Cascade the Vision, Delegate the Work
Run a huge org on high-level objectives and tight feedback loops instead of cascading OKRs
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 88%
Rather than a 10-year plan cascaded into per-team OKRs, Mercado Libre publishes only high-level objectives and a handful of exploration areas, then lets teams decide what to build. Freedom is paired with tight feedback loops and selective deep leadership involvement on the most important projects, so 18,000 people stay pointed in the same direction without being micromanaged.
Origin
Sebastian Barrios' description of how Mercado Libre operates without OKRs in a fast-changing, multi-country, heavily-regulated market.
Core principles
- 01In a fast-moving market a rigid multi-year plan cascaded into OKRs is a liability, not an asset
- 02Delegate the 'what to work on' but never delegate the holistic product vision
- 03Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand — give teams latitude but hold them accountable via feedback
- 04You cannot tell 18,000 people what to do each day; you can only align them on direction
How to run it
- 1
Publish only high-level objectives
Communicate where the company wants to be and a few new business or exploration areas — deliberately not long-term. Leave the specific features and roadmaps up to the teams.
Pro tip Keep objectives short-horizon; in a dynamic market long plans go stale before they ship.
Watch out Avoid the OKR trap where everything trickles down into prescribed per-team features.
- 2
Grant freedom and responsibility
Tell teams to do literally whatever they think is best for users and the company within the cascaded vision.
Watch out Pure distribution produces a product with great parts that feels horrible when assembled — pair freedom with a holistic vision layer.
- 3
Run tight feedback loops via design/product reviews
Use frequent, candid design and product reviews to check teams are pointed the same way, and pivot quickly when a direction proves wrong.
Pro tip Leadership feedback should be honest and direct but always cordial.
- 4
Go deep only where it matters most
Leadership cannot inspect every detail or the 30,000 daily changes; instead the whole leadership team goes extremely deep on the projects judged most important.
Pro tip Explicitly decide what you can delegate versus what you cannot for each project — the rule varies.
Watch out With 30,000 deploys a day, no one can audit every change; rely on culture and feedback loops, not inspection.
In the wild
Barrios explains they don't operate with OKRs because a 10-year plan cascaded into team-level features can't survive a competitive, multi-country market with dynamic regulations. Instead they cascade the main vision and let teams choose the features, with tight feedback loops keeping alignment.
→ Mercado Libre sustains ~30,000 production changes per day across 18,000 engineers while staying directionally aligned.
Common mistakes
Over-distributing without a holistic vision
If every team optimizes its own piece with total freedom, the assembled product can be incoherent and unpleasant even when each part is good. A unifying vision of the end product must accompany the freedom.
Treating one delegation rule as universal
Barrios notes there is no single rule for all projects — some allow more team freedom, others require one tight vision. Applying the same latitude everywhere breaks either speed or coherence.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders scaling large engineering orgs in fast-changing, regulated, or multi-market environments where rigid long-term planning fails
Not ideal for
Small teams or stable markets where a clear cascaded roadmap and OKRs provide useful focus
From the transcript
“we don't operate with OKRs uh where everything just like trickles down into what every team is is supposed to do”
“Oh we we just cascade the the main vision of of where the company's going.”
“you can't sort of like be uh telling 18,000 people exactly what they should be working on every day and and and expect that to…”
“Then you can end up with a product that has great parts, but once you put them all together, it's horrible and it's a it…”
From the episode
How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes
Sebastian Barrios