Hello ,
People are so passionate about OKR and KPI.
It’s almost like they are supporting two sports team:
- Team OKR - they are faaaaaaar better than KPI.
- Team KPI of course - OKR are ruuuuubish!
- And a Team Both - you need salt AND pepper!
And I said sports team… It’s more like a religious belief.
Religious beliefs were a way to protect unexplained scientific truth.
The classic example is fire.
Because fire was so important to us, we made it sacred and created rules and rituals around it.
These rules and rituals were scientific truth about how to keep the fire and how to control it.
Unexplained scientific truth at the time - religious beliefs.
When it comes to business performance, we also have religious beliefs.
But instead of unexplained scientific truth, these beliefs protect unexplained success mechanism.
We did in the past - it “always worked”.
This tycoon says he did OKR for his team performance - we need to do OKR!
And in that jolly mess the expert consultant comes in.
The expert consultant is the clergyman, the sorcerer.
He has special knowledge or abilities that enable him to control the unexplained.
Of course the HR consultant does not talk to the dead or cut the inside of birds to tell you to use OKR or KPI.
But he plays the role of a passer between the known and the unknown.
And to do that he makes things very complicated.
He introduces a new language that only he understands.
And he uses artefacts such as OKR and KPI (what do they even mean???) to make converts.
So at the end what should you do - OKR or KPI?
You should go back to basics.
You want to measure progress towards a goal to meet.
Set that goal.
Determine what “progress” is:
- Milestone over specific period
- Incremental results in a specific period (monthly extra sales)
- Regular results over a specific period (first response to customer under 24 hours).
And then set up the technology to measure and track.
You can then decide to call that KPI or OKR or a mixture of both.
I will continue to call this common sense :)
Julien
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Far more important than OKR or KPI is common sense as you can see.
To get a lot of common sense in your business you need top talents. If you are struggling to find these top talents just hit reply and ask me any question.
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