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 take a quick look at the history of goal-setting frameworks.
In 1954, Peter Drucker introduced the concept of MBO (Management by Objectives) in his book The Practice of Management [2]. The core idea is to set goals at the company level and cascade them down to individuals at each level. Many services within Yandex, for example, still use a similar approach today. There’s even a dedicated internal tool for cascading goals called «Golzyatnitsa.»
In 1981, George Doran formulated the SMART goal-setting framework and published it in a journal article. My guess is that before SMART gained popularity, goals were described something like: Person X must complete the following list of tasks by a specific date.
In 1983, Andrew Grove (Co-founder of Intel) developed the OKR methodology — Objectives and Key Results — using it to improve Intel’s production processes. Grove is, in many ways, a legendary figure in management culture and the author of several must-read books, including High Output Management (available in Russian translation), where he first introduced OKR.
In 1999, Andrew Grove helped introduce OKR at Google.
In 2017, Felipe Castro brought OKR to a broader audience beyond Google and has since become one of the framework’s leading advocates — consulting, speaking, and writing books on the subject. One of his books, The Beginner’s Guide to OKR, is available in a Russian translation by Scrumtrek.
So, pretty much every manager has heard of OKR — but in my observation, it’s not all that commonly adopted in product-focused tech companies (though there are certainly successful examples). The transition from traditional goal-setting to OKR requires a significant cultural shift that 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 himself points out:
- OKR dogma says: «No metric, no Key Result.» But in practice, it’s perfectly normal for a project to still be in development at the end of a quarter — meaning the work done hasn’t yet moved any product or business metrics. My workaround was to use traditional goal-setting for products in the launch stage and OKR for products in the growth stage. That’s not very convenient 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 the following improvements over OKR [3]:
- Add more context to the Objective in the form of a Narrative — explaining why the goal matters and how it connects to strategy.
- Make Key Results mandatory commitments. Ravi Mehta calls them Commitments, and they can be framed either quantitatively (as prescribed in OKR) or in a project delivery format («Launch-It»).
- For each commitment, work with the team to develop an execution plan and build a roadmap of Tasks. Unlike commitments, the plan and tasks can be adjusted along the way.
I don’t think Ravi Mehta invented the wheel here — he’s really formalizing an approach that many teams already use intuitively. And it tends to stick much better than OKR. Worth knowing about.
Notes
[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 a sample NCT goal description from Ravi Mehta, for reference.