# Explain Performance, OKRs, Failure, and Project Learning Use one or two truthful projects to answer a leadership deep dive about how your performance was evaluated, how objectives were set, what your largest relevant failure was, and what you would change if you repeated the work. ### Clarifying Questions to Ask - Should the answer focus on your individual goals, the team's goals, or the relationship between them? - Does the interviewer want one continuous project example or separate examples for performance and failure? ### Part 1: Performance and OKRs How was your performance assessed? Who helped define the objectives, how were they chosen, and how did you know the measures represented useful outcomes rather than activity? #### What This Part Should Cover - Your role in shaping goals and negotiating trade-offs. - Leading and lagging indicators with known limitations. - Checkpoints where evidence changed scope or execution. ### Part 2: A Significant Failure Describe a meaningful failure or miss. What did you own, when did you recognize the problem, how did you communicate it, and what recovery action did you take? #### What This Part Should Cover - Specific accountability without blaming or false sole ownership. - The decision or assumption that led to the miss. - Immediate mitigation and stakeholder communication. ### Part 3: If You Could Restart What would you change if you could run the project again, and what evidence shows that the lesson affected later work? #### What This Part Should Cover - A concrete process, design, or communication change. - Trade-offs of the proposed change rather than hindsight certainty. - Later behavior that demonstrates learning. ### Solving Hints - Distinguish the metric used to manage work from the outcome used to judge value. - Choose a failure with consequences and recovery, not a disguised strength. ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A credible objective-setting process, measurable outcomes, and the candidate's influence. - Honest ownership of a failure and timely, audience-appropriate communication. - Root-cause reasoning that includes systems and incentives as well as individual action. - A specific restart plan and evidence of durable behavioral change. ### Follow-up Questions 1. Which objective did you push back on, and why? 2. When did you first have enough evidence that the plan was failing? 3. What did you communicate differently to executives and engineers? 4. Which part of your proposed restart would cost more or slow delivery?