big org and designed for a big org? Should we give infants medicines that were created for adults? Startups need to stop copying BigTech because they're not like BigTech.
- hgsgm 4y agoI don't think that's accurate. They got OKRs early on from a VC John Doerr connected to Intel ("High Output Management"). Intel was huge when they started OKRs, but Google wasn't, in 2000. https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/set-goals-with-okrs/steps/learn-the-abridged-history-of-OKRs/ https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/set-goals-with-okrs/ste...
- rubyn00bie 4y agoAt this point, I'm full "sickos.jpg" watching organizations switch goal setting frameworks to fix issues stemming entirely from communication, planning, and accountability problems. I'm not even going to get started on how silly these scorecards are considering the metrics shown are a minimum for running a business.
- theptip 4y agoFunnily enough, the point of OKRs is to provide a framework for communication, planning, and accountability. Particularly the last 2. Most companies, if they actually sit down and talk through their objectives honestly, and then get buy-in from the stakeholders and doers on the actual KRs and initiatives, will be forced to face and figure out the big issues in communication and accountability, at least by the time you have done OKRs for a year or so (your third or fourth planning cycle typically starts to feel like you have the hang of it). And writing down your main goals ahead of time, with a clear owner, then reviewing after, is a good planning and accountability framework, no matter what name you give it. As with anything good, there is snake oil to be had, and idiots will do OKRs wrong like they do everything else wrong. But I think it’s a useful tool in the hands of a competent and well-run company, particularly for startups that are getting into the stage where they need to start planning seriously, and don’t have an existing framework, say around 25-50 people.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y agoI don't know what the rest of the comments are on about but this is a pretty reasonable proposal. In particular, it's heinous to couple customer acquisition to engineering projects. Maybe customers don't want what you're selling, or maybe the economy is taking a down turn, or the sales pipeline is broken. OKRs can absolutely be useful, but like so many other things, a system is what it does. If you measure bug rate, then you'll get no bug reports, even if there are bugs. OKRs, when done correctly, aren't about accountability necessarily, but course correcting early and often. It's a tool to combat scope creep and a feedback loop for triggering pivots when progress towards laid plans aren't yielding returns. These are things engineers should love! They keep engineers focused on the right things, aligned with the business and most importantly keep the business aligned with them. Politics and bureaucracy are rampant everywhere, but like everything else, when used in moderation these tools can be really good.
- mejutoco 4y agoFrom wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR) > Key results should be measurable, either on a 0–100% scale or with any numerical value (e.g. count, dollar amount, or percentage) that can be used by planners and decision makers to determine whether those involved in working towards the key result have been successful. There should be no opportunity for "grey area" when defining a key result. In a lot of places that use "OKRs" the metric is something non-specific, like "get more users" or "have a great UX". This means your bonus now depends on politics, instead of a defined metric of success. When the metrics are clearly defined, work can be a pleasure.
- loeg 4y ago> This means your bonus now depends on politics, instead of a defined metric of success. The process of defining a concrete metric in advance is just front-loading that politics process to the planning stage instead of at the back end. (Which may be better! But it doesn't eliminate politics.)
- mejutoco 4y agoThat is a good angle. Let me elaborate. I am not so much talking about the correctness of the metric, but about the certainty that you will get it, if your results are good. If there is no specific number someone can always say you performed bad one day before, for pretty much any reason (you did not care enough about the customer). This can destroy morale. Instead, if the metric is quantifiable and easy to check on a dashboard there is no way to deny it. By the time the evaluation comes there is no manipulation possible.
- alexashka 4y agoA business should track its financials, goals and performance? You don't say :)
- DebtDeflation 4y agoThe problem with all of these performance management frameworks is the same. You start with objectives that make sense and are aligned to the organization's mission. Then you come up with metrics that attempt to measure how successfully those objectives are being realized. Then you tie manager and executive compensation to those metrics. Finally everyone proceeds to game the metrics, often in ways that completely contravene the original objectives, in order to maximize their bonuses. Rinse and repeat.
- iamdbtoo 4y agoAnother serious problem with these, at least to me, is that an employee's performance within these frameworks is often graded against an ideal implementaion and not the actual implementation.
- keredson 4y agoyep! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- tired_star_nrg 4y agoThe interesting thing is that in Measure What Matters (the Book about OKRs) they specifically call out _not_ tying bonuses and compensation to OKR results. It’s such a shame that this critical part of the methodology gets lost in the implementation.
- deathanatos 4y ago> OKRs inevitably become at odds with business results and the OKR system becomes bloated. It becomes hard to focus on the priorities that matter most while ensuring that every area of the business is running as expected. Is practically begging the question. If the business results are not matching up, what's going on? Are are your OKRs in conflict with running the business as expected? The title "will never be enough" is business dystopia to my ears. OKRs are bad enough — and you want more? OKRs as implemented where I've worked is the "O" is often BS, everybody skips the "KR" step completely, often naming abstract wibbly-wobbly goals in its place, and by Q3 it's all been forgotten about.
- hgsgm 4y agoIs your company successful? Or is their failure at OKRs a symptom of their problem?
- keredson 4y agoOKRs in practice look suspiciously like waterfall software development. When you find yourself assigning ICs programming tasks by economic quarter, you've f-ed up.
- drewcoo 4y agoSo the simple modified MBO framework that Andy Grove era Intel used and then later Google used . . . just won't scale as startups get bigger? Something smells fishy.
- itsdrewmiller 4y agoI imagine both companies also have a financial plan and some kind of process for monitoring baseline KPIs, which seems to be the main point of the post.
- esel2k 4y agoI don’t see the difference (and frankly the need for) scorecard and OKR. I am one of these managers the majority of the comments here complain about. I lead teams and tried to implement twice OKR. Overall the idea I think is good as it makes everyone start thinking how to work with outcomes instead of objectives. The major problem is that without a good strategy doing OKRs is very difficult. But back to the problem: Objectives (O) should be inspirational and Key Results (KR) are measurable outcomes. The examples given for scorecards can very well be KRs. Instead of a weekly review we just use dashboards where everyone can see how we perform and we review OKR quarterly.
- ecf 4y agoBy their very nature OKRs are terrible. It’s purely for the benefit of management/executives because they’re asking rank and file employees to go above and beyond their job duty all in the name of squeezing out more performance with the same amount of resources. Supposedly it’s the leadership’s job of steering the company in the right direction but in the end they throw their hands up and ask the people doing the REAL work to simply do more.
- flappyeagle 4y agoThe author gets the headline right: OKRs will never be enough. You need talent. Management talent and individual contributor talent. OKRs are a communication framework. The author thinks you should communicate more detailed information than what OKRs contain by default. Seems fine, but honestly a big nothingburger.
- testfrequency 4y agoI’m so fucking over everyone spending time trying to re-invent the methodology in which work is accomplished. Just do the work, do it well, make it measurable, and hit 80% of your aspirational goals Middle management needs to find something else to do, like complain about single panes of glass and metrics