Why OKR Implementation Fails

The answer is straightforward and old-fashioned: culture eats strategy for breakfast. With OKR implementation is no different.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are an old goal setting framework, to the surprise of most. It was first introduced in 1983 by Andy Grove in Intel, 9 years before the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) was invented, in 1992. However, it gained popularity in September of 2017, when John Doerr published Measure What Matters (see Google Trends chart below). The famous book that details Google’s Goal-Setting Framework.

OKRs popularity grew fast after Measure What Matters was released | Source: Google Trends

OKRs is sold as a simple-super-powerful-framework that drives 10x growth. In spite of its hype, if you talk to your friends who use or have used OKRs, you’ll see that several of them will say that OKRs don’t work or that they’re skeptical about them. If it is so simple and has obvious benefits, why is it that it fails lots of times getting people to speak ill of the framework? 

Below and in this LinkedIn Post are some other expert opinions on this topic:

“Most systems implementations fail because the two groups, the people pushing for the systems change and the people actually required to use the new systems, are motivated by different things.” 

— Shervin Talieh, Founder & CEO at Partner Hero, and former Accenture Partner.

“On average, successful OKR implementations take 18 months”

— Jessie Withers, LinkedIn Learning Author & People Development @ Google.

Summarizing: OKRs are a system. System implementations require culture change. Culture change requires change management. Change management takes time.

Although it is known that change management takes time, you will see consulting firms selling things like 2-week strategy workshops as OKR implementation. Do not fall for this. It is a trap. 

The reality is that at the end of those 2 weeks, your OKR implementation will live the valley of death. If the consulting leaves, your team will be left at its own devices with a new way of working and no change management. People will start saying “we never did OKRs and we were just fine” and the implementation will fail. If the OKR implementation fails at this stage, get prepared to face a million more times more resistance the next time you try.

Instead, what a consulting firm should be doing is catalyzing the organization to cross the valley of death, as detailed in the beautiful chart below I borrowed from my friends at Bain & Co.

Why OKR implementation fails, illustrated | Source: Adapted from Bain & Co

In conclusion: OKR implementation fails because it is often not treated as something that requires culture change and time. Do not fall for the trap of a 2-week OKR implementation project. It will take longer than that. 

Up next: OKR implementation that works: a framework to make culture-change easy