Why bol.com made its
goal-setting more pragmatic

​Dear Reader,​

This is the final part of my mini-series on how bol.com, one of Europe's largest e-commerce companies, shapes its fintech products. After exploring their product definition and discovery practices, let's look at how they've adapted traditional goal-setting frameworks to their reality.

Particularly as a function that wears two hats, enabling other teams and serving customers directly, Damien and his team must acknowledge where it’s worth aiming for more rigid OKR structures vs. pragmatic prioritization of what needs to be done.

"We started making OKRs by the book," Folkerts explains, "but it's so hard in our area to sometimes do that the ‘right’ way, especially when it's cascading from company vision." Instead of forcing perfect metric-driven OKRs for everything they do, they've also relied on one-pagers that outline what they'll deliver, why it matters, and what value it should add. Sometimes, that means acknowledging that a goal is about enabling another team by delivering a specific feature they need, instead of debating how to correctly write this as an Outcome KR.

This pragmatic mindset led them to implement what they call their "cascading process" in December last year. The process starts with goals at the company level, cascades them down to their fintech area and team level, and then rolls them back up to ensure alignment. Through regular check-ins, teams clearly understand how their work connects to fintech and company-wide objectives. Because not every OKR of a team needs to connect to Company-level priorities.

"Everybody is way more aware of what they do for the company, and what they do for Fintech," Folkerts shares. "The conversations we have, the quick check-ins, the attention we're getting and giving to those teams - we're way more aligned with them now, from leadership level all the way to the teams and back up again."

They complement these alignment paths with launch celebration rituals, recognizing the collective achievement of product and engineering teams. It's a practice they're actively working to make habitual, acknowledging the importance of marking progress together.

The key insight? When serving enabling and direct customer-facing functions, rigid adherence to frameworks can hinder rather than help. bol.com's approach shows how adapting practices to your context while maintaining their core purpose leads to better alignment and outcomes.

I’m always looking for other European companies to share their Strategy, Goal-setting, or Discovery practices in this newsletter. If you’re interested, hit reply to get in touch.

Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

PS: Reply with your best guess for the year I got into brewing filter coffee (yes, that's my first V60). I'll give away one of my custom OKR-themed coffee mugs among all correct guesses.

How to Dive Deeper into Product OKRs

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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.