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OKRs will never be enough

edge.ceo

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Re: OKRs will never be enough

#61

Post by deathanatos »

> OKRs inevitably become at odds with business results and the OKR system becomes bloated. It becomes hard to focus on the priorities that matter most while ensuring that every area of the business is running as expected.

Is practically begging the question. If the business results are not matching up, what's going on? Are are your OKRs in conflict with running the business as expected?

The title "will never be enough" is business dystopia to my ears. OKRs are bad enough — and you want more? OKRs as implemented where I've worked is the "O" is often BS, everybody skips the "KR" step completely, often naming abstract wibbly-wobbly goals in its place, and by Q3 it's all been forgotten about.

Re: OKRs will never be enough

#62

Post by keredson »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #51

The problem with all of these performance management frameworks is the same. You start with objectives that make sense and are aligned to the organization's mission. Then you come up with metrics that attempt to measure how successfully those objectives are being realized. Then you tie manager and executive compensation to those metrics. Finally everyone proceeds to game the metrics, often in ways that completely con…

yep! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Re: OKRs will never be enough

#63

Post by keredson »

derefr wrote: post #6
mndgs wrote: post #3

While the article may be good at explaining organizational goal setting, personally I f*g hate anything about this HR bullshit. It's simple: make goals, do them. Don't overcomplicate and annoy people who actually do smth compared to those that just talk.

It is almost always the people who "just talk" (managers) that are being measured by OKRs, though. It's just that these managers often respond by relaying their OKRs to their teams and making them constantly-aware-of and responsible-for achieving them, rather than having the OKR be something private to the executive level that informs the manager's decisions , while they continue to run the team the way they would wi…

That's in theory. In practice I knew of no ICs w/o OKRs assigned to them.

Re: OKRs will never be enough

#65

Post by mattbuilds »

crazygringo wrote: post #41
mattbuilds wrote: post #10

All these frameworks for managing people matter much less than creating a team of quality people. Think of it like sports. Sure a good manager or coach can get the most of the players on the team. They might even add tactics and play above their level. But when it comes down to it, what matters the most in the skill set of the players. The best coaching in the world isn’t going to help me and my friends beat a pro sp…

I deeply disagree. If you have a team of quality people but they're all running around in their own direction doing their uncoordinated thing, they add up to basically zero. While if they're all working towards the same thing in the same direction, their efforts reinforce each other so the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. The expertise of people on a team provides a ceiling for what they can accomplis…

I actually agree with you a good amount. I was never saying that you don't need management, just that first you need quality people. I do think you can have a good team with poor managers that still preforms, but I can't think of any examples of great managers with bad teams that excel.

Well first I would say that a team of quality people wouldn't all run in their own direction. They would know they need to coordinate to achieve a goal. Quality doesn't just mean being good at programming, it means the whole process of delivering software.

The sports metaphor is starting to break down, but just to have a one more go. Sports is different because the top teams all have top 1000 players in the world. This won't really happen in software. So with software it's more about putting together the right team. One where people enhance the whole, and that's what I think the biggest role of management is about. It's helping coordinate quality people.

The thing I was speaking out against was that you could have a good manager with a good process and not great people. The idea that the process can hide the problems of the team is something I don't believe. It doesn't matter how you organize if thats the case, nothing of real value will get made.

I do like the idea that the total result is a multiplayer of the two values. I just think the team quality is a little more of a multiplier than the other :)

Re: OKRs will never be enough

#67

Post by keredson »

seanhandley wrote: post #27
arkitaip wrote: post #11

Does anyone use OKRs for themselves? How does it work?

Yes, for settings personal goals it can be helpful. KRs are just "things you can do to achieve the goal", so my process goes: - What do I wish was different? - What would happen if that thing changed? - What's stopping it from changing? - How can I get over those obstacles? The answers to "how can I get over those obstacles?" become the KRs that help achieve the O ("What do I wish was different?").

KR stands for "Key Result". They're definitely not "things you do to achieve your goal".

That's kind of the point of OKRs (in theory): To stop upper managers from dictating process to lower managers. (Which is a big problem.) Instead, ignore their process and evaluate them on how well whatever process they chose delivered. IE, give someone an objective, let them find their own solution, and evaluate them on only how well it worked.

Re: OKRs will never be enough

#68

Post by drewcoo »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #17
tekla wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the same people who think its never worth planning anything are the ones who spend all their time making worthless crap and never get anything done because they think having a goal is beneath them.

My experience is that people that plan all the time are the ones that get nothing done.

Want do get something done? Only plan some of the time!

False dichotomy avoided.

Re: OKRs will never be enough

#69

Post by canes123456 »

mattbuilds wrote: post #10

All these frameworks for managing people matter much less than creating a team of quality people. Think of it like sports. Sure a good manager or coach can get the most of the players on the team. They might even add tactics and play above their level. But when it comes down to it, what matters the most in the skill set of the players. The best coaching in the world isn’t going to help me and my friends beat a pro sp…

In small companies, I agree with you. However, in a big company the quality of individual work doesn't matter much at all. Most of the time will be spent on communication, prioritization, compliance, and oversight overhead. On top of that you have everyone just performing for a promotion instead of what actually helps the company. Improvements to reduce any of this overhead will dominate how good the team is.

Re: OKRs will never be enough

#70

Post by valenterry »

LambdaComplex wrote: post #28
zemvpferreira wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience you have it right but backwards: These frameworks exist to help management manage teams without quality people. Scrum/agile is exactly the same thing. The stricter and more documented the process, the more fungible actual team-members are. That's important in places like bodyshops and non-software business where no self-respecting engineer with options would want to work, and places where monotonous…

> Scrum/agile is exactly the same thing. The stricter and more documented the process The Agile manifesto specifically says "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools." If teams are forced to work in a certain way (e.g. scrum) then your organization isn't actually doing Agile.

Maybe. But "Scrum" and "Agile" are now mostly used exactly for what OP said. So it doesn't really matter what the original intention of the word was, unfortunately the meaning has changed.
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