War-game an OKRs reset before you lock the quarter

War-game an OKRs reset before teams inherit goals that look sharp in a deck and soft under measurement.

OKR resets fail when objectives are slogans, when key results cannot be audited, when capacity cannot clear the claimed volume, and when every team inherits stretch that finance already priced as baseline. A pretty cascade chart is not evidence.

What to put on the table

One sentence for the company bet this quarter, the three to five objectives, the measurable key results, the owners, and the capacity that will chase them. Attach last quarter outcomes, definition of done for each KR, dependency maps, and the kill or re-scope criteria mid-quarter. If product, sales, and finance tell different success stories, stop and reconcile before the review.

Name the decision you will make if the war game finds nothing new, and the delay criteria that would keep last quarter's goals until the gaps close. Those two lines keep the review from becoming endless option shopping.

Attack surfaces

Measurability: which KR has no source of truth or dual counting.
Capacity: people and tools versus claimed volume.
Cascade honesty: which team KR is really a company wish.
Incentive conflict: which KR rewards gaming or customer harm.
Dependency risk: which objective dies if one upstream team slips.

Optional finance seat if cash timing or payback is the real constraint. Optional people seat if stretch goals assume unpaid overtime.

How to run it

Feed Pingpong the OKR memo and exhibits. Instruct early passes to steelman the reset, then seat operator, finance, customer, and skeptic attacks. End with a pass that turns surviving objections into cut KRs, clearer definitions, or a smaller bet set. Delete invented baselines, dual-counted metrics, and KRs that only move with luck.

When a KR leans on a partner or a vendor, force a day-thirty narrative: what happens if that dependency slips, and who owns the re-scope. If that story is stronger than the upside story, fix the package before you lock the quarter.

Separate leading indicators from lagging outcomes in the memo. If a team can hit activity KRs while the business misses, say so. Ask the skeptic seat to attack blended scorecards until every KR has its own definition and its own mid-quarter kill criteria.