I really like the concept behind OKRs. The idea that the business has something it wants to achieve and should have a way to measure it’s progress towards that, well, it just makes sense.

As with many things in life though, taking a text book example and applying it to a real world situation seems much harder than you would think. My employer has recently introduced them and the results seem plagued by the issues discussed in this article by Jeff Gothelf. That is, most of the key results seem to be the ‘existence’ of something that does not currently exist. This appears to stem from the idea that what we want to do is ‘build x’, rather than ‘increase y (by building x)’. It seems our tangable projects are the thing that counts - rather than the benefits they will bring.

OiKRs

It’s seems to be a mindset thing. People who work with projects, think in projects. It’s not that there aren’t any objectives or key results, they just get turned into a project at the first opportunity so that people having some context to refer to. So the challenge is capturing the actual driver and needs before it is turned into a solution (or discovering them after the fact if it’s already too late).

To combat this I’ve started thinking them of OiKRs where the little i stands for initiative. Now when I read a proposed OKR I look to see if it contains any kind of ‘initiative’ and move it there. With an initiative in the middle the task is now to ask why that is being done and to work out the real measure for success.