Why NCTs Outperform OKRs: The Future of Goal-Management Platforms

This article explores why the NCT (Narratives, Commitments, Tasks) framework outperforms OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) as the foundation for modern goal-management platforms. While OKRs have long been celebrated for their simplicity, their lack of strategic context, rigidity, and execution gaps often hinder organizational success. NCTs address these limitations by integrating the “Why” through Narratives, setting achievable Commitments, and creating actionable Tasks, offering a more adaptable and effective approach.

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Introduction 

With a substantial increase in organizations reporting comparative improvements in results and income from utilizing performance and goal-management software, it may come as little surprise that the market value is projected to reach $12.94 billion USD by 2032. 

The most fundamental aspect of any goal management platform is the goal framework at its core since it will act as the cornerstone for the entire methodological approach on which goals are strategically set, measured, and executed. 

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) have been one of the most polarising go-to frameworks for many years for the lack of a better alternative. During this time, many leaders and organizations have implemented them as a way to tie company objectives to clear and measurable results, and as such, they have at times been celebrated for their simplicity and focus. 

However, as many teams continuously discover, this simplicity can often lead to frustrating oversights and inefficiencies and, at times, have been outright unfitting for purpose. 

A modern framework called NCTs (Narratives, Commitments, and Tasks) is the new horse in the stable and has been bred for a more fitting purpose. As with all things in nature and business, evolution and innovation are ongoing processes of improving and replacing what came before. 

With many goal-management tools and platforms to choose from, many platforms have made OKRs their core framework and the workhorse of their product. Since it's in their interest to defend it (honest intentions acknowledged), they recommend a range of adjustments that overstretch, force-fit, and expand its scope and application beyond its initial intended design in order to address its consistent and inevitable shortcomings rather than admit that maybe the framework just isn't always fit for purpose. 

With more patrons investing in goal-management software to achieve their goals, shouldn't we be delivering on their best interests? 

Maybe it's just time we all sit down and have that conversation. OKRs have had a great run, have done their time, and earned their rest. Maybe it is just time to put the ol’ steed out to pasture and make way for an alternative framework designed to cope with more modern industry demands. 

This article will begin by understanding OKRs and their challenges before introducing the NCT Goal Framework and addressing why NCTs provide a better foundation for Goal-Setting Platforms and the Organizations and Teams using them. 

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Understanding OKRs: The Promise and the Challenges

The Promise of OKRs

Dating as far back as the 1970s, OKRs have been hailed as a transformative framework for aligning objectives and measuring success. Their promise has always been their simplicity: define a clear Objective, support it with measurable Key Results, and track progress toward achieving it.

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Organizations like Google and Intel have attributed significant success to OKRs, showcasing their potential when implemented effectively. 

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Yet, for many modern teams, the reality of OKRs falls short of this promise. As industry environments evolve and organizations constantly need to adapt to operate, the simplicity once associated with OKRs has become increasingly complex as it attempts to adjust to the present demands of strategy and execution. 

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The Challenges of OKRs 

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A common issue with OKRs is the lack of focus on the strategic “Why.” While the Objective answers “What?” and the Key Results answer “How?”, the critical “Why?” is often missing. This omission often leads to misaligned priorities, where teams fail to grasp the broader purpose and, as a result, struggle to align strategically behind the same outcomes.

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Additionally, there is too much emphasis on quantifiable metrics. While results framed in this manner certainly matter, teams aren't encouraged to consider that other qualitative outputs can lead to desired strategic outcomes.

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With best practices targeting 50-70% goal achievement, organizations risk cultivating a culture where goals become probabilistic rather than deterministic for their teams. While this is intended to encourage ambition, it can demoralize teams, making goals feel unattainable. This practice also leads to disorientation, where it is unclear what will be achieved by the end of any given period, and impacts any attempts at course correction.  

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OKRs can be very rigid. With modern organizations, particularly start-ups, scale-ups, and product-led, needing to pivot and adapt to their environments often, OKRs can take a long time to lock in. By the time they’re set, circumstances may have already changed to the point where they're obsolete. This can be particularly devastating when using cascading OKRs, where top-level goals flow down as new objectives for lower levels, stifling adaptability when teams need to adjust to changing priorities. 

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Finally, Key Results indicate “How” the progress of a goal is to be measured but not “How” it is to be achieved. This leads to targets (often ambitiously set) having no believable or actionable road map to how they're to be achieved. The road to execution is left to teams to ‘figure out,’ which is a time-consuming ‘cold-start’ process by itself when environments in which the goals were set are ever-changing.

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With this understanding of OKRs, let us introduce the NCT Goal Framework by breaking down its elements and the reasons behind its conception. 

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The NCT Goal Framework

What is NCT?

The NCT Goal Framework consists of three elements. 

Narratives 

Narratives are 1-3 sentence qualitative descriptions of what the team wants to achieve in a quarter, focusing on providing the strategic context behind the goals - the “Why.” 

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The Power of Narratives lies in their ability to provide strategic alignment and a purpose to drive team engagement by addressing the critical “Why” question. 

Commitments 

Commitments are 3-5 objectively verifiable goals the team commits to achieving by the end of any quarter. They are the targets that link strategy to execution and are flexible in that they can determine outputs as well as outcomes, i.e., deliverables in addition to or in place of quantifiable metrics.   

Tasks 

Tasks are the actionable steps to deliver on the Commitments and achieve the Narrative. From a strategic standpoint, they will align strategy to daily execution and determine whether a goal is actionable and achievable. From an execution standpoint, they offer a flexible guiding process to define and deliver on the Commitments. Since they're intended as a guiding action process, they're more elastic than Commitments and can be adapted as the quarter progresses where necessary.

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Why NCTs Were Created

The NCT Goal Framework was created by Ravi Mehta to address some of the common pains and challenges associated with goal-setting for product-led organizations. As a well-versed professional who had consistently found OKRs not only insufficient for these challenges but outright exacerbating them, Ravi created a framework that addressed the common pitfalls associated with OKRs designed to be utilized from the offset as a replacement. 

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Instead of morphing and complicating OKRs beyond their inherent capabilities as is the common practice, by addressing the challenges from the ground up while maintaining the simplicity associated with OKRs, NCTs provide an alternative Framework designed to align strategic vision with actionable execution that is more fitting, more adaptable, and ultimately more beneficial. 

Now that we understand what NCTs are and how they came to be, let's look into how they outperform OKRs as a framework for goal-management platforms. 

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Why NCT Outperforms OKR in Goal-Management Platforms 

With Goal Frameworks providing the core system of Goal-Management Platforms, the NCT Framework provides significant advantages over OKRs by addressing many of the latter’s inherent limitations. Where OKRs can lead to ambiguity and misalignment, NCT fosters clarity, accountability, and effective execution. Below are the key reasons why NCT outperforms OKRs, particularly in modern, dynamic organizational environments.

Strategic Alignment Through Narratives

One of the standout features of NCT is the inclusion of Narratives, which explicitly address the “Why” behind goals. This ensures that every team member understands the broader strategic context of their objectives. For example, a Narrative might articulate that the purpose of a product launch is not simply to meet a sales target but to strengthen customer loyalty and drive long-term revenue with an increase in CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). By grounding goals within that strategic intent, Narratives prevent the disjointed efforts and misaligned priorities often seen with OKRs, where the "Why" is frequently overlooked.

Balancing Ambition and Feasibility with Commitments

Unlike OKRs, where Key Results are often aspirational and partially achieved (typically 50-70%), NCT’s Commitments are deterministic and designed to be achieved 100%. This emphasis on feasibility encourages teams to set ambitious yet realistic goals. For example, instead of setting an OKR to “Increase customer retention by 10%,” an NCT Commitment would involve a measurable, actionable milestone, such as “Launch a customer feedback program and pilot two retention initiatives by the end of Q3.” Focusing on an achievable outcome over a mere metric provides a tangible output with a more precise scope for actionable deliverables. This fosters accountability and eliminates the ambiguity surrounding end-of-quarter deliverables.

Tangible Execution with Tasks

Tasks are the actionable roadmap that bridges the gap between strategic goals and execution, a component largely absent in the OKR framework. In NCT, Tasks outline the specific steps required to achieve Commitments, providing teams with a clear path forward. 

For instance, Tasks might include steps like “Conduct user interviews to identify key pain points,” “Develop a prototype for feedback,” and “Roll out beta testing to 200 users.” These steps ensure that teams begin each quarter with clarity and direction, eliminating the "cold start" problem often associated with OKRs, where teams are left to figure out execution on their own.

Flexibility for Agile Teams

Modern organizations, especially startups and product-led teams, operate in environments that demand continuous adaptation. NCT’s flexible structure allows teams to pivot without losing sight of their strategic goals. 

OKRs often become rigid due to their abstract nature and the manner and frequency in which they're set and understood, risking obsoletion as cycles progress, which is particularly devastating when applied in a cascading nature. 

NCT’s modular design enables adjustments to Tasks and even Commitments, provided they still support the overarching Narrative. This adaptability ensures that teams remain effective, even in rapidly changing circumstances.

Conclusion

In the evolving organizational goal-management landscape, frameworks must balance strategic alignment, actionable execution, and adaptability. 

While OKRs have long been popular, their limitations leave teams increasingly struggling to achieve meaningful results. 

NCTs represent an evolutionary step forward, addressing these shortcomings with a structured yet flexible approach. Narratives provide the essential “Why,” Commitments ensure realistic and measurable targets, and Tasks create a clear path for execution. 

This tripod equips goal-management platforms with the necessary core framework to provide organizations and teams with the most efficient support structure to align their daily efforts with strategic objectives. 

As organizations continue to navigate the complexities of modern markets, frameworks like NCT and Goal-Management Platforms that implement them will play a critical role in shaping the future of how strategy is executed. Place your bets on the winning horse early. 

If you need help selecting the right Goal-Management Platform for your organization, see our guide on 7 Steps to Choosing the Perfect Goal-Management Platform for Your Team. 

For more information on understanding the NCT Goal Framework, please check out our complete guide to NCTs.