Inspired by * I will elaborate a bit on what I think would be an OKR-approach for that. It could be a goal like "How am I supposed to know why customers are churning?". Then your key results would be, not the metric that says "Working on that", but the metric that helps you with answering the question in a way that proves or solves the puzzle ideally. There are many things that are solvable and for these the OKR recommends "Committed OKRs" while for things that are unclear there is the "aspirational OKRs".
Say, for the above: KR A being test the hypothesis for churning using XYZ analysis method and KR B bring peer review that with specialist named Klopvital, Tartirius and Mochalatet. Then, once you improved an answer, I would think you have achieved a partial goal - and if that is data to someone else then it comes the choreography of things.
. . .
The whole reason of a system of goals is to have one work and what OKR helps relates to accountability - what is a measure that validates the goal. Of course, the complexity comes when one goal system is chained with the other - the orchestration.
Your case "Someone needs to do the research, analysis, and leg work of finding potential areas to exploit." partially opens the door to it for the idea of Committed OKR (the kind of OKRs that one can do, solvable).
On your point "And then someone needs to have at least some amount of vision or inspiration about how to solve that problem." this seems to be about the idea of Aspirational OKR. In this regard, I agree that many things in the entrepreneurial outset starts with a north and not a precise thing. Certainly OKR is not a system to work on requirements - do it and that is that. The OKR approach is influenced by short feedback reviews for goals — that is derived or inspired by Andy Grove insights about MBO vs feedback vs planning that goes on like a) point to a roadmap b) work on it with a temporary plan in an accountable transparent way c) review the plan and review the roadmap.
But I hear your strong statement that "but the last time I worked in an environment with OKR no one seemed to have any brilliant ideas about how to, you know, actually achieve the Key Results." and would love to talk with you to understand more your experience. From the book I read I came upon cases that some of the success cases too years to fix their OKR system.
* Some of the ideas here I was inspired by the Measure What Matters book by John Doerr. But of course it's my limited interpretation.
Say, for the above: KR A being test the hypothesis for churning using XYZ analysis method and KR B bring peer review that with specialist named Klopvital, Tartirius and Mochalatet. Then, once you improved an answer, I would think you have achieved a partial goal - and if that is data to someone else then it comes the choreography of things.
. . .
The whole reason of a system of goals is to have one work and what OKR helps relates to accountability - what is a measure that validates the goal. Of course, the complexity comes when one goal system is chained with the other - the orchestration.
Your case "Someone needs to do the research, analysis, and leg work of finding potential areas to exploit." partially opens the door to it for the idea of Committed OKR (the kind of OKRs that one can do, solvable).
On your point "And then someone needs to have at least some amount of vision or inspiration about how to solve that problem." this seems to be about the idea of Aspirational OKR. In this regard, I agree that many things in the entrepreneurial outset starts with a north and not a precise thing. Certainly OKR is not a system to work on requirements - do it and that is that. The OKR approach is influenced by short feedback reviews for goals — that is derived or inspired by Andy Grove insights about MBO vs feedback vs planning that goes on like a) point to a roadmap b) work on it with a temporary plan in an accountable transparent way c) review the plan and review the roadmap.
But I hear your strong statement that "but the last time I worked in an environment with OKR no one seemed to have any brilliant ideas about how to, you know, actually achieve the Key Results." and would love to talk with you to understand more your experience. From the book I read I came upon cases that some of the success cases too years to fix their OKR system.
* Some of the ideas here I was inspired by the Measure What Matters book by John Doerr. But of course it's my limited interpretation.