Don't Accomplish Everything

Why accomplishing half your goals signals better performance than completing all of them

Management incentives that work for scaling existing systems (Extract) actively discourage the learning and discovery needed in exploration phases (Explore). Kent Beck's P50 goal framework shows how Facebook aligned performance expectations with the actual work: in exploratory phases, finishing all goals signals you weren't ambitious enough or learning enough to adapt; in extraction phases, that same approach creates dangerous surprises across dependencies.

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Questions this essay answers

  • Why do OKR and KPI systems fail when you shift from scaling to exploring?
  • How should you set performance goals when the outcome is fundamentally uncertain?
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