Do you have an alternative? Genuine question. We‘re also using OKRs and I’m dreading it, but it’s better than nothing. Hoping for everybody to magically on their own align with company goals doesn’t work either.
Right now we're trying a combination of company-level objectives (not KRs) and Kanban, where the teams just work on the next most important objective they can.
Aha. That’s an interesting take I never would’ve thought of. Thx…
That kind of “not my OKR” nonsense shouldn’t happen in a 15,000 person company, let alone a company where everyone’s OKR’s are, what, two steps from the corporate ones?
I believe it is accurate and constructive to say a 150 person company with OKRs producing counter-productive outcomes is doing it wrong, at least when replying to someone who seems to believe the problem is with the OKR model.
Don't you have higher level umbrella targets that everyone can contribute to? OKRs are a tree, working on targets that aren't your teams but helps the bigger picture above you is also a feature of OKRs, you aren't meant to just look at your local OKRs.
Of course, it's better to be flexible, but when you give someone a goal, the goal is, well, the goal.
OKR shows you the state of the current organization, if the OKR are dysfunctional the organization is dysfunctional, it would be even if you didn't see the OKRs. The fix isn't to remove the OKRs, it is to align the OKRs with what each team is really expected to do as I said above.
If the team you need help from had an OKR to help you quickly, so they focused on that, do you really believe that would be a bad thing? That is the only way to do it, such teams are slow to respond and provide help everywhere that doesn't give them OKRs to reduce latency on responses, they always have their own things to work in regardless if they are visible or not.
Such OKR also makes life easier for that team, now they get rewarded for what they are supposed to do: provide support. And, if they don't have enough people to provide that support, now they have a good case to get more resources to enable them to provide that support.
Whilst I don't really like JIRA, I think this kind of tracking of objectives, initiatives and delivered results is a good way to capture OKRs based on reality rather than mission statements.