Events • On Demand | Watch Time: 30 min
Escaping the Performance Trap: Why Goals and OKRs Fail and What to Do Instead
ACCELERATE 2025: Virtual Summit for Product and Portfolio Leaders by Dragonboat
“Methodologies for goal-setting, including SMART Goals and OKRs, are deeply ingrained in our corporate culture and taken as gospel. We don’t question if they actually work – criticism of goal-setting or OKRs is heresy.” – Radhika Dutt
Join Radhika Dutt, author of “Radical Product Thinking,” as she challenges conventional wisdom around goals and introduces a powerful alternative that has helped companies double sales and reduce customer churn.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why traditional goal-setting frameworks often fail to deliver meaningful results
- How OKRs can become “duct tape on foundational cracks” in your organization
- The OHL framework (Objectives, Hypotheses, and Learnings) and how it transforms performance
- Practical steps to implement puzzle-solving instead of target-chasing
- Real-world case studies showing measurable business impact
Key Takeaways
- Goals and OKRs have become a religion: As Radhika explains, “We don’t question whether goal setting works. We’ve heard, you know, goals, OKRs, this is how you build good businesses, this is how you grow.” This unquestioned acceptance often masks deeper organizational issues.
- From goal-setting to puzzle-solving: Rather than focusing solely on metrics, the ‘OHL’ framework encourages teams to frame their work as solving puzzles. This shift fosters creativity, collaboration, and continuous learning.
- The signs of ineffective goal-setting: Teams scrambling to present favorable numbers, borrowing from future performance to meet current targets, and limiting innovation by declaring “if it doesn’t move an OKR, we’re not doing it.”
- Signal Ocean’s transformation: After implementing the OHL framework, this data platform company for the maritime industry doubled sales and reduced customer churn from 26% to 4% by focusing on customer needs rather than arbitrary metrics.
- Create accountability through learning: Instead of using “end-of-year exams,” the OHL approach creates accountability through three simple questions: How well did it work? What did we learn? What will we try next?
Featured Speaker
Radhika Dutt
Product Leader, Author of "Radical Product Thinking" Book, Radical Product
Radhika Dutt is the author of 'Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter' which has been translated into Chinese and Japanese. The methodology she introduced in her first book is now used in over 40 countries. She is an entrepreneur, speaker, and product leader who has participated in five acquisitions, two of which were companies that she founded. She is currently Advisor on Product Thinking to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (Singapore’s central bank and financial regulator), and does consulting and training for organizations ranging from high-tech startups to multinationals on building radical products that create a fundamental change. Radhika has built products in a wide range of industries including broadcast, media and entertainment, telecom, advertising technology, government, consumer apps, robotics, and even wine. She graduated from MIT with an SB and M.Eng in Electrical Engineering, and speaks nine languages. Radhika is now working on her second book, Escaping the Performance Trap: Why Goals and Targets Backfire and What Actually Works.
