When to recognize
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Dear Reader,
It's week three of Q4 planning. Your team has revised the OKRs five times. Leadership wants one more alignment session. The quarter starts in a week, but you haven't actually begun working toward the goals yet.
The moment you're tweaking wording instead of committing to a strategic goal, you've crossed from Real Progress into Alibi Progress. OKR planning takes too long when teams get distracted by the technicalities instead of focusing on the value these goals should provide.
Here's how to spot when you've hit the point of diminishing returns:
You're Polishing Instead of Deciding
When teams debate whether "improve" or "increase" sounds better in an objective, or whether a Key Result is "outcome enough."
Teams worry more about what fits in their OKR tool than what value it provides. But OKRs are simply a way to communicate metrics when it comes to measuring progress toward strategic priorities. Once you've identified metrics that answer "X months from now, which three metrics would tell us this strategy choice has worked?"—you're done. Everything else is polish that delays action.
Your Process Interferes with the 10% Guiding
If your OKR cycle is quarterly (13 weeks), Lane Shackleton recommends planning should take roughly 10% of that time—about 52 team hours total. When you're spending weeks in alignment workshops and revision cycles, you've blown past this threshold. The process has become the product.
One of my favorite ways of helping teams pressure-test their OKRs is by trying to predict the future. I want them to think about the answer to “Imagine a check-in 4 weeks down the road. With whom will you look at these OKRs and discussion emerges from looking at the changed values and confidence?”
This is similar to a premortem exercise. By predicting the future, teams can anticipate how useful their OKRs are for making decisions.
The Real Problem Isn't the OKRs
Excessive OKR planning is usually a symptom of deeper issues. The solution isn't better templates or more sophisticated tooling. It's recognizing when you've crossed from strategic clarity into OKR theater—and having the courage to say: "These are directionally good enough. Let's start."
OKRs don't need to be perfect to be useful. They need to be clear enough to guide daily decisions and specific enough to reveal what you're NOT doing. Can team members explain the intent behind each OKR? Do they help you say no to work that doesn't advance them? Can you trace each Key Result back to a specific strategic choice?
If yes, they're good enough.
Remember: OKRs should help teams measure progress toward strategic priorities. That's it. When the planning process prevents progress, you've lost the plot.
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As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions.
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