I did something most founders won't do. I got on a call with my marketing team and asked them straight up why did you stop using our software?
Not a survey. Not a feedback form. A live call where I shut up and let them talk.
These are people who work for me.
They had every reason to just say, "yeah, it's great, bro, we'll use it more." But they didn't.
They told me the truth. And the truth was brutal.
"It Looked Like a To-Do List"
The first person to speak said something that still sits with me. He said when he logged in, all he saw was a place to put tasks and mark them done.
That's it.
He couldn't tell it was an OKR tool. Couldn't figure out what an objective was versus a key result.
The percentages on the dashboard meant nothing to him. The progress charts? Decoration.
And this guy had been onboarded. Our operations manager personally walked the whole team through the software.
Showed them where to set goals, how to add key results, and what everything means. After all that, his exact words were "still I don't know how that works."
That broke something in me. If someone can sit through a guided demo and still not understand what they're looking at, the software failed. Not the person. The software.
Every OKR tool assumes users know what OKRs are. Most employees don't. They know tasks. They know deadlines.
They don't know what "a measurable key result tied to a strategic objective" means.
And honestly, why should they?
They just want to know what to do today and whether they're doing enough.
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