8 Super Powerful OKR Anti-Patterns For Crying
Continue reading if you are interested in what you can do to sabotage your OKR (Objectives and Key Results) implementation. Here are 8 useful tips how to harm OKR on different levels and avoid progress or improvements. In case you are not familiar what OKR is, read “What are OKRs?” first.
Cover all work with OKRs
Why would you do that? There will always (at least I can’t think of case were it will not be the case) be work that needs to be done without having a particular focus. Maintenance, customer support, fixing bugs or administrative work for example. OKRs should cover just you high priorities that you really want to focus on in order to move business forward.
Have additional regular meetings / ceremonies
You have put a lot of effort in implementing OKR with all the ceremonies such as planning, check-in, review, retrospective. Thee ceremonies should be held at a good quality so that they are effective. Avoid additional regular meetings (e.g. jour fix, lessons learned, steering committees) or ceremonies that cause additional loops of tasks and communication. Try to have all the necessary conversations in OKR ceremonies.
KRs are activities or tasks
Remember that KRs should reflect measurable improvement in outcomes, not activities or tasks. Activities or tasks might be a lot easier to check but hold the risk of still not achieving hat you want to achieve even if the KR completes at 1. KRs should measure what comes out after you have completed your tasks and activities.
Check-in KRs by feeling or assumptions
When updating progress on your KRs, make sure you have proper data at hand. Updating KRs on feelings and assumptions is random and you are basically blind regarding your achievements. Collecting and reading data is a lot harder than just updating based on feelings and assumptions, but mo pain no gain.
Forget about OKR ceremonies actions
Scheduling and holding OKR ceremonies is usually not the problem. When it comes to actually following up on what was agreed up on is a bit more tricky. This is valid for check-ins when blockers or dependencies are handled and progress is put at risk. Similar case is retrospectives without implementing actions. That results in mediocre continuation instead of continuously improving.
Let additional work creep in
An OKR cycle of 3 months is short but not too short to put additional wishes or tasks on the table. That’s fine, just make sure you consciously decide what to do and don’t just pick up everything additionally to your set OKRs. OKRs can protect you from distraction and loss of focus, so profit from that. It’s fine to welcome change when there are changes that deserve it. Just don’t forget to keep OKRs realistic in negotiate the new scope so that OKRs stay ambitious but also realistic.
OKRs are your strategy
OKRs are what it says, Objectives and measurably Key Results. This doesn’t replace a good strategy that considers your current reality, where you want to be in future and why it is good to go there. OKRs can help you to execute your strategy, but it isn’t a strategy.
MBO and OKR is the same thing
With MBO company Objectives are cascaded down to employees in order to be achieved. Something like a goal setting between you and your manager would be an implementation of MBO. Even if executed on a team level MBO is not OKR.
OKR is a framework that should align an organization on goals. MBO does this too, but different. With OKR there is a bottom up part that allows people and teams with expertise and context to decide what the best contribution to your company OKRs are. Self-organization and ownership on all levels is highly encouraged with OKRs, contrary to MBO.
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Now go out and try these anti patterns in the field. Please let me know what your experience is and how they could even be improved.
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