The Three-Peer 24-Hour Approval
Replace slow top-down OKR sign-off with three peers who sanity-check your goals in a 24-hour turnaround.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 86%
Wodtke names the approval process as a silent killer of OKR planning — hierarchical sign-off chains drag quarterly planning out for weeks. Her alternative, developed with a client: instead of routing OKRs up to a boss, you have three peer teams who know your work review them within 24 hours, flagging anything that looks wrong or infeasible, and then you're done. It compresses planning to roughly four days and forces leaders to let go of low-cost control.
Origin
Christina Wodtke's approval-process redesign, developed with a consulting client and shared in this conversation as a lesser-known OKR practice.
Core principles
- 01The approval process will kill you — Wodtke has seen it stall planning over and over
- 02Planning time is not shipping time; the best is the enemy of the good
- 03Ask who really has to approve this and what it costs you if you get it wrong — usually little
- 04Peers who know your work can sanity-check faster and better than a distant boss
- 05You have to let go or get mired in process crap; wrong bets get corrected next quarter anyway
How to run it
- 1
Draft your OKRs
Write your team's objective and key results for the quarter, aiming to spend as little total planning time as possible.
Pro tip Target roughly four days total for grading last quarter and setting the next, unless you have a very deep hierarchy.
Watch out Time spent planning is time not spent shipping; don't let perfection stall you.
- 2
Route to three peer reviewers
Send the draft to three teams that work with you closely enough to know what you're up to — for example someone from tech, strategy, and sales — rather than up a management chain.
Pro tip Use the rule of threes; you can do fewer or more, but three peers give balanced coverage.
Watch out If ten teams ask you to review theirs, you must say no — keep each reviewer's load to about one a day.
- 3
Get feedback in 24 hours
Reviewers turn it around within a day with a simple verdict: 'this looks right' or 'I don't think this is possible.' You incorporate the feedback and you're done.
Pro tip One review a day means a reviewer can clear a week's worth without drowning.
Watch out Don't reintroduce multi-week sign-off; the whole point is speed with a good-enough safety net.
In the wild
Working with a client, Wodtke replaced boss-approval with a process where you write your OKRs, three peer teams who know your work review them on a 24-hour turnaround, flag anything infeasible, and that's the entire approval.
→ 'It's so fast, and it works so well' — quarterly planning compressed dramatically while still catching bad or impossible goals through informed peer review.
Common mistakes
Hierarchical sign-off chains
Routing OKRs up through layers of management approval stalls planning for weeks; Wodtke has watched this kill OKR processes repeatedly, and peer review is the fast substitute.
Over-worrying about getting the bet exactly right
Teams delay approval seeking certainty, but if a bet is wrong you'll discover it during the quarter and correct next quarter — the cost of being wrong is low, so let go.
Is it for you?
Best for
Mid-size and larger organizations whose quarterly OKR planning bogs down in approval chains and dependency alignment.
Not ideal for
Very large, deeply hierarchical companies with heavy platform dependencies where Wodtke concedes the fast cadence is genuinely hard to pull off.
From the transcript
“The approval process will kill you. I've seen it happen over and over again”
“you write your OKRs, you get three ... teams that work with you enough to know what you're up to, to look them over”
“They just look them over 24-hour turnaround. They say, "This looks right, but I don't think this is possible."”
“who really has to approve it? And what does it cost you if you get it wrong?”
“we have to let go, or we will get mired down in all this crap”
From the episode
The ultimate guide to OKRs
Christina Wodtke (Stanford)