The CTO Playbook 72: Why OKRs Fail — and What to Use Instead (with Radhika Dutt)
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Dec 2, 2025 Radhika Dutt, an engineer and product strategist known for her book 'Radical Product Thinking,' dives into the pitfalls of traditional goal-setting and OKRs. She shares how focusing on targets can distract teams from genuine learning and problem-solving. Radhika advocates for a 'puzzle-setting' approach to motivate creativity and collaboration, encouraging leaders to embrace uncertainty. With real-world examples, she illustrates how reframing objectives can lead to smarter decisions and a culture of exploration, ultimately driving better product outcomes.
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High Sales Hid A Crumbling Market
- At Avid Technology Radhika watched sales climb while the core market eroded because leadership chased high-end customers.
- Targets masked a degrading foundation until it was too late to adapt the product strategy.
Targets Delay Bad News
- Targets bias reports toward good news and delay honest detection of problems.
- Puzzle setting flips this by encouraging teams to surface bad data and play detective earlier.
Gaming Test Coverage Targets
- A self-driving car team set 90% test coverage as a key result and then wrote bogus tests to hit the metric.
- The OKR looked green while software stability actually worsened and morale dropped.
