Anti-pattern: OKRs as bureaucratic red-tape
Anti-pattern: OKRs as bureaucratic red-tape
There's plenty of pushback to OKRs and there are plenty of examples where OKRs have become yet another bureaucratic process step to getting something done.
I saw this tweet earlier this month, and whilst I think there’s an element of seeking some Twitter clout from the polarising framing, it is undoubtedly based on his experiences. I’ve witnessed similar bureaucratisation of OKRs, business canvases and other popularised practices that seek clarity on what is to be achieved.
https://x.com/ChrisJBakke/status/1724835226000539666?s=20
It’s common for things that either work well once or even seem like a good idea to be suggested to become part of the process. Some work environments overuse processes as the primary means of achieving consistency. There are many alternatives to using a process.
What are OKRs for?
OKRs are, in the first instance, just a format for describing an outcome along with some measurable ‘points of agreement’ that can help with alignment by giving concrete examples of what is believed to represent progress towards achieving the goal.
For an organisation or a team, it is an expression of the current goals and a means for alignment—an agreement amongst a group of people and a concerted effort to agree in writing.
By being explicit about the focus, there is an opportunity to use this focus as a filter, a discussion point on whether a given activity is likely to help progress towards the goal. It’s a discussion as a few goals may not cover all possible work that needs doing, but it’s an excellent lens to use, especially given how common it is for a team to have more work than it has the capacity to do.
Writing and tracking OKRs is a process of sorts but can be a model describing what they aspire to achieve over the longer term. I say model because its not there to function as mandatory steps to follow but as an artifact that is known to be valuable and can help trigger the right discussion and decisions.
The act of setting and tracking OKRs might be a handful of hours per month; this might be enough to consider it an overhead, but when used well it can save that team tens or hundreds of hours:
through the work, it helped them deprioritise to remain focused.
by having a way to track progress towards achieving the goal and the faster pivots, understanding progress sooner.
If a team has an equally effective method to achieve the same, then the redundant OKR process of the organisation may seem like overhead. That’s a valid concern and a good debate to be had about whether, for the organisation’s context, there’s value in the consistency or not. The answer can differ for different organisational contexts.
Where might OKRs become a bureaucratic process?
Many organisations use OKRs in a less strict form, describing an action and a few related measures. It is not many steps from here to start to suppose that any significant activity might need an OKR drafted as a condition to meet to be allowed to proceed.
And this is precisely what happens. Sometimes formally or sometimes through assumption or imprinting of behaviour. People start to expect that a new OKR needs to be drafted. Sometimes, it’s mandated in the process itself. For instance, it becomes mandated in the project initiation process or as part of a prioritisation process. This seems to echo the experience cited in the tweet above. People may gain political capital over time by doling out this seemingly sensible advice.
By entwining OKRs in the activity layer of getting work done rather than in the investment in alignment and orientation, it becomes just another process step and ceases to provide most of the benefit.
How OKRs can be leveraged as directional context
If OKRs represent a present focus and describe an outcome, then any activity can be considered in the context of the current set of OKRs. If the activity represents a path to achieving the goal the friction for considering commencing in this direction should be low, especially if it represents the agreed best path for reaching the goal. Suppose an activity addresses a vital hygiene factor that needs correction to help the business maintain its standards. In that case, this is work that is a candidate to proceed with. Making someone draft a new OKR for this would be unnecessary red tape.
If the work represents a vital change of strategy, then it would be worth discussing amongst the team whether it is so vital that it is worth abandoning the current goals and shifting to the new focus. It’s probably worth spending time aligning on this new work to ensure the team is aligned on what needs to be achieved. Depending on the urgency and how well the goal is understood, this might be done via writing a new OKR. Very urgent and well understood might use a more expedient method. For instance, a significant incident might already be captured clearly - there’s little value in shifting this to an OKR format.
At their heart, OKRs are a simple method of synthesising a collective view of a goal. They are a summation of conversations and also a reference point for conversations. You might achieve something similar with a memo or other long-form prose. You might achieve it by having a conversation or documenting requirements. Some approaches will suit some contexts and situations better than others.
If the goal has changed because of some event or something you learned then you can discuss what has changed and then encapsulate how it has changed by how you update the goal.
If you find the OKR approach is not valuable in a situation, it's again worth a conversation amongst the team about what might be a better alternative. That might be simply talking about what is required to be done and then doing it.
Have OKRs become bureaucratic red tape at your workplace? How has that manifested? What do you think are the causes? Share your views in the comments.