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I wrote this article to discuss some myths and realities I hear during my OKR mentoring sessions. Each one appears frequently — and all deserve a direct answer.
Myth #1 — OKRs Don’t Work
They do. They were born in Silicon Valley and progressively spread to startups and large companies. They are ideal for startups that have already passed the Product-Market Fit phase, gone through bootstrapping, and now need to prove scale to achieve a good valuation and attract investment. And they continue to be useful long after that.
Where do large organizations fit in? They have evaluated OKRs as an alternative to traditional goals — tired of making “New Year’s resolutions” that vanish at the first fire that breaks out. OKRs work in companies of other sectors and sizes too.
Myth #2 — OKRs Are an HR Tool
OKRs were developed outside the People & Culture department. By definition — as Andy Grove states — OKRs cannot be the tool for evaluating how an employee is performing. They can be ingredients for performance reviews, but not their foundation.
Also by definition, OKRs should not be tied to financial bonuses, to avoid sandbagging — the phenomenon of deliberately modest goals written to be easily beaten.
Myth #3 — OKRs Are Not an HR Tool
Although they were not born in HR, OKRs have been a powerful tool for driving good people management practices. They can be used to manage the complex feedback processes between managers and their direct reports.
As Christina Wodtke says, it is recommended to balance delivery OKRs with protective and organizational health OKRs. At that point, OKRs work well for measuring behavioral contribution and reinforcing cultural pillars — and this is the only case that justifies an individual OKR (personal opinion).
To wrap up: HR makes good use of OKR’s nested cadences to give momentum to things that were always easy to define and hard to put into practice. When paired with good monitoring software — preferably mobile — it becomes beautifully practical for our HR friends.
Myth #4 — OKRs Are Similar to KPIs
No. No. No.
OKRs are not metrics. OKRs are goals — classified as constraints in the management of complex environments.
It may be that some Key Result follows the format of a KPI. But generally, if that happens, the OKR was probably written poorly — and you will have motivational problems when tracking it. More than improving a vanity metric, a lagging metric, or a misleading metric (see “Fooled by Randomness” by N. N. Taleb), a good KR always pursues a delivery, a threshold to be reached, a result.
As Christina Wodtke says: the KR must have a result.
Over time, KPIs have stopped being truly “key” in favor of monitoring every operational detail — losing their strategic bias in the process.
Myth #5 — OKRs Are an Improved Version of MBO, BSC, and SMART Goals
Each of those frameworks has specific limitations:
- MBO has no hypothesis validation cycles.
- Balanced Scorecard became a soup of indicators, losing focus on strategic choice — the difference between “should do” and “must do.”
- SMART Goals are merely a way to write goals. They do not bring a complete framework of principles, systematization, management, and governance — no roles, artifacts, or cadences.
OKRs are grounded in “Measure What Matters” — the title of John Doerr’s book. All of this makes them unique.
Myth #6 — OKRs Are for Strategic Planning
OKRs originated in that context — but the framework has evolved. The phenomenon of high-frequency OKRs has emerged, reported in the book Exponential Organizations. As the framework’s power became apparent, it has been used for other purposes. This is roughly what happened with Scrum when it moved from IT into the world.
Beyond the HR application already mentioned, an extraordinary use of OKRs has been in Product Management. In that scenario, OKRs teach teams to understand what value is — and help them get there. They encourage teams to stop being “feature factories,” mere deliverers of items no one uses. As Marty Cagan says: if, in Backlog refinement, an idea does not align with OKRs, it is quickly discarded.
Are OKRs “Just” a Goal System?
Yes — but they go beyond that. They are also a powerful communication system, flowing like sap between all layers of the organization.
I like the analogies used by Bono Vox: OKRs are a glue that, like magic, connects all the company’s practices and initiatives. They promote alignments that were previously intangible, tackle the famous invisible fences, and resolve interdependencies once shared OKR maturity is reached. This silo-breaking phenomenon is explored in OKR to Remove Invisible Fences.
Myth #7 — OKRs Don’t Change Mindset
Mindset has always been somewhat subjective. OKRs consolidate a set of practices that adhere to organizational culture and reinforce it — making people think in terms of results rather than effort.
This effect is called “Plumbing” (as opposed to “Poetry,” which resembles Mindset). Well — we need poetry and some hammering every now and then.
The literature states that to obtain full benefits, OKRs need to be experienced for at least 4 cycles — the equivalent of 1 year on the standard cycle. But my experience shows that the impact on team engagement begins from the writing of the first OKR.
What to Take Away
OKRs are simple to understand and complex to execute well. Most myths arise precisely in that gap — between the expectation of a magic tool and the reality of a framework that requires discipline, cadence, and continuous learning. If you want to go beyond the myths and learn how to write them correctly, read Writing and Managing Good OKRs.
Results do appear. But they are built cycle by cycle.