1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
In 2025, stop trying to get better at OKRs
In 2025, stop trying
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Dear Reader,
I hope you had the start of 2025 that you had wished and planned for. I'm excited to get back into the rhythm of weekly publishing, having completed my annual in-person workshop series and gearing up for continued (and new) client engagements. If you're up for it, reply to this newsletter and let me know what one thing you would like to see more (or less) of in this newsletter in 2025.
To get better at OKRs don’t try to get better at OKRs.
Treat OKRs as a product that should solve one problem: measuring progress toward strategic priorities.
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OKRs are supposed to be the solution to this problem, which means they shouldn’t…
a) …feature generic evergreen metrics.
b) …include metrics unconnected from what you discover and deliver.
c) …be full of lagging indicators you can only review in hindsight.
Focusing on technical correctness ("Make sure Objectives follow this structure") pushes teams toward OKR Theater.
One practice that seems to have nothing to do with OKRs but has everything to do with OKRs is for teams to own their metrics trees (I’ve written about this structure before here and here).
Consider a checkout team. "Increase Search-to-Buy Conversion Rate by 3%" would be a poor quarterly goal.
Instead, by mapping the drivers of this metric through metrics tree relationships, they can find their influenceable contribution:
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They can’t influence what happens in the search or on the product detail page, which moves these branches of the tree outside their sphere of influence. However, they can massively influence the conversion rate from started to completed purchases.
This allows them to turn this branch into their own metrics tree, making “Cart to Purchase Completed Conversion Rate” a healthy reactive KPI to keep track of. But to set proactive goals, they need to make an informed statement about which of these drivers are within their responsibility they want to tackle.
These driver branch breakdowns can work with categories like conversion journey steps, platforms, technical components, etc.
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Picking a lever to focus on from these drivers, they could land on an OKR like this:
Objective: Make checkout completion effortless for mobile shoppers
Key Result 1: Reduce mobile form field errors by 40%
Key Result 2: Increase first-attempt address validation success rate to 95%
Key Result 3: Reduce payment method rejection rate by 25%
By treating OKRs as a product and using metrics trees to inform their creation, teams can craft goals that solve their fundamental need: measuring meaningful progress toward strategic priorities. Remember, it's all just metrics, anyway.
Instead of falling into the trap of OKR theater, teams owning their metrics trees can identify and focus on the metrics to…
a) …set goals that represent specific, time-bound bets.
b) …use metrics that they can influence with identified and shipped solutions.
c) …check if their work impacts the goal cycle.
This product-thinking approach to OKRs—starting with the problem they should solve for teams and working backward through metrics relationships—leads to more valuable goals than simply perfecting OKR formatting.
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Thank you for Practicing Product,
Tim
Good News!
Some last tickets are available for my in-person Product Discovery workshop on March 10 in London (as part of Mind the Product conference).
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As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions.
I focus on better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery.
Product Practice Newsletter
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
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