Why your Company's POV on OKRs matters more than Processes

​Dear Reader,​

Before I talk with companies about OKR cadences, templates, or tools, I ask them: "What do you expect to change by using OKRs?"

The answers take a bit of time. Not because they don't exist, but because OKRs have been treated as a solution without a problem to solve. OKRs haven't been treated as a product, but as a process without purpose.

They've chosen a quarterly cadence because that's what Google does. They've set three Objectives with three Key Results each because someone on LinkedIn said so. They've picked a tool, scheduled check-ins, and trained all teams on the format, with 3 days to submit the first "drafts" (which are expected to be final).

And then it doesn't work. Not because the process is wrong. Because there's no point of view behind it.

Your company's POV on OKRs is the answer to a simple question: What should be different because we use them? That answer varies by organization. For some, it's shifting from output to outcome thinking. For others, it's creating transparency across teams. For others, it's giving product teams more autonomy in pursuing strategic priorities.

Each of those reasons leads to a process - or codified OKR system. The team that needs transparency will design OKRs differently from the team that needs autonomy. The cadence, the number of OKR sets, the level of prescription, even how rigid you want to be about Outcomes and Outputs, all of that should follow from your POV. Not from a blueprint.

Without that POV, you get symptoms I keep running into:

• Key Results that describe metrics nobody needs to proactively change, because no one clarified what change OKRs are supposed to drive.
• OKRs are used as a manager's checklist that exists in a parallel universe to the actual roadmap.
• Teams overthink whether their Key Results are "real Outcomes," paralyzed by doing it right instead of learning from doing it at all.

These are POV failures.

The irony is that the process conversations, the ones about cadence, format, and tooling, are the easy ones. They feel productive because they're concrete. But they're downstream. Upstream is: Why are we doing this? What are we not doing well enough today that OKRs should help us do better?

If you can answer that, the process decisions get simpler. If you can't, no process will save you.

So before your next OKR cycle, skip the template debate. Start with the POV.

That's why I got excited about the opportunity to join Myta as an advisor. Because they build an OKR platform with a POV rather than more shiny processes. The perspective that OKRs need to be contextual and action-driving. Learn more about them by signing up for their waiting list.

Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

If you consume one thing this week, make it this...

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.