Subjective Self-Assessment Rescues Raw Scores

“Say the team’s objective is to recruit new customers, and your individual key result is fifty phone calls. You wind up calling thirty-five prospects, for a raw goal score of 70 percent. Did you succeed or fail? By itself, the data doesn’t afford us much insight. But if a dozen of your calls lasted several hours apiece and resulted in eight new customers, you might give yourself a perfect 1.0. Conversely: If you procrastinated, rushed through all fifty calls, and signed only one new customer, you might assess your performance at 0.25—because you could have pushed harder. (And on reflection: Should the key result have prioritized new customers, rather than calls?)”

“Self-assessment In evaluating OKR performance, objective data is enhanced by the goal setter’s thoughtful, subjective judgment. For any given goal in a given quarter, there may be extenuating circumstances. A weak showing by the numbers might hide a strong effort; a strong one could be artificially inflated.”