I remember the struggle to "rewrite our targets" into OKRs because that is what organizations like Google use. It was time consuming and confusing for both management and the team.
In order to use OKRs organizations need first to do what Christina Wodtke calls "the prework":
🗺 Have a crisp strategy
👷♂️ Teams need to have psychological safety
🛠 Have multidisciplinary product teams
🏄🏼♀️ Adopt Agile and Lean practices
❌ Fire bad managers
💪 Have Self-sufficient teams in place
🌸 Value effectiveness over efficiency
Today when customers ask me support in setting their OKRs, I start by asking them few questions to assess where they stand.
OKRs can be a powerful tool that help you bring the focus back on important but not urgent. However you first need to make sure that your organization is ready to evolve and do the prework. Then you can start using OKRs.
To mention Christina Wodtke: "OKRs are like the advice 'Eat less and exercise more.' They are simple and hard. If you’d rather rename what you are doing now without any changes to how you work, be my guest. Just don’t call it “OKRs.”