Big Company Talents: Is OKR Failing?#
#Omnivore
Highlights#
The core of OKR lies in goal setting, using descriptive goals to indicate the direction of the company, achieving "vague correctness" rather than obsessing over a few percentage points of growth. ⤴️ ^7870c6ab
This point is about OKR being qualitative and KPI being quantitative.
Today's internet giants do not have new growth points, and they have entered the stage of mature operation. OKR is not suitable for them, and it is more appropriate to use KPI. ⤴️ ^9f24eb0d
This article is from WeChat Official Account: Orange Bamboo Insights (ID: gh_013fe5eb0b97), Author: Zhu Dawei, Image Source: Visual China
Recently, I read a book called "Big Company Talents." The author is a partner at a traditional consulting firm, and he examines the talent management models and methodologies of internet companies from an external perspective. The subtitle of the book is: Internet giants' talent management pixel-level restoration.
This book criticizes the talent management models and methodologies of internet companies from the perspective of a traditional consulting firm. The author believes that these systems, concepts, and tools are just "phase solutions" that are neither groundbreaking nor universally applicable. Moreover, their effects are exaggerated and should not be promoted.
The book analyzes and lists the talent management tools of internet giants, such as values assessment, OKR, abandoning KPI, nicknames, flexible working hours, talent inventory, etc. Then, it provides examples to illustrate that these tools are no longer effective or have turned into their opposites.
For example, Google, which initially advocated for OKR, has abandoned it, and other big companies have also reverted to using KPIs. While it may seem like nicknames have eliminated hierarchies, they have actually introduced new codes for different levels. Flexible working hours have become a means to exploit and squeeze employees' working time. Talent inventory has become a formality.
I think the author's criticism of the results is valid, but the analysis of the reasons for the failure of internet talent management logic only scratches the surface.
Taking OKR as an example, the logic of OKR is to set goals from top to bottom and plans from bottom to top. "Big Company Talents" mentions many problems encountered in OKR implementation, such as internal competition, dual assessment, and excessive adjustments. However, these are just symptoms, not the essence. "Big Company Talents" criticizes domestic large enterprises for blindly adopting OKR, attributing the success of Google and ByteDance to OKR, and seeking management shortcuts. This point is not wrong, but it is also too arbitrary to consider Google's abandonment of OKR as the failure of OKR.
OKR is suitable for the innovation stage. When an internet company enters a new field, it is difficult to set specific goals. Looking back now, whether it's Google entering search, Alibaba entering e-commerce, or Tencent entering gaming, who could have predicted the scale they would achieve?
In a new field, what company leaders need to do is make a firm choice in a certain direction, such as 2C search services, e-commerce platforms, mobile games, etc. ==The core of OKR lies in goal setting, using descriptive goals to indicate the direction of the company, achieving "vague correctness" rather than obsessing over a few percentage points of growth.== Even in the early stages of laying the foundation, despite high-speed growth, it may still not generate enough revenue or even have no actual income, like the early days of WeChat.
But if the right direction is chosen, even if the core capabilities have been established, the company can still benefit from the development of the entire society and achieve a significant increase in performance. Google, Alibaba, and Tencent have all enjoyed the dividends of the times.
Based on this logic, OKR certainly needs frequent retrospectives to check if the goal descriptions are consistent with the direction, if the means are consistent with the objectives, and if there are better solutions or goals.
Therefore, it is necessary to view OKR and similar management methods in the context of high-speed growth in internet companies. Similarly, abandoning KPIs, flexible working hours, values assessment, etc., are all based on this premise. Since the solutions are proposed by lower-level employees, how to achieve them should also be planned and implemented by them, and superiors do not need to restrict specific indicators and working hours. However, values, such as whether the user comes first or whether to do no evil, can affect whether the means are consistent with the goals and direction, and therefore need to be assessed.
What is "failing" now is not OKR, but the internet giants. Or rather, ==today's internet giants do not have new growth points and have entered the stage of mature operation, so OKR is not suitable for them, and it is more appropriate to use KPIs.==
The rise of big companies often comes from aligning with the rhythm of the times and having the right strategic direction, which allows room for diligent tactics. Similarly, if the strategic direction is wrong, no matter how much adjustment is made, it is difficult to avoid decline. This is true for Google and Alibaba. However, both the big companies themselves and the training companies that promote OKR prefer to attribute success to individuals or "miracle tools." Behind this is the desire of countless small bosses to replicate the myth of Alibaba and Google getting rich overnight, but they don't seriously think about their own business and don't use their brains, only wanting to brainwash others.
This is not the fault of OKR. Attendance clocking and agile development can also be used for PUA.
For innovative companies, OKR is still a suitable methodology. For example, companies like OpenAI are hard to imagine having specific KPIs, such as improving response speed by a few percentage points or counting lines of code for statistical engineers to see what time they clock out. They must have a goal list similar to OKR, and the previous internal conflicts precisely indicate that there were problems with the goals, whether it is about rapid growth or ensuring a certain bottom line.
OKR may not guarantee the success of OpenAI, but KPIs are definitely not suitable for OpenAI.
If Alibaba wants to become a retail company, then KPIs would be more effective than OKR. If Alibaba wants to transform into an AI company, then OKR might be better.
Labeling OKR as a failure or praising it as a miracle is oversimplified thinking.
This article is from WeChat Official Account: Orange Bamboo Insights (ID: gh_013fe5eb0b97), Author: Zhu Dawei