Objectives and Key Results, what does it really mean?

As CHRO, I recently met a lot of software providers to implement a new performance management system within our Group. I was quite surprised with some of their selling points and I would like to share one of them: “Our system is OKR based, as you may know Performance Management Systems are under big transformations and this is the end of the yearly evaluation system; now most of the companies are promoting OKR based systems with quarterly reviews….”

So let’s come back to the origin of OKR as developped by @JohnDoerr in the Ted talks below. It has been drafted in 1975, yes more than 40 years ago. John Deer presents the Objectives as the what we are doing things, the Key Results are how we are doing them and he recommends to add a touch of why, to give meaning (@Simon Sinek). Compared to a basic Performance Management System process, what could be new is that key results and objectives can be transparent and seen by everyone in the company.

At the end, my point is that OKR is an efficient process but the main success factor is how clever and efficient are the managers. I don’t see anything in former PMS systems forbidding the managers to meet regularly their team members, to let them propose their own objectives and set up their key objectives within a SMART way. The « why ? », the purpose, is a matter of culture and values of your organization, of its leaders.

Introducing OKR can be a good move if you don’t use as a motive the inefficiency of your former yearly appraisal system. If the former system is not efficient it is probably because you don’t pay enough attention to the competencies of your managers. Giving them coaching skills could be widely more efficient than changing a whole PMS system and software. I invite you to watch John Doerr’s talk to make up your mind. Let me know what you think.