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You’re Not Writing OKRs—You’re Reformatting KPIs

Published about 1 year ago • 3 min read

You’re Not Writing OKRs.
You’re Reformatting KPIs

READ ON

​HERBIG.CO​

PUBLISHED

Mar 21, 2025

READING TIME

5 min & 32 sec

​Dear Reader,​

Every product organization has seen it - "OKR Theater" - Teams meticulously craft perfect objective statements, debate whether something is "outcome enough," and create elaborate tracking systems that generate more busy work than value.

Behind this theater lurk predictable patterns:

We adopt "best practices" without a clear why. Instead of copy-pasting Google's framework, use your existing Product Vision, Strategy, and team retrospectives to define why you need OKRs and how you'll know they're working.

We try to make OKRs cover 100% of our responsibilities.

This creates a spreadsheet of busy work disguised as strategic priorities. Product teams should only focus OKRs on what they want to measure and influence proactively—the difference between Key Results (strategic priorities) and KPIs (evergreen metrics).

Our team structures prevent cross-functional collaboration. The "We enable X by Y%" objective sounds great until you realize you can't influence half of what's needed to make it happen because critical expertise sits elsewhere. Your shared UX resource is busy elsewhere? Tough luck. Is the infrastructure team not available this cycle? The growth team can’t prioritize your A/B test until Q3. The case for embedding domains of expertise within a Product Team becomes more substantial as your organization grows.

We chase impacts instead of outcomes. While "increase activation rate by 20%" sounds impressive, these lagging metrics change too slowly to guide your work. Product teams need leading indicators that provide faster feedback on whether they're making progress.

We have AI generate our OKRs from Scratch. Using AI as a thought partner is crucial for enhancing your practices, but outsourcing your thinking to it produces generic goals disconnected from your context. Treat AI like a sparring partner to refine existing thinking, not a servant to do your strategic thinking. The real question remains: "What will we do differently, and how will we measure success?"

Should I share my favorite OKR sparring prompts in a future newsletter? Reply and let me know.

To create real progress by using OKRs:

  1. Focus on what's influenceable. Choose metrics your team can influence rather than ones that sound impressive but require other teams' work.
  2. Ground your OKRs in evidence. Instead of assuming users want to "add more items to their shopping baskets," verify what real problems prevent desired behaviors.
  3. Speak human language. When stuck, forget frameworks and lingo temporarily to ask: "What three metrics would show we're making progress toward our priorities?"

​The practice is the product. Just as we continuously refine our products based on user feedback, we should adapt our working methods based on their effectiveness, not their resemblance to a framework. OKRs aren't magical - they're just metrics used thoughtfully to create specific value.

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Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

PS.: I'm doing a live fireside chat on Don't Turn Continuous Discovery into Dogmatic Discovery with Ibrahim Bashir (Ex-VP Product Amplitude, Author of Running the Business)

How to Dive Deeper into Product OKRs

Learn the strategies and tactics you need to use OKRs in a way that helps product teams prioritize work based on user problems and business goals—instead of replicating existing feature backlogs.

My Outcome OKRs for Product Teams Course enables product teams to use OKRs as a tool for decision-making in the context of Product Strategy, Product Discovery, and Scrum. Without the fluff, but with a focus on practicality in everyday work.

Content I found Practical This Week

Combining OKRs and JTBD

JTBD gives us signal on the first two elements in this OKR framework: 1. Job Performer: In JTBD you first define who is executing the job. So if you’ve already done a JTBD analysis, you know your “Who” for customer-centered OKRs. 2. Specific Unmet Needs: JTBD gives you detailed insight into the pain points people have while executing their job to be done. And the rigor that goes into it gives you confidence it’s the right problem to solve.

How to set and achieve ambitious goals

Goal setting is a three legged stool, and OKRs only get you two of the legs. As John Doerr explains, the "Why?" is the most important element. OKRs thrive in an environment where that purpose is clear and well understood — so they've worked well at Google, Intel, and other companies that have built the supporting structure to enable good OKR process.​ Unfortunately, most of us aren't in on that secret. Nearly every team I've worked with has struggled to use OKRs "off the shelf". Garden variety OKRs often focus too much on the what, and not enough on the why and the how.

Understanding Organizational Capacity: Why It Matters in OKR Practice

Organizational capacity refers to the resources and capabilities your organization has to accomplish its goals. This includes the number of people available, their skills, the technology at your disposal, the budget you can allocate, and the time you have to achieve your goals. Understanding your capacity means knowing your limits and strengths. When you know your capacity, you can set goals that are ambitious yet realistic. Setting goals that are too high can lead to frustration and burnout. On the other hand, goals that are too easy can result in complacency. By understanding your capacity, you can strike a balance, setting goals that challenge your team but are still achievable.

Who is Tim Herbig?

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

Turn Product Theory into Pragmatic Application by Tim Herbig

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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