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Imagine that you are an executive managing an org with 3000 people in 4-5 levels of hierarchy. That's common in large companies. You get to "talk" to the enire
by intellectronica 3y ago
Imagine that you are an executive managing an org with 3000 people in 4-5 levels of hierarchy. That's common in large companies.
You get to "talk" to the enire team perhaps a once a quarter, in some town-hall event where most people aren't really listening, and maybe send a mass email every now and then, which no-one reads. You get to talk to your immediate management team more often, and they talk to their reports, and so on, but of course whatever message you've had is greatly diluted, sometimes comically so, like in a game of telephone.
People are not robots, their understanding and communication is very ... creative. And context-dependent. And self-motivated. So that's not effective. Most people need to engage with the message you have - your priorities, changes in direction, specific goals - on a daily basis. Otherwise you are not really giving them any direction. And so you need some device to enable that. And OKRs are a part of the solution.
- skrebbel 3y agoI understand the problem, thanks, but I still don’t understand how an OKR is a good solution.
- intellectronica 3y agoI can review the OKRs every day, and structure my plans for what to work on accordingly. Objectives tell me what is the strategic direction. If what I do doesn't help move in that direction I can stop doing that and do something else instead. Key results help me assess whether I am making progress. If I am not, I can stop doing what I was doing and adjust my plans. That's not perfect, but a lot better than getting to the end of the quarter (or, more commonly, semester) and realising that a few months of hard work have gone to waste because we weren't aligned to the strategy and so didn't achieve what we set to achieve.
- BobbyTables2 3y ago> I can review the OKRs every day Have you considered seeking assistance from professional counsellors? But seriously, I don’t understand the OKR cult. The whole “update and align” thing is worse than any religion. Or do people really wake up each day and ask, what am I supposed to be doing at work?
- IshKebab 3y agoThat doesn't match my experience. Town hall style meetings are generally more frequent than OKRs and paid more attention to. My experience of OKRs has always been "set then once or twice a year and then immediately forget about them until the next time".
- intellectronica 3y agoThe point is that the OKRs, once set, can be reviewed regularly by everyone.
- pvdoom 3y agoYeah, executives need to understand how little influence they actually have. I think OKRs aren't really that much of a solution, as more of a stopgap. We need a new management paradigm that embraces this knowledge, rather than pretending it doesn't exist.