Kallokain

Recently, I made a short Linkedin post that was quite critical of OKRs, Objectives and Key Results. The post got a few likes, and comments who both agreed and disagreed with me. I found one of the comments that disagreed with me particularly interesting, because it referenced an article that was very positive to OKRs. That article contained pretty much everything that makes me doubt that OKRs are useful. I’ll walk through it, but first, here is my original Linkedin post: Here is why I do not trust OKRs, in three quotes: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." -Goodhart's Law, https://lnkd.in/dUgcBEMT "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." -Campbell's Law, https://lnkd.in/dFyeu4K3 "Key Results benchmark and monitor how we get to the obje...

Mapping a Value Stream is an adventure, a bit like exploring an uncharted landscape. If you are serious about improving the way your organization works … Let me rephrase that: If you are serious about improving any process, for an organization, for yourself, or for a friend, you will sooner or later need information about what the relevant value streams look like. You also need a simple, yet useful, way to map the information. Having that enables you to figure out where to focus your efforts. A value stream map is easy to learn, yet very useful, tool for mapping value streams. The purpose of a value stream map is to help you identify waste in a value stream. A value stream map tells you how much of the time that a goal unit [1] spends in the value stream that is value adding time and how much is non-value adding time. Waste, schock, and incredulity Schock and incredulity are common reactions the first time someone sees a value stream map. Does it really take that much time...