tl;dr: if the the world’s most powerful goal setting methodology can be paired with the world’s most innovative incentivization system, the results could be monumental.
When it comes to groups of anything more than 2, one of the biggest challenges is maintaining focus and alignment.
We’ve all been in organizations that start off with the best of intentions and then, invariably, there’s a form of “strategic decay” and “organizational drift” as the grand master first suffers from the impact of the “telephone” game and then, as people do what people do, they put their own spin on things, making iterations that are off script.
The other night, I was watching an episode of Undercover Boss, featuring Gigi’s Cupcakes. In the very first assignment, the boss was in the kitchen of one of her franchise owner’s stores and working with a baker, following the corporate-set standard recipe for one of her cupcakes.
Thing is, there was a post-it note that was the local owner’s “modification” of the recipe. Gigi almost lost it, but it was a perfect sign of “strategic decay.”
I know Ray Kroc had the same problem when he started franchising McDonald’s restaurants out.
So, what is to be done?
Well, obviously, come up with superior ways to ensure minimal strategic decay.
The best way that I’ve ever discovered for a traditional, centralized organization in the knowledge economy to do that is with the use of OKR’s, or Objectives and Key Results, the methodology that is supported Gtmhub and which is used by our clients including CNN, Red Hat, Societe Generale and hundreds of others.
And the best way I’ve discovered to align a decentralized organization in the knowledge economy, or one that lacks a command and control structure, is through the use of cryptoeconomic incentives that are guaranteed by a protocol and which create a virtuous loop of value for each stakeholder, compelling them (through their own self-interest) to stay aligned with the values of the network or risk losing out.
However, a decentralized network still has non-financial goals to achieve, (e.g. marketing and software development).
Plus, each individual community member wants to do one, possibly two, things and maybe more.
- they want to contribute meaningfully to the growth of the network
- they want to accrue “cred” or reputation that indicates their ability to actually deliver meaningful value to the network
My newest brainstorm, and I will admit, it is far from fully flushed out, is that there’s an opportunity to merge these two approaches to the challenges of organizational alignment in order to hyper focus concerted and group efforts against common targets.
Plus, OKRs, like crypto, are designed to be transparent which increases accountability of the individual and the network to the whole.
Finally, OKRs like crypto, are about measurable, provable results. By connecting an individual’s outcomes to a decentralized profile or wallet address, a crypto network might begin to determine not only who has the most money/stake, but also who contributes the most indirect economic value, which opens up the door to all kinds of applications.
I may be trying to jam a square peg into a round hole here, but I have a vision of a yin (OKRs) with a yang (cryptoeconomics) that combine to accelerate the flywheel of value creation.
Feedback welcome and needed.
