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Making OKRs more playful using hill charts

martin.sh

21–30 of 71 posts

Re: Making OKRs more playful using hill charts

#21
post #10

When ive been introduced to okr Ive really liked this concept to the point that i started to use them in my private life But on the other hand i dont fully like them in my work life First my job forces OKRs amount and treats them equally So OKR like completing half day training and sharing the learnings has the same value as multi month engineering effort.

I think that completing a training or sharing the results are, technically speaking, deliverables not results; that's why that doesn't work as a OKR. OKR would ask for the measurable impact that completing those things has on business behavior (user-facing KPIs, or internal productivity / value measures). My only encounter with OKRs sucked badly, and mismatches like that were one of the reasons.

This is the problem with both SMART goals and OKRs. They purport to be meaningful by measuring results, but results are outside of one's control and subject to the inputs of lady Fortune!

What we want to incentivise is not success, but the kind of behaviour that leads to success. But that, on the other hand, suffers even worse from Goodhart's law.

Cedric Chin dug deeply into this dilemma[1] about a year ago. His suggestion is to frequently follow up on both behaviour metrics and result metrics to build a tacit understanding of how one is affected by another. This then allows you to focus improvements on behaviour metrics, which are mostly in your control.

I have yet to try putting it to practise, but I like the idea.

[1]: https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/

Re: Making OKRs more playful using hill charts

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever hear someone complain about big company bureaucracy? The bigger an organization gets, the more impossible it gets to manage it and keep people aligned towards effective and compounding goals. OKRs promise to help improve that impossible process. I'm not surprised at all that people are interested.

OKRs can in theory make sense but they create a new kind of tension. Because they compete with the BAU work, the niggly things that come up mid quarter that you need to get done. Individuals need to resolve the dilemma, do what has to be done, or do what makes me look good. I think a new thing is needed at least for smaller teams. Something like adaptive goals. Roadmap a year, vaguely and plan the next 6 weeks. Measu…

The existence of bad measures doesn't preclude the possibility of good ones, even though they won't be perfect. BAU activities, e.g. devops, can be measured in useful ways[0] as well.

[0] https://dora.dev

Re: Making OKRs more playful using hill charts

#23
post #9

I really don’t understand people who are interested in things like OKRs.

To me its not OKRs specifically but organisations in general - what is an organisation and how does it actually work (as opposed to what we tell ourselves), and that includes the frameworks and processes we use. OKRs are interesting then because they are a specific framework that maybe, or maybe not works. But people getting obsessed about OKRs in particular and making them "fun" are completely missing the bigger picture and the purpose of metrics, as tools of control and stuff...

Re: Making OKRs more playful using hill charts

#25
post #9

I really don’t understand people who are interested in things like OKRs.

Ever hear someone complain about big company bureaucracy? The bigger an organization gets, the more impossible it gets to manage it and keep people aligned towards effective and compounding goals. OKRs promise to help improve that impossible process. I'm not surprised at all that people are interested.

Kinda disagree. All the times I have seen OKRs implemented has been as part of a "transition to agile" with several other measures, and often what happens is they get slapped on top or replace other measures, without doing anything real for fixing company bureaucracy. You need much more fundamental changes to fix that, and that would involve pissing off a lot of people with a lot of power.

Re: Making OKRs more playful using hill charts

#26
> Progress is more like a hill than a straight line. Uphill: figuring things out (uncertainty, unknowns, problem-solving). Downhill: making things happen (certainty, confidence, execution)

This is the first time I've seen a "hill chart" and I found it a little confusing to look at - maybe because the shape looks like a normal distribution, where "the sides" are more uncertain and not less uncertain. If one turned a hill chart inside out, you'd get a chart like a dartboard, where as things are more certain you are closer to a bullseye in the middle, and less certain you are further away. I could see looking at OKRs that way.

Re: Making OKRs more playful using hill charts

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OKRs can in theory make sense but they create a new kind of tension. Because they compete with the BAU work, the niggly things that come up mid quarter that you need to get done. Individuals need to resolve the dilemma, do what has to be done, or do what makes me look good. I think a new thing is needed at least for smaller teams. Something like adaptive goals. Roadmap a year, vaguely and plan the next 6 weeks. Measu…

The existence of bad measures doesn't preclude the possibility of good ones, even though they won't be perfect. BAU activities, e.g. devops, can be measured in useful ways[0] as well. [0] https://dora.dev

Oh yes. But intelligence needs to be applied. OKRs turn measures into something like a sport, like soccer where those measure become the goal (beat the KR and get a bonus, or even just pressure on the KR and nothing else).

Re: Making OKRs more playful using hill charts

#30
post #9

I really don’t understand people who are interested in things like OKRs.

When my previous company introduced them I pointed out that despite several studies, not one could conclude that OKRs had any positive effect and that the only famous "success" case, Google, didn't prove at all that Google was successful due to them but arguably, despite them.

Let's just say that I didn't won any popularity awards there for being the rational one.

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