Alienation to performance management.. Does OKR works?

It is a matter of fact that we are passing through unprecedented period of time with a high velocity and uncertainty regarding a variety of areas in the life. Despite the fact that “change management” was often aligned with a well-ended voyage to better way of business with an adoptive life style, the level of uncontrollability and high stakes of opportunity cost make that transformation like a horror-film just as produced by Hollywood film industry for perception management. Who will get lion’s share from such a manifested VUCA process could be another question to be profoundly discussed, however, in that article whether shift in performance management could be a remedy and tool for such a drastic evolution will be debated.

According to Peter Berger, alienation is a is a process in which the dialectical relationship among ‘individual’ and ‘his world’ is lost in the minds. In a sense, people could forget that the world which is cooperatively produced and maintained. In this respect, the true relationship among ‘human’ and ‘world’ is disordered on the mind and while the ‘procreator’ is recognized as only a product, actor becomes a subject that is just affected externally. Therefore, the only way to avoid from alienation is to recognize the socio-cultural world a consequence of human’s own activity and so providing the ‘cohesiveness’ instead of understanding socio-cultural world as natural facts. In that way, employee’s alienation and disregard to performance management system/process is actually a manifestation of people’s lack of awareness and belief to move forward to a better sub-system by means of performance. In other words, historical evolution of performance system proved that goals are usually limited with top-management through artificially inspired balanced score cards and sexy KPI’s with no interest in the eyes of other white/blue collar workers, highly distanced from management process. For that reason, dislike and disregard to performance is mostly also a result organizational structure and strengthened culture of the management team with a hierarchical and aristocrat way of doing business with keeping participation as a way of emphatically rhetoric for marketing purpose. Taking into consideration such eclectic relationship among framework, culture and level of openness, we always expect that change in the performance management will save us from all these weakness and obstacles with well preparing the company for a bright future. Thus, we assume that the result of main systems (performance) will be a driver to rescue us from these wasted and outdated frame via a well-branded project of change management. If that is not a utopia, it is like dreaming hope for sustainability reports with hundred pages of information will save our world and remind us responsibilities as “good” citizens of the universe. Is that so easy, not really.

In that context, whether OKR (objective and key results) methodology could be a green revolution to lessen the alienation of performance management in the eyes of employees is a matter of discussion. OKR is actually a result of continuous effort to improve alignment of organizational units with mostly shared goals. Whereas Objectives in OKR are supposed to be defined strategically and intuitively by asking the question of “what do we achieve”, Key Results are evaluated as tactical and measurable ways for how to active the objective by relying on SMART principles. The strengths of OKR, however, not only relies on its emphasis on setting high correlation between objectives and key results during the goal setting process, but also its principles on focus, alignment, transparency and result orientation. Considering that previous attempts and studies on performance management (as such management by objectives-MBOs, balanced score card-BSC) could not provide satisfactory results in terms of employee’s owning her/his goals despite they include highly academic content. The fundamental reason for that, the vantage point of these methodologies on goal setting process stayed / perceived as high and hierarchical level of the organization with utmost emphasis on top management with a an artificial mechanism of cascading. Given the fact that, employee’s awareness for company’s corporate goals is below 10% according to recent studies, these methods could not generate a medicine to alienation from performance system. OKR’s complimentary and indispensable brother of CFR (communication, feedback and results) enters the game in that cycle. That’s to say, lack of previous methodologies and their mechanic characteristic is reversed by OKR discipline through an utmost priority attributed to active participation and empowerment of all level of the employees in dynamic goal-setting process. In addition to that, monthly/quarterly reviews of targets instead of annual cycles could decrease the degree of alienation via practicing and enabling regular 1-1 meetings, feedback sessions and synchronized recognition modules like “Kudos”.

Accordingly, OKR is not a certain refutation of historically and evolutionary developed strong academic content of MBO’s and BSC, but rather a breaking through of performance life cycle to prevent and ease its declining inclination with a last attempt. Considering 21. century’s primary concepts of transparency, openness, participation, remote-management, a tailor made and well practiced OKR execution could be a partial solution to revitalize performance management process and make it comparatively SMART with a relatively high belongingness for the employee. However, since cultural change and corporate development is one of the slowest sub-systems of any organization in comparison to fast and mechanically change sales, marketing and information flow process, we are not to be in hurry to see the mid and long run results of OKR.

Consequently, alienation from performance management is not easily turned into a success story in the short-run insofar as the roots of that is not limited to performance process. The way of managing companies in terms of level of transparency, effective span of control, vertical level of hierarchy and degree of alignment shall be main drivers and determinants of the success of a real change management. Change management driven by a tailor made (organic) OKR can also be achievable with the participation and alignment of employees in the process not in spite of them. Nevertheless, decisiveness for the destruction of functional silos and attempts for avoiding tunnel-bridge problems could be good starting points to accelerate mutual trust and respect and thereby diminish the degree of alienation from performance.

Given the fact that OKRs principle is to focus on substantial items of the business agenda to decrease opportunity cost of choices in line with organization’s priorities, “we have to always begin with an end in our minds” with a particular focus on individual recognition and empowerment of people.