How does it being an OKR make the communication more effective?
(Note: I mean this literally. I’ve never worked in an organization with OKRs, all I know about OKRs comes from HN. I want to understand your point better, not criticize it)
My experiences with OKR's is that they are an cargo cult practices covering the lack of good coherent strategy, the exception to this is things that looks like OKR's but evolved differently within the organization rather then being adopted top down by a set of management consultants.
It really is just telling them and checking once in a while how it’s going.
You get to "talk" to the enire team perhaps a once a quarter, in some town-hall event where most people aren't really listening, and maybe send a mass email every now and then, which no-one reads. You get to talk to your immediate management team more often, and they talk to their reports, and so on, but of course whatever message you've had is greatly diluted, sometimes comically so, like in a game of telephone.
People are not robots, their understanding and communication is very ... creative. And context-dependent. And self-motivated. So that's not effective. Most people need to engage with the message you have - your priorities, changes in direction, specific goals - on a daily basis. Otherwise you are not really giving them any direction. And so you need some device to enable that. And OKRs are a part of the solution.
Have you considered seeking assistance from professional counsellors?
But seriously, I don’t understand the OKR cult. The whole “update and align” thing is worse than any religion.
Or do people really wake up each day and ask, what am I supposed to be doing at work?
Of course, in practice, your mileage may vary.