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Henrik-Jan van der Pol is the CEO of OKR software company Perdoo. Previously a management consultant, he first became interested in OKRs after seeing how frequently leaders fail to unite teams behind company goals.

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Van der Pol delivers a refreshing and humorous presentation to the OKR Forum in Amsterdam in 2019 on the common failures and pitfalls of OKR implementation. ‘Who here has found OKRs an overnight success?’ he asks the Forum. Everyone laughs; few delegates raise their hands.

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Van der Pol talks about the ‘actual pain’ of implementing OKR programmes and highlights three common mistakes. The first is to assume that OKRs are a silver bullet. The second is to rush the process of setting OKRs, while Pol sees the quarterly process of creating OKRs as a major benefit, recommending taking one week per quarter in the early stages. Finally, Pol warns against using OKRs to measure ‘everything’. OKRs represent the road map to take us to our destination, van der Pol says, while checking the petrol gauge to make sure you have enough petrol is a KPI. OKRs are a tool that translates strategy into goals; KPIs are a metric that shows the business is running smoothly.

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Van der Pol shares his top 7 tips to make an OKR programme a success – one of which, radically, is that if a team new to OKRs is struggling with stretch objectives, ‘ditch them’. Choose a more achievable objective and shoot for stretch at a later stage.

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This is an original ‘what-not-to-do’ presentation from someone with years of experience helping companies execute their OKR programmes.