Radically Yours, Radhika Dutt.

Optimizing for user engagement can worsen long-term business outcomes. Why? Here’s a fascinating example from dating apps to illustrate this:

When Tinder launched in 2013 and popularized the UI for swiping left or right, other dating apps copied it to boost user engagement metrics through gamification. And it worked in the short-term… but it’s led to a dating-app burnout and people now find this same interface a turn-off.

This reminds me of the Pepsi challenge in 1975 - it was a brilliant marketing campaign by Pepsi where participants taste tested Pepsi and Coca-Cola without knowing which is which. Based on a single sip, people overwhelmingly preferred Pepsi because it was sweeter. So Coca Cola copied Pepsi and changed their formula.

The result was a disaster. Coca Cola had to roll back their formulation because people complained that they wanted the old Coke. But wait, didn’t people prefer the sweeter taste? It turned out that when the test is a single sip, Pepsi wins. But if you want a whole can, less sweet tasting (Coke) is preferable.

I realized that the same applies to gamification in dating apps. Optimizing for user engagement by copying the swipe right/ left UI was like Coke changing its formula based on the taste test. The gamification (like higher sugar content) works for a short while… but it’s tiring in the long-term. The more intimacy is simplified to swiping left or right based on a profile picture, the more users feel icky and are turned off dating apps.

Dating apps have been focused on optimizing metrics instead of being more vision-driven and solving the puzzle of how to make the dating experience better.

What can we learn from this? Don’t just focus on optimizing for metrics. It may achieve results in the short term, but you need a clear vision of what problem you’re solving for. Instead of giving your team the task of optimizing for a specific metric (like engagement), give them a puzzle, for example, “How can we make dating feel less difficult for our users?”

I call this methodology OHLs (Objectives, hypotheses, learnings) - it’s a powerful alternative to OKRs to produce better results. Here are free templates you can download to start using this approach.

If you’re thoughtful and passionate about your work, OKRs and goals can be deeply demotivating. Why? Because the performance theater they incentivize is soul-sucking when you care about your work. I’ve seen this in my consulting but I’ve also experienced this firsthand as an employee. Here’s an example:

Our product was technically complex and we had launched it on an aggressive timeline. But once it was in the field, we realized that our customers were running into serious issues. After our CEO had to field a few angry calls, he declared a new goal: Fix showstopper bugs on the same day.

Overnight, developers became firefighters. Everyone wanted to look good by being a savior for a customer in distress. But they had little incentive to work on the important but low-visibility tasks of fixing the deeper issues or improving software quality. It led to short-term hacks and a pile up of tech debt and “vision debt” to meet the new goal.

The metrics looked great. But morale and product quality didn’t. Goals often lead to performance theater which feels soul-sucking for people who are thoughtful and passionate about their work.

See if you’ve experienced this yourself. This 2-minute diagnostic draws on my 25 years as an employee, leader, and consultant – it helps surface the hidden costs of goal-setting systems like OKRs: Are You Caught in the Performance Trap? .

I look forward to hearing how you scored and if there are any questions that particularly resonate for you.

When I give talks on why OKRs don’t work and what actually works instead, I hear the same question afterwards:

“I hate OKRs, but challenging OKRs in my company would be career-limiting for me. What do I do?"

Here’s the good news: Not only can you stop the tyranny of OKRs, but you can also look good while doing it! For a couple of years had tried approaches, both top-down (trying to convince leaders) and bottom up (trying to equip teams), to shift their companies away from OKRs. But about 9 months ago I finally found an approach that works. It helped me drive change at the grassroots level so effectively that it very naturally minimized the importance of OKRs and quarterly KPIs. And the best part was that teams using this new approach were recognized by management as high-performing. One CEO articulated his observation, sharing…

“I can see people are taking more ownership. They’ve reflected on learnings and therefore have conviction in their decisions. And they’re making better decisions.”

So what’s this approach to challenge OKRs? The alternative is what I call OHLs (Objectives, Hypotheses, and Learnings). While OKRs incentivize performance theater and leave teams chasing the wrong outcomes just to “make the numbers look good,” OHLs give teams permission to experiment, reflect, and evolve. They’re just as rigorous as OKRs but far better suited to the complex, fast-moving world we actually live in.

Think of it this way:
OKRs = hit the target
OHLs = solve the puzzle

While OKRs were intended to motivate teams, I’ve found that the performance theater they incentivize around the company is actually demotivating for the highest performers. On the other hand, the OHL approach of puzzle-setting and puzzle-solving is like catnip for high-performers.

Want to try it? Download these free OHLs templates in Google Slides format so you can start using them right away. I look forward to hearing what resonates and your experience as you use these.