Your OKR problem is a strategy problem

When I see a product team ‘starting from scratch’ with their OKRs each quarter, it’s a sure sign that there is an absence of product strategy. 

At their heart OKR is a framework for executing a strategy. It isn’t a strategy creation tool, but it does reveal an absence of one.

Marty Cagan: “In most companies, there is no product strategy. Notice I didn't say a bad product strategy—I mean literally no product strategy”  EMPOWERED (Silicon Valley Product Group) (p. 9)

I’ve seen many teams who have no product strategy, but a fluffy strategy can be almost as frustrating to execute against.  

A compass doesn’t help if you don’t know where you want to go to.

In my experience with OKR a good product strategy has a concrete aspirational vision in the 3-5 year range. This is articulated in terms of customer problems  and outcomes and is clear about market segments and personas. 

This provides a great end state for the teams to aim at, but 3-5 years is a long time. Teams also benefit from working with leaders to establish some great outcomes they can deliver along the way. These outcomes should be in the form of customer outcomes and business outcomes. This can be more tangible than a huge gulf to a 5 year vision, that can feel unattainable.

This is an example of leading with context. It gives the team and the leaders something to base their OKRs on and check progress against.

From there of course the team needs to be empowered to get after those challenges as they see fit!