Afonso Malo Franco: When the Past Pushes Back: Lessons from Transforming an Established Organisation
Most product transformations don't fail because of the wrong framework. They fail because of the wrong assumptions about how people and organisations actually behave.
Afonso Matos is in the middle of one. As Head of Product at Laerdal Medical, a company with decades of history, deep-rooted ways of working, and a mission as serious as it gets, he is leading a product operating model transformation that touches everything: how teams are structured, how progress is measured, how decisions get made, and how people let go of what used to work.
OKRs are part of that story. They're also where much of the struggle becomes visible.
Despite the books, the articles, the podcasts, and the talks, OKRs remain a persistent source of frustration. Some blame the technique. Others blame the people for not doing it "right." Afonso believes both are missing the point.
The real challenge isn't goal-setting. It's understanding how human beings behave around goals, metrics, and progress, and what it actually takes to shift that behavior in an organisation that has been doing things a certain way for a very long time.
This talk draws on practical lessons from working with more than 100 product teams across multiple organisations, and from the messy, ongoing reality of transformation from the inside. You'll leave with a clearer perspective on what it really takes to build better judgment, not just better frameworks, in organisations where the past has a very strong gravitational pull.