Great article ! I also use OKR for my personal life + company but but don't you feel that it can sometimes take away from the meaning? I'm thinking about some topics here, for example I measure for a personal goal "Reduce my general stress level" KRs on the number of hours of meditation per week and the number of hours of sport per week but I quickly find myself in a loop where I end up stressing more if I don't reach these KRs and finally I'm counterproductive on the goal. Same thing on creative subjects of corporate communication or design it seems to me difficult to measure the performance here while sometimes a moment of inspiration can make 80% of the result.
I agree that OKRs are useful for company-wide goals, but I also believe that there can be limits to what it can apply to. Some things that are really important are hard to put in deadline-based metrics. For instance, writing high quality code is very important for service availability in the long run, but the service availability you measure in a quarter is only partially linked to the quality of software written during this quarter. It is largely the result of the quality of software written in the previous years. So the quality of work done by developers can only be seen in the long run and I think it’s pretty impossible to create a correct metric incentive. The best thing that can be done is I think to create a “culture of quality” so that people write quality code in a “pay it forward” way.
Great article ! I also use OKR for my personal life + company but but don't you feel that it can sometimes take away from the meaning? I'm thinking about some topics here, for example I measure for a personal goal "Reduce my general stress level" KRs on the number of hours of meditation per week and the number of hours of sport per week but I quickly find myself in a loop where I end up stressing more if I don't reach these KRs and finally I'm counterproductive on the goal. Same thing on creative subjects of corporate communication or design it seems to me difficult to measure the performance here while sometimes a moment of inspiration can make 80% of the result.
I agree that OKRs are useful for company-wide goals, but I also believe that there can be limits to what it can apply to. Some things that are really important are hard to put in deadline-based metrics. For instance, writing high quality code is very important for service availability in the long run, but the service availability you measure in a quarter is only partially linked to the quality of software written during this quarter. It is largely the result of the quality of software written in the previous years. So the quality of work done by developers can only be seen in the long run and I think it’s pretty impossible to create a correct metric incentive. The best thing that can be done is I think to create a “culture of quality” so that people write quality code in a “pay it forward” way.
Planning a wedding ? :)