OKR drift: when the work stops matching the goal
OKRs set in week one quietly decouple from the work by week six. Axon surfaces the drift between stated key results and what's actually moving.
Nobody decides to abandon the OKRs — the work just drifts. Effort flows to whatever's urgent, and by quarter-end the key results and the actual work have quietly parted ways.
Why do OKRs drift mid-quarter?
Because they're set once and rarely reconciled against the work until the quarter closes. Urgent work crowds out the work that maps to the key results, and since nobody's checking the mapping, the drift accumulates unseen until it's too late to correct.
How do you keep OKRs honest?
By continuously checking what's actually moving against the key results, and surfacing the divergence while there's still quarter left. The goal is a mid-quarter signal, not an end-of-quarter post-mortem.
Frequently asked
Isn't OKR drift just a sign of bad goals?
Sometimes — but often the goals are fine and the work simply drifted from them under day-to-day pressure. The fix is visibility into the drift, not necessarily new goals.
Stop being the reality check.
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