Copy and paste is the opposite of how okrs are intended to work. But traditional annual goal-setting models do cascade.
Unfortunately Doerr presented a football team example in a pathetic attempt to explain how okrs cascade directly.
Because of this, okrs have been done poorly at so many orgs. Sadly, okrs software companies saw the simple computation from set theory to make krs be children of higher level objectives so they could make cool visual maps illustrating how okrs connect.
That is sad. Hope you are doing something to fix that. Sounds like people are just randomly doing stuff even though they took time to define okrs. Why define okrs in first place if just doing random stuff? Seems like a leadership issue. If you see the problem, address it. Lead or leave.
Yes - ICs have tasks, not okrs. The tasks can be intended to impact a higher-level kr which defines progress of an O and that O MUST be connected the strategy of the company or it is a crap/BS O.
So, in conclusion:
1-okrs should not be used to evaluate staff or be scored for pay raise decision. Oops, seems like some people still do that.
2-individuals should not be defining okrs at their level. I don’t see many people doing this anymore… even Google came out and advised against this practice as it leads to a lack of collaboration. And okrs end up looking like personal goals such as “buy house in Mountain View”
3-okrs should not be a to-do list, but looks like many, if not most, teams who think they are doing “okrs” simply make a to-do list and call it “okrs” which is ironic since okrs are about outcomes not output.
4-Okrs work best when leadership stops saying just “be innovative” and instead says “successfully expand the ecosystem of product ABC”
Then describes why that objective is important and why now to educate and motivate the company. And then gets input to solicit how we will agree on what measurable progress will define the achievement of the objective so we all know what the goals are for the short term. But okrs do not work when krs look like “reduce the backlog” or “fix bugs” as those are not actually “krs” they are “to-do lists”
5- last point, and most importantly… okrs is a “verb”, a way of asking questions. You are doing okrs when you are asking yourself and others include the following questions:
A-what is the most important area to focus on making progress in near term? Why?
B-how will measure progress on the objective?
C-what is the intended outcome of the task (because people will answer question B with a task list)
If you ask these questions of yourself and others, good things happen. If you use okrs to make a to-do list or evaluate performance of staff, you will end up complaining that okrs don’t work. Your choice.
Unfortunately Doerr presented a football team example in a pathetic attempt to explain how okrs cascade directly.
Because of this, okrs have been done poorly at so many orgs. Sadly, okrs software companies saw the simple computation from set theory to make krs be children of higher level objectives so they could make cool visual maps illustrating how okrs connect.
So, yeah, I feel you, “Whateva”