Safety First

At a Glance

• Psychological safety is essential for OKRs to drive real business results

• The tension between established plans and contradictory customer insights

• How leaders inadvertently create fear around changing course

• Practical steps for creating an environment where teams aren't afraid to share what they learn

Hey folks,

Let’s say you’re in a meeting, about to share an insight that contradicts your organization's established plan. Suddenly, you find yourself sweating, and decide to filter what you're about to say. Perhaps you soften your concern, add qualifiers, or don’t speak up at all.

This is a psychological safety issue, and it's one of the biggest barriers to OKR success. When teams don't feel safe to report what they're actually learning from customers, the entire foundation of outcome-based work crumbles.

Let’s talk about where that sense of safety falters, and what to do about it. 

– Jeff

P.S. I’ve got opportunities to become a Certified Training Partner and storytelling company training programs for you, plus a course on lean product discovery and a free webinar on OKRs and performance management metrics. More details below. 

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OKRs & Performance Management Metrics (Free) 

9pm, May 27, 2025

In today's output-driven world, success is typically measured by shipping products and adhering to schedules. But what happens when your organization adopts OKRs and starts measuring success through customer behavior changes instead of task completion?

Join Josh Seiden, Lynda McDonald (Head of Strategy and Operations to Mastercard's Head of Innovation), and me for an interactive webinar where we'll tackle one of the most challenging yet critical aspects of implementing OKRs: how to evaluate and develop team performance.

Whether you're new to OKRs or struggling with implementation challenges, this webinar will provide actionable insights to help your teams thrive in an outcome-focused culture.

Article: Safety First: Why OKRs require psychological safety

The entire premise of OKRs is that we set goals focused on outcomes—the changes in customer behavior we want to see—and then figure out how to achieve those changes. This inherently requires experimentation, because we don't know exactly what will work when we start.

But what happens when experiments reveal information that conflicts with the organization's plans, assumptions, or leadership agendas?

Without psychological safety, teams will do one of two things:

1. They'll avoid running experiments that might yield contradictory findings, or

2. They'll downplay or hide results that challenge the established narrative

Either way, the organization loses the benefit of learning what's actually happening with customers, and OKRs become a performative exercise rather than a driver of innovation and improvement.

The organizational momentum trap

There's a reason changing course is difficult. Organizations invest tremendous resources—time, money, reputation—in planning and building momentum around specific initiatives:

• Leadership spends Q4 setting annual goals and communicating them broadly

• Resources are allocated based on those plans

• Teams get excited about the work they've been assigned

• Executive careers become linked to the success of major initiatives

After all this investment, when a team discovers something that suggests a different approach would be better, the organization faces an impossible choice: either ignore the new information and continue as planned, or accept the sunk cost and change direction.

Without psychological safety, the implicit message to teams becomes: "Don't bring us problems."

Real consequences for career-limiting moves

In my workshops, I often challenge participants who express fear about contradicting leadership's plans. "Who remembers the last person that got fired for speaking their mind or doing their job?" I ask.

No one can ever remember a single example.

Yet the fear persists, not necessarily of being fired outright, but of more subtle career repercussions—being labeled "not a team player," losing political capital, or being passed over for promotions and opportunities.

All too often, this fear is enough to prevent teams from surfacing critical information that could change how the organization approaches its goals.

Building psychological safety for better OKRs

If you're a leader looking to create an environment where OKRs can thrive, here are practical steps to build psychological safety:

1. Model learning behavior yourself

Leaders who admit when they're wrong, openly change their minds based on new information, and talk about their own failures create permission for others to do the same. Share stories about times you've changed course based on customer insights and how it led to better outcomes.

2. Reward the messenger

When someone brings challenging information to light, explicitly thank them. Make it clear that surfacing problems early is a valuable contribution, not an annoyance. Consider creating formal recognition for teams that identify issues that lead to course corrections.

3. Frame the work as learning, not execution

The language we use matters. Instead of asking, "Did you hit your target?" ask, "What did you learn?" Instead of referring to "failed experiments," talk about "valuable learning experiences." This shifts the focus from judgment to curiosity.

4. Create structured moments for course correction

Build regular checkpoints specifically designed to evaluate whether current approaches are working. This normalizes the idea that plans should evolve based on what we learn.

5. Separate the person from the problem

When discussing challenges, focus on the situation rather than the individual. Use language like "The approach isn't yielding the results we hoped for" rather than "Your approach isn't working."

A leading indicator of OKR success

Psychological safety isn't just a nice-to-have cultural element—it's a leading indicator of whether your OKR implementation will succeed or fail.

Teams that feel safe to report what they're actually seeing, even when it contradicts leadership assumptions, are the ones that will drive real innovation and improvement. Without safety, you might go through the motions of setting outcome-based goals, but you'll miss the learning that makes those outcomes achievable.

Remember: if your team never brings you bad news, it doesn't mean there isn't any—it means they don't feel safe enough to tell you about it.

What I’ve been up to

Storytelling Training Programs: I've been working with several leadership teams on improving their presentation and storytelling skills. It's been fascinating to watch the transformation as teams shift from dense, jargon-heavy slides to concise, impactful presentations and pitches that actually engage their audiences. We have a public version of this class coming up in mid-July. Information about that can be found here. If you’re interested in bringing this class in-house to your teams, let me know. 

Certified Training Partner Program: We're expanding our Sense & Respond Learning offerings through partnerships with carefully selected and qualified training professionals. If you're interested in bringing our product management, discovery and OKR curriculum to your clients or organization, fill out this form.

Follow our Sense & Respond Learning LinkedIn page for more resources, including a new series of videos we've been publishing about implementing customer-centric OKRs.

What’s new on the blog

When Is It OK to have an output as a key result? - Despite our emphasis on outcome-based OKRs, there are some situations where outputs can be appropriate key results. This article explains the rare circumstances—low risk, high certainty situations with well-understood problems and users—where focusing on a specific deliverable makes sense. Just remember: your confidence in an idea isn't enough to justify output-based goals.

How to Create an OKR-Based Roadmap - Finally, a complete example of an OKR-based roadmap in video form! This presentation covers the Lean Strategy Canvas as a foundation for developing OKRs, explains the basics of OKRs, and then demonstrates how to build a roadmap that focuses on outcomes rather than features. Perfect for teams transitioning from output-based to outcome-based planning.