I came across an interesting approach to goal-setting — NCT (Narratives, Commitments, Tasks) by Ravi Mehta [1]. What makes it compelling is that it positions itself as an alternative to OKR and could be genuinely useful for many product teams. Before diving into NCT, let’s do a quick historical overview of how goal-setting frameworks have evolved.
In 1954, Peter Drucker introduced the concept of MBO (Management by Objectives) in his book The Practice of Management [2]. The core idea: set goals at the company level and cascade them down to individual contributors at every layer. Many services within Yandex, for example, still use a similar approach today. They even have a dedicated internal tool for cascading goals called «Golzyatnitsa» (roughly, «the goal keeper»).
In 1981, George Doran formalized the concept of SMART goals and published it in a journal article. My guess is that before SMART gained traction, goals were written something like: Person X must complete this list of work by this date.
In 1983, Andrew Grove (co-founder of Intel) developed the OKR methodology — Objectives and Key Results — and used it to improve Intel’s operational processes. Grove is something of a legend in management culture and wrote several books worth your attention, including High Output Management (available in Russian translation), where he first introduced OKR.
In 1999, Andrew Grove brought OKR to Google.
In 2017, Felipe Castro began spreading the gospel of OKR beyond Google and has remained a leading voice on the subject ever since — consulting, speaking, and writing. Here’s one of his books, The Beginner’s Guide to OKR, in a Russian translation by Scrumtrek.
So, every manager has heard of OKR — but from what I’ve observed, it doesn’t actually get used that often in product-driven tech companies (though there are successful examples, of course). The shift from traditional goal-setting to OKR requires a massive cultural leap, and that leap isn’t easy to make — and may not always be necessary.
I’ve tried applying OKR at the team level and ran into a number of challenges, including some that Ravi Mehta writes about:
- OKR orthodoxy insists: «No number, no key result.» But in real life, it’s perfectly normal for a project to still be in development at the end of the quarter — meaning the work done hasn’t yet moved any product or business metrics. My workaround: I used the classic goal-setting approach for products in the launch phase and OKR for products in the growth phase. Not ideal when you’re managing a portfolio of products at different lifecycle stages.
- OKR doesn’t really help a manager or team forecast and build a roadmap for shipping new features. Without that, it’s hard to keep the team focused and manage stakeholder expectations.
In his NCT framework, Ravi Mehta proposes refining OKR methodology in the following ways [3]:
- Expand the Objective with more context — a Narrative that explains why the goal matters and how it connects to strategy.
- Make Key Results mandatory. Ravi Mehta reframes them as Commitments, which can be expressed either in quantitative form (as OKR prescribes) or in project form (as a «Launch-It» milestone).
- For each Commitment, work with the team to develop an execution plan and build a Task roadmap. Unlike the Commitments themselves, this plan can be adjusted as you go.
I don’t think Ravi Mehta invented the wheel here — he mostly formalized an approach that many teams already use instinctively. And for those teams, this approach tends to stick far better than OKR ever did. Worth knowing about.
References
[1] The Reforge blog has a detailed article by Ravi Mehta (ex-CPO at Tinder and Facebook) on NCT.
[2] The Practice of Management is available in Russian, published by Mann, Ivanov and Ferber.
[3] Here’s a template with an example of NCT goal-setting from Ravi Mehta, for reference.