I am reading a post here on how Google and Zynga set and achieve meaningful OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).
In the post there is one paragraph saying:
If you’re finding your team sets quarterly OKRs only to trash them each quarter given a brilliant mid-quarter discovery, you’re either:
- a 2-sigma team that repeatedly launches industry leading core features every quarter despite not initially planning them
- setting OKRs not “worth doing” as evidenced by repeated willingness to ditch them
- unfocused and need more operational discipline
What does the word "trash" mean?
What does the phrase *"given a brilliant mid-quarter discovery" * mean?
What is the exact meaning of the first sentence?
Best Answer
Tyler James Young has already answered some of your questions in the comments. Here I will continue Tyler's work and try to answer the remaining questions as well:
What does the word "trash" mean?
As explained by Tyler, in this context "to trash the quarterly OKRs" means "to ditch/discard/throw away the quarterly OKRs".
What does the phrase "given a brilliant mid-quarter discovery" mean?
The term "quarter" in this paragraph means "a period of three months", that is a quarter of a year.
A "mid-quarter discovery" is a something that has been discovered during a quarter.
"Given" in "given a brilliant mid-quarter discovery" is a preposition with the meaning of "taking (something) into account". In this case (something) is "a brilliant mid-quarter discovery".
Thus, "given a brilliant mid-quarter discovery" could be rephrased as "taking into account something brilliant that happened during a quarter".
What is the exact meaning of the first sentence?
Let's now consider the full sentence:
It tells us that if your team sets an OKR every quarter and at some point during that quarter your team discovers something brilliant and decides to discard the OKR, then your team is either A, B or C.