OKR: should you stretch your goals?
OKR is not a new framework. It stands for “Objectives & Key Results”. The concept originated from Intel and continued to spread across other tech and non-tech companies throughout the years. One of these companies is Google who was an early OKR adopter by 1999. It seems to have served it well since the framework supported its growth from 40 employees more than 60,000 today worldwide.
I have been asked numerous times in the past whether I know how to make OKRs, help create OKRs, and whether an OKR should describe an ambitious (stretch) goal or conversely, a goal that can be achieved 100%.
Albeit intuitive as it may be, unfortunately, I don’t think there is a clear cut answer to the last question. The answer is: it depends. It depends on factors such as culture, record history, and resources to name a few.
My initial thought was that if a company is running on a blame culture, then a stretch (therefore unrealistically high) goal wouldn’t go down that well. Why? Because if you set unrealistically high goals and not achieve them, you are risking to be blamed for not achieving them. You are shooting yourself in the foot so to say. So, swimming in the lane would be my preferred approach in such environments.
HBR’s article The Stretch Paradox describes extensively whether a stretch goal is appropriate for a given company. However, what sparked me to think about OKRs and stretch goals was the description of complacency by John Kotter’s book, Leading Change (not a new book but surprisingly current). This was a little before the OKR became a thing and widely adopted.
Talking about establishing a state of urgency as a first transformation phase (with which you may or may not agree), Kotter expands on complacency in organizations. To paraphrase a bit, he states that keeping people alert creates little bombs that blow up pockets of complacency. This could manifest in a number of ways such as aiming to double the existing high profits, focusing on bad customer feedback as opposed to good reviews, etc.
Now here’s the key: maintaining stretch goals, as described in the Stretch Paradox, is good for thriving but complacent companies. Equally, Kotter says that stretch goals assist to “break” complacency. He then goes on to how a stretch goal creates “artificial crises” in the sense of unachieved results, or urgent, vital achievements. Therefore, in the context of Agile transformations, or organizational transformation, the above premises lead me to the conclusion that stretch goals are a good thing to have. That is not to say that complacency is only one factor to take into consideration, however, when a company decides to “transform”, it means that it wants to stray away from some bad practices and follow some better ones.
As I mentioned, I do believe that timing is a crucial factor and one cannot suddenly introduce a stretch OKR in a company without the company having prior notion or understanding of what a stretch OKR is. Prior communication, visibility, transparency, quality metrics, are all crucial aspects that assist any goal setting and transformation and should be taken into account by any change agent or leader who decides to promote change in an organization.
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