Product Therapy – “Coaching Team Objectives”

Podcast: Product Therapy
Host: Christian Idiodi (A)
Guest: John Moore (B), SVPG Partner
Date: October 16, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Christian Idiodi and John Moore dive deep into the art – and challenge – of setting meaningful team objectives within empowered product teams. They reframe commonly misunderstood frameworks like OKRs, explore the difference between company, team, and individual goals, and dwell on the behavioral and cultural shifts required for real empowerment. Questions about focus, accountability, and practical implementation are tackled through both philosophical and tactical lenses. Anti-patterns and cultural pitfalls are surfaced, with candid stories and coaching wisdom for teams and leaders alike.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Team Objectives vs OKRs vs Company Goals

• Team objectives = problems to solve. Christian and John reassert that in product work, a team's objective is not a to-do, but a “problem to solve”—this shifts focus from output to outcome.

  • [00:55] John Moore: “If you work for me, then team objectives would be problems to solve full stop. ... And it's easy to say, but it's very, very difficult for some companies to do right.”

• Relation to OKRs: Objectives (the “O”) = the problem. Key Results (the “KR”) show measurable success in solving that problem.

  • [01:31] The main issue with OKRs: they often become a bureaucratic layering exercise instead of empowering teams.

• Differences clarified:

  • Company objective: Big, strategic, often filtered via leadership/board.
  • Team objective: A focused, actionable problem derived from company strategy, handed to a product team.
  • Individual objective: Not the focus in the product model; accountability is on the team.

2. Pitfalls from Misusing Frameworks or Treating Objectives as Output

• OKRs don't work with output-driven leadership: If leaders only care about features and dates, OKRs are “like oil and water.”

  • [05:12] John Moore: “Objectives and key results are all about outcomes. If the executive team don't care about outcomes, they just want their stuff delivered on a date... product and technology teams care about one thing and the execs care about another.”

• Why OKRs "fail": Many companies adopt OKRs as a shortcut ("Google does it!"), ignoring the enabling culture of trust, empowerment, and maturity that makes them work at companies like Google.

  • [07:39] Christian Idiodi: “Your OKR says the most important thing is to improve customer satisfaction. Then your roadmap says, build this mobile app by Monday. What do you think your teams are going to work on?”

• You cannot have OKRs and feature-driven roadmaps effectively operate together. The process without the right environment fails.

3. Empowerment, Maturity, and Trust

• True empowerment: Only mature, cross-functional teams with expertise and trust can be handed problems and held accountable for outcomes.
  • [09:01] John Moore: “Do you have that maturity? Are you experts in all the areas that a product manager has got to be expert in to gain trust? ... If you are not, then ask yourself the question, are you deserving of being trusted?”

4. What Makes a Good Team Objective?

• Objectives must be problems to solve, not solutions to build. Avoid framing objectives as features or projects (“build this”)—instead, state the underlying customer or business problem.
  • [09:57] John Moore: “A good team objective... has got to be a problem to solve. It cannot be some feature to build.”
• Leaders can suggest solutions, but these should not be mandated; teams must own the discovery and validation.
  • [10:50] John Moore: “As long as it's not a mandate... they will go and prototype that and... come back and say... Here were the results, didn't work so well. But you know what? We iterated it... this really appears to work. ... That's how we roll.”

5. Business vs Customer Outcomes

• It’s not either/or: objectives may focus on customer problems, business problems, or both (but clarify which).
  • [12:14] John Moore: “It had better be one or the other. It had better be a customer problem or a business problem.”

6. Creating and Collaborating on Team Objectives

• Output of Product Strategy: Team objectives emerge directly from (and are the focus of) product strategy—not an afterthought, not a laundry list.

  • [13:32] John Moore: “The literal output of a product strategy is a small focus set of problems to solve.”

• Team, not functional, objectives: In empowered product models, “engineering objectives” and “design objectives” become obsolete—everyone is accountable for team objectives.

  • [14:43] Christian Idiodi: “There is nothing like an engineering objective. There is nothing like a product management objective or a design objective. There's only a team objective...”

• Involvement: Product leaders convene groups, including senior engineers and other relevant voices, to focus and align on true “problems to solve.”

7. Cadence & Accountability

• Quarterly is best for review: Long enough to solve real problems, short enough to avoid “backlog rot.”

  • [18:30] John Moore: “I think quarterly is a really good cadence. ...anything shorter...doesn't give the teams enough purchase to solve these hard problems.”

• How reviews are handled shapes team culture: Reporting at the end of a cycle should be a learning experience, not a punitive one.

  • [19:38] John Moore: “Those quarterly moments where the teams report on the success or failure is a super important moment. ...It helps to define culture.”

• Top-down meets bottom-up: Leaders set the objective; teams define the key results and measurements.

  • [20:34] John Moore: “We are not giving them the key results. We do have certain expectations... and so the ambition level is important.”
  • Unrealistic goals are on leadership, not teams.

• Handling misses: Missed outcomes should trigger learning and retrospection, not blame.

  • [22:34] Christian Idiodi: “You treat it like a retrospective, like an outage... we hopefully discovered how to increase revenue by 1% and we learn and we calibrate.”

8. High-Integrity Commitments & “Must-Do” Work

• Sometimes dates must be hit: For legal, compliance, or high-stakes market situations, “high-integrity commitments” are carved out, with dates nominated by the team (after discovery) and treated seriously.

  • [24:17] John Moore: “We have a phrase...a high integrity commitment...because it builds trust. ...If we're an organization that is known for hitting those dates again, leadership will trust us.”

• These are exceptions and shouldn't become the norm or replace the team objective model.

  • [27:10] John Moore: “I looked at it and literally every team had high integrity commitments. You know what they were, there were features with data tags. ...this whole concept, so easily broken.”

9. Alignment, Focus, and Shared Objectives

• Not every team should have a different objective; sometimes, many teams should tackle the same problem for focus and increased impact.

  • [03:53 & 27:29] “It's perfectly okay for multiple teams to work on the same objective... we call this a shared objective and a common objective.”

• Overloading with too many objectives reduces focus and delivers mediocrity.

  • [28:16] John Moore: “If we put a little less into the system then we can get more done. We overload the system, then...At best mediocrity, at worst a whole lot of nothing.”

10. Anti-Patterns and Practical Advice

• Common pitfalls:

  • Objectives as feature lists
  • “Peanut butter strategies” – spreading effort thin to please all stakeholders
  • Functional (vs team) objectives
  • OKRs without the underlying empowered culture

• What to Start / Stop / Watch:

  • [30:23] John Moore: “In this model, the teams are accountable because they are the ones proving out which of these solutions is going to achieve the outcome. So now they are accountable for the results. And that's what leaders really want.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Objective is just a fancy word for problem to solve.” — Christian Idiodi [02:10]
• “Objectives and key results are all about outcomes. If the executive team don't care about outcomes...it's like oil and water.” — John Moore [05:12]
• “You cannot have a OKR and a roadmap.” — Christian Idiodi [07:47]
• “Do you have that maturity?...Are you deserving of being trusted?” — John Moore [09:01]
• “A good team objective...has got to be a problem to solve. It cannot be some feature to build.” — John Moore [09:57]
• “There is nothing like an engineering objective...There's only a team objective.” — Christian Idiodi [14:43]
• “If we put a little less into the system then we can get more done. We overload the system, then...At best mediocrity, at worst a whole lot of nothing.” — John Moore [28:16]
• “It is almost impossible to iterate value into something that has no inherent value.” — John Moore [30:23]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:55 — Defining team objectives and the "problem to solve" mindset
• 05:12 — Why OKRs and feature/delivery cultures clash
• 07:39 — Why copying OKRs from Google doesn't work without Google's culture
• 09:01 — Empowerment requires team maturity and trust
• 09:57 — Essential qualities of a good team objective
• 13:32 — Team objectives as the output of product strategy, not functional goals
• 18:30 — Quarterly cadence and accountability in reviewing objectives
• 24:17 — High-integrity commitments: when and how to handle “must-do” work
• 27:29 — Dangers of turning commitments into disguised feature roadmaps
• 28:16 — Focus, WIP limits, and the value of shared objectives
• 30:23-31:37 — Practical advice for moving from project/feature to team objectives; real accountability

Practical Takeaways

• True team objectives are always “problems to solve”—no more feature lists.
• Cross-functional team accountability is key—no more “engineering objectives” versus “product objectives.”
• Set team objectives based on strategic focus, and let teams own their key results and measures.
• Review team objectives quarterly, approaching missed targets as opportunities for learning, not blame.
• “High integrity commitments” are reserved for the minority of work that is truly time-bound and cross-cutting—don’t let these take over.
• Focus breeds impact. Don’t overload teams; one or two objectives per cycle is plenty.
• Alignment and the right culture trumps mere process. OKRs without empowerment and trust inevitably fail.

To Learn More

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