There are times when goals make sense. Training for a marathon. Preparing for an exam. Trying to ship a product by a hard deadline. In finite, controlled, well-understood domains, goals are fine.

But smart people often face ambiguous, ill-defined problems. Should I switch careers? Start a company? Move cities? Build a media business? In those spaces... See more

Marginalized contributors. Rigidly cascaded systems tend to shut out input from frontline employees. In a top-down ecosystem, contributors will hesitate to share goal-related concerns or promising ideas. • One-dimensional linkages. While cascading locks in vertical alignment, it’s less effective in connecting peers horizontally, across departmental

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Every successful large technology company uses this system. It has no single name—Google, for example, calls theirs Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs—but the systems are essentially the same from company to company. They share the following key functions: Setting vision and goals for the company, each department, and each individual on a regular

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