OKRs that
earn their keep.

Start with meaning

Vision sets the horizon. Mission describes the work. Strategy makes the choices.

OKRs are not a substitute for a vision, mission or strategy. A vision names the future you are trying to create. A mission explains your organisation’s enduring contribution. Strategy is a set of choices about where to play, how to win and what you will deliberately not do.

OKRs translate the most important strategic choices into a time-bound period of focus. When a team cannot connect an OKR to a strategic choice, it is usually a useful prompt: is this truly a priority, a KPI to monitor, or an initiative to run?

The essential idea

Objectives name the change. Key Results show the evidence.

An Objective is qualitative: a memorable statement of the meaningful change you want to create. A Key Result is quantitative: a measurable condition that would be true if that change had happened. The initiatives are the projects, experiments and actions you choose to run.

Strong OKRs are short enough to remember, specific enough to guide choices, and few enough to preserve focus. For most teams, one to three objectives with two to five key results each is more useful than a catalogue of every good intention.

Writing an OKR

Ask “what would have to be true?”

Start with the outcome, not the project. If every key result were true, would you confidently say the objective had been achieved? If the answer is no, keep refining. Good objectives are clear, meaningful and directional. Good key results have a baseline, a target, a unit and a time frame.

A useful draft test: Can a new colleague understand what matters, how progress will be measured, and what is intentionally left open for the team to decide?

Don’t make them do the same job

OKRs, KPIs and initiatives belong together—but they are different.

A service team might keep an eye on response-time KPIs, use an OKR to materially improve customer trust, and run initiatives such as workflow redesign, coaching and self-service experiments to get there.

Multi-level organisations

Align around intent. Do not force a mechanical cascade.

Alignment is a conversation about contribution and interdependencies, not a diagram where every individual OKR must roll neatly into a company OKR. Share the strategic context and organisational objectives early. Then let teams identify the outcomes they can meaningfully influence.

A simple three-level view works well for many organisations: company or business-unit priorities, team OKRs, then individual commitments or growth goals where they are genuinely helpful. Cross-functional work should be visible: teams can share an OKR, contribute to another team’s Key Result, or name the dependency explicitly.

• Make ownership clear without pretending ownership is isolated.
• Use alignment sessions to surface gaps, overlaps and dependencies.
• Keep the number of organisation-wide priorities small enough to shape trade-offs.

The part most teams miss

Set a rhythm for learning, not just scoring.

Static goals decay quickly in a changing environment. Short check-ins make space to look at the evidence, adjust initiatives, surface blockers and decide whether the original target still represents the right ambition. The score is useful only if it helps a team learn and make a better next decision.

• Weekly or fortnightly: What changed? What are we learning? Where do we need help?
• Mid-cycle: Is the objective still right? Are the initiatives moving the needle?
• End of cycle: Assess the results, reflect without blame, and decide what carries forward.

Red is information, not failure. A useful red status lets a team adjust in time and communicate the impact on anyone who depends on the work.

Focus, growth & transparency

The point is better work—not fuller dashboards.

OKRs create value when they make priorities visible, help people see how their work contributes, and give teams permission to say no to work that does not serve the current strategic focus. This clarity can be especially valuable in periods of growth, change or ambiguity.

Make progress transparent, but do not turn OKRs into a performance-rating proxy. Ambitious outcomes need honest reporting. Treat missed targets as an invitation to learn about the customer, the system or the original assumption—not an excuse to hide the signal.