The dry-erase marker squeaks against the board, a sound that usually triggers a low-level migraine in the back of my left eye. It is the sound of a manager-let’s call him Marcus, because everyone who suggests impossible things seems to be named Marcus-drawing a line that slants upward at an angle that defies the laws of physics. He looks at us, his eyes bright with the kind of caffeine-induced zeal that usually precedes a disaster, and tells us that for the next quarter, we aren’t just looking for growth. We are looking for a ‘stretch.’ Specifically, a 152% increase in output. But then, in the same breath, he mentions that the quarterly bonus structure is strictly tied to achieving 102% of our set objectives. If we hit 92%, we get nothing. If we hit 152%, he gets a promotion and we get a pizza party.
I’ve spent the last 32 minutes staring at a coffee stain on the carpet that looks remarkably like the map of Tasmania, wondering how we got here. We are living in the era of the OKR delusion, a period where the most sophisticated management framework ever devised by the minds at Intel and Google has been stripped for parts and sold back to us as a high-tech whip. It is a system designed to encourage failure as a stepping stone to innovation, yet it is being used by traditional corporate structures to punish anyone who doesn’t possess the foresight to lie about what they can actually achieve.
The Visceral Truth of Sandbagging
52% chance of failure
100% guaranteed hit
We know that if we are honest-if we say we want to attempt something truly difficult that has a 52% chance of failure-we are essentially signing our own financial death warrant. So we don’t. We sandbag. We take a goal we know we can hit by Tuesday and we dress it up in the language of ‘aspirational moonshots.’
The Chimney Inspector and Structural Decay
“
Most people don’t want to know if their chimney is actually safe; they want him to sign a paper saying it is. If he finds a crack in the flue of a 102-year-old house, he’s the messenger of bad news.
– João C., Chimney Inspector
In the corporate world, an ambitious OKR is that crack. It reveals the limitation of the structure. But instead of fixing the house, the manager asks the inspector to pretend the crack is a decorative feature. João once spent 72 hours trying to explain to a homeowner that a ‘stretch goal’ for a chimney-like, say, venting twice the smoke it was built for-would just result in a house fire. The homeowner didn’t care. They wanted the performance metric to look good for the insurance company.
Bold
Paid
This is the double-bind: We are told to be bold, but we are paid to be predictable.
When you tie performance reviews and bonuses to aspirational goals, you aren’t creating a culture of excellence; you are creating a culture of high-stakes fiction writing. The ‘O’ in OKR stands for Objective, but in most companies, it actually stands for ‘Or else.’ This is why I never set ambitious goals anymore. I set ‘safe’ goals and pretend they were hard. It’s a survival mechanism that costs the company millions in lost innovation, but it keeps my mortgage paid and my stress levels at a manageable 42%.
This is why engineering should be about purpose, something I see reflected in the ethos of Magnus Dream UK, where the focus is on building things that actually work for their intended environment rather than forcing a template onto a problem that won’t fit.
The Day the Honest Goal Failed
I remember a specific instance about 12 months ago where I tried to play the game properly. I set an objective that was truly ‘stretch.’ I wanted to automate a process that usually took 82 hours of manual labor down to 22. It was risky. […] In any rational world, that’s a win. But because I had set the ‘aspirational’ goal at 22, my completion rate was technically only 52%. When bonus time came, I was told that I hadn’t met my ‘committed’ objectives. The automation-the thing that saved the company thousands of dollars-was ignored because the number on the spreadsheet didn’t turn green.
Goal Met (Failure)
Goal Met (Success)
If I had set the goal at 52 hours and hit 42, I would have been a hero. By aiming for 22, I became a failure. That was the day I decided I would never make that mistake again. Now, when I draft my OKRs, I look at what is actually possible and I subtract 12%. I present this as a ‘challenging target’ and I am hailed as a high performer every single quarter. It’s a pathetic dance, isn’t it?
The Compass Turned GPS
The language of Silicon Valley masking 1950s bureaucracy.
Gravity vs. Acronyms
I often think about João and his chimneys. He has a 32-foot ladder that he carries on his truck. He knows exactly how much weight that ladder can take. If a manager told him to ‘stretch’ and carry 152% of that weight, João would simply walk away. He knows that physics doesn’t care about your quarterly targets. In the world of bricks and mortar, gravity is the final arbiter. In the world of office work, we’ve convinced ourselves that we can ignore gravity if we just use the right acronyms.
Consequences Tracking (Burnout)
22% Turnover
Gravity shows up in burnout, turnover, and ‘quiet quitting.’
You’ll end up with a pilot who flies 2 miles into the air, lands in a field, and tells you it was the moon. And because you’re so desperate for the data to look good, you’ll probably believe him.
“
If you want people to be ambitious, you have to give them the psychological safety to fail. You cannot demand a moonshot while holding a gun to the pilot’s head.
– The Consequence
Securing the Miracle
I look at my notebook, where I’ve doodled a small chimney with smoke coming out of it. I have 102 questions, but I know none of them will be answered with anything other than corporate jargon. So I raise my hand and I say, ‘Looks great, Marcus. I think we can hit 162% if we really lean in.’
He beams. I’ve just secured my bonus for next year by promising a miracle I have no intention of delivering. I feel a slight pang of guilt, a small 12% flicker in my chest, but then I remember the 82-hour work weeks and the ‘failed’ automation project. The guilt vanishes. I am a product of the system I work in. If the system demands a delusion, I will provide the highest quality delusion money can buy.
The Cost of the Line That Must Go Up
Guilt (12%)
Flicker before vanishing.
Lost Potential
Millions in lost innovation.
The Break
The limit of being pulled thin.
We need to stop pretending that these frameworks are neutral tools. They are expressions of power. When a company adopts OKRs without changing its underlying culture of fear, it is simply putting a new coat of paint on a crumbling wall. The only thing that matters is that the line keeps going up, even if it has to pass through a few hallucinations to get there.