My company has traditionally had a good OKR program driven by strong strategy butwe have recently has been acquired by a company that has a less than powerful strategic vision.
Is there a way to ‘insulate’ our hard-fought OKRs and KPI’s from the parent companies vague amorphous strategic framework?
I’d shy away from insulating yourself, especially if you have just been bought, its going to look like you are not connected with the new overlords.
Rather I’d see the OKR process as a way of highlighting weak strategy and corporate goals.
Do you best to set OKRs which speak to your product and customers while fitting in with the perceived strategy. I would hope you have a review process were you present the OKRs to more senior leaders and get their feedback. When you show the OKRs they may want to say “You don’t understand the strategy” or you might say “This is how we interpreted the strategy.”
Either way its the start of a conversation. Hence I like to call OKRa a strategy debugger.
This is a pretty lovely and useful thought I’m going to appropriate it and use it repeatedly, excellent!