[drewcoo]

I don't think line workers on assembly lines have much exposure to OKRs.

OKRs are entirely about creative work and have seen success at tech companies that take management seriously.

The problem is that throughout the industry most managers were promoted into those positions without any training for being good at something else entirely. So even if they want to care, they generally have no idea where to begin. Self help books about business "heroes?" Focus on more metrics because they're something to show? Just focus on coding because that's what got them the promo? Et al.

[jl2718]

I have a theory that management can be connected to portfolio theory as a variance-reducing process. Outcomes are random but bounded in expectation by the efficient frontier. When Google started, they hired the smartest people and enforced zero management and zero hierarchy, and thus were operating at the high point of both expectation and variance of outcome. Instantiation of OKRs brought their operating point down to something more predictable, but at a tautologically lower expected outcome. They notice this and keep trying to remove management on special groups like X, but then some new brilliant management idea comes along, and they adopt it with roughly the same results as every other new management idea. It's like the investment industry before Benjamin Graham.