Untrapping Product Teams Podcast Why OKRs Are Killing Your Team's Performance with Radhika Dutt
Do you love or hate OKRs?
Be honest with that, your boss isn’t listening to your answer.
Even after 17 years of playing the product game, I haven’t found teams longing for OKRs, but I have seen too many despising it.
Yes, we can blame the player instead of the game. But is it so?
If you've ever felt like OKRs are more of a burden than a benefit, you're not alone.
In my latest podcast conversation with Radhika Dutt, author of "Radical Product Thinking," we dug deeper into why this beloved framework might be hindering your team's success.
Radhika shares how she helped Signal Ocean double their sales twice while reducing churn from 26% to 4% by ditching traditional goal-setting for something revolutionary: puzzle-solving.
You can download the OHL slide deck for free here.
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A question for you:
What are you up to in 2026, the year is already knocking on your door. And I want to give you the best content I can, would you take 2 minutes to share your objectives with me? I promise to read all answers and reflect on them to give you the best content I can.
10 Key Takeaways from Radhika Dutt
1. OKRs Haven't Evolved in Decades
"We haven't challenged this concept of OKRs or goal setting since it became entrenched in business culture. It's a 75-year-old idea... the same ideas relabeled and repackaged, they date all the way to 1940s."
The framework that worked for unskilled assembly line workers doesn't fit today's knowledge work.
2. Goals Create Performance Theater, Not Performance
"What goals and OKRs do is create performance theater... you're trying to figure out how do I show these numbers? Even if you're not being malicious, even when you're not trying to spin numbers, it kind of biases you because you want to see the good numbers."
Teams focus on looking good rather than being good.
3. OKRs Kill Collaboration
"It reduces collaboration because you want to hit your numbers because you want to look like a high performer, whereas by helping someone else, your own numbers might not look good."
When everyone owns different metrics, teamwork becomes competition.
4. The "Set Better Goals" Advice Is Wrong
"If it didn't work for you, [OKR experts say] it just means you set the wrong goals. Whereas I think... it's not just a matter of if you just set the right goals, then everything works well. It's a much bigger problem than that."
The problem isn't execution; it's the framework itself.
5. Goals Focus You on the Wrong Things
"Whatever numbers you set, I realized that it's focusing you on the wrong area because you discover as you're executing where the actual problem and bottleneck lies."
Real insights emerge through work, not planning.
6. People Are Naturally Motivated by Puzzles
"We all like puzzles... When I asked you what puzzles do you want to solve this year? Look at that. It's like you had a flood of ideas for it instantly."
Curiosity beats quotas every time.
7. The OHL Framework: Objectives, Hypotheses, Learnings
"A framework I call OHLs... it's a framework for puzzle setting and puzzle solving. And so as a leader, when you set direction, you're setting direction around the puzzle you're solving."
Replace rigid targets with flexible investigation.
8. Three Questions That Drive Real Performance
"How well did it work? What did we learn? Based on how well it worked and what did you learn, what would you try next?"
These questions create continuous improvement loops that actually work.
9. Learning Speed Matters More Than Experiment Speed
"The pace of that learning is so important. I think that is much more important than how quickly are you experimenting."
Quality insights trump quantity of tests.
10. Reflection Is Where Real Learning Happens
"We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience."
Without reflection, experience is just activity.
Are you ready to escape the performance trap?
Listen to the full conversation to hear how Radhika's team achieved remarkable results by solving puzzles instead of chasing numbers.
Plus, download her free OHLs toolkit at radicalproductthinking.com to start implementing this approach with your team immediately.
The question isn't whether you can afford to change your approach. It's whether you can afford not to.
Let’s keep untrapping product teams together,
David
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