post

Footer About

Footer Contribute

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

Product Management

Bumble results: Will an improved user experience save it from dating app fatigue?

Diversity

Black History Month: Our favourite lessons from from Black Product Leaders at #mtpcon

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

Lessons from Duolingo’s product handbook

Three amazing speakers to learn from at #mtpcon London 2025

The best resources for product managers in 2025

Poor leadership: Its effect on product people and how to manage it

Are you tracking the right product metrics?

Eira is an editor for Mind the Product. She's been a business journalist, editor, and copywriter for longer than she cares to think about.

Eira Hayward

This week’s Sunday Rewind takes us back to a 2020 #MTPEngage Manchester talk from consultant <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianh/?originalSubdomain=uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Adrian Howard</a>. It’s a talk that is full of advice on how to write effective OKRs and how to use them correctly.
Objectives and key results sound deceptively simple on paper, says Adrian, but many businesses spend a vast amount of energy trying to create their first OKRs, and then just hope that they will magically solve their problems and make them more efficient, aligned and successful.
They aren’t a substitute for a strategy or vision, and they won’t conjure organisational alignment out of nothing, Adrian says.
Adrian then runs through common red flags he’s come across when organisations are struggling with OKRs, together with steps to take to get back on track. He looks at how to deal with all-encompassing objectives and key results and generic objectives, quantitative objectives (which are rarely strategic), <a href="https://www.pendo.io/resources/the-10-kpis-every-product-leader-needs-to-know/?&amp;utm_source=mtp&amp;utm_medium=display&amp;utm_campaign=mtp-resources-top-kpis-q3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">output-based key results</a>, top-down OKRs which are cascaded through the organisation and OKRs that are rapidly cycled and largely ignored.
In summary, OKRs must be relatable and understandable, and give the organisation the information and tools it needs to steer towards the desired outcomes.
You should regularly ask questions about how well your OKRs have supported and guided decisions, or whether the key results actually led to the objectives you wanted.
Read the original post and watch the video <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/how-to-write-okrs-that-dont-suck-by-adrian-howard/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">How to write OKRs that don’t suck by Adrian Howard</a>

core/freeform

Balancing long-term metrics and OKRs using the Product Strategy Metrics Sandwich by Tim Herbig

The good, bad, and ugly of OKRs by Jenny Herald

OKRs in product management by Roman Pichler

MTP Panel: Defining your OKRs in 2022

Everything you need to know about OKRs: AMA with Jeff Gothelf

AMA with Christina Wodtke: Encouraging Autonomy and Writing Awesome OKRs

How to Write OKRs That Don’t Suck by Adrian Howard

SUNDAY REWIND: How to write OKRs that don’t suck by Adrian Howard

ProductTank Bangalore

ProductTank Pune

ProductTank Chandigarh

ProductTank Madrid

ProductTank Wellington

ProductTank Abu Dhabi

ProductTank Düsseldorf

ProductTank Bristol

ProductTank Norwich

ProductTank São Paulo

ProductTank México City

ProductTank Auckland

ProductTank Oslo

ProductTank Barcelona

ProductTank Newcastle Upon Tyne

ProductTank London

ProductTank Birmingham

ProductTank Jacksonville

ProductTank Atlanta

ProductTank Hong Kong

ProductTank Bucharest

ProductTank Berlin

ProductTank Porto

ProductTank Raleigh

ProductTank Chicago

ProductTank Phoenix

ProductTank Seattle

ProductTank Chennai

ProductTank Warsaw

ProductTank Bielefeld

ProductTank Bern

ProductTank Philadelphia

ProductTank Orlando

ProductTank Tokyo

ProductTank Rotterdam

ProductTank Pittsburgh

ProductTank Brno

ProductTank Cardiff

ProductTank Montréal

ProductTank Waterloo

ProductTank Curitiba

ProductTank Lausanne

ProductTank München

ProductTank Oxford

ProductTank Madison

ProductTank Köln

ProductTank Manchester

ProductTank Reston

ProductTank Exeter

ProductTank Zürich

ProductTank Portland

ProductTank Des Moines

SUNDAY REWIND: How to write OKRs that don’t suck by Adrian Howard

Eira Hayward

Read more

Comments