OKRs masquerade as strategy
One of my issues with OKRs is the oft-repeated line that the goals should be so audacious that you should only expect to achieve about 70% of them.<p>If you're following this advice, you are either purposefully choosing goals that you do not know how to achieve, which is a problem, or purposefully choosing goals whose achievement relies on way too many externalities over which you have little control, which is a problem.<p>I'm not saying external factors shouldn't be considered, or that we should only set goals that are within comfortable reach.<p>Rather, I'm saying the uncertainty should be accounted for differently. It should be baked into our goals, not treated as if it only matters at the OKR level.<p>Imagine if you were to plan a sprint, and your story points did not factor in uncertainty at all. Then, you committed to a sprint size that also did not take into account uncertainty. But your stakeholders agreed that a 30% sprint failure rate was acceptable.<p>Now imagine baking in uncertainty into your estimates and then committing to a sprint size you can realistically hit. Add stretch goals if you want. Doesn't that seem more sensible?