What are Objectives and Key Results? (OKRs)

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a simple way of setting goals, and focusing everyone's efforts towards achieving those goals.

This page will give a quick overview of the main parts of the OKR framework, and how to implement them in your organisation.

Let's dive in

The Objective is the outcome you're trying to achieve.

The Key Results are ways that you can measure your progress towards the outcome, and whether you have achieved it or not.

If the Key Results are all met, then the Objective should also be met. Or the other way around, the Objective is not met unless all or most of the Key Results are all or mostly complete.

OKRs are usually run over a quarter, and scored halfway through and again at the end, to see how teams are progressing.

The following quarter any learnings and successful outcomes can be used to shape the next set of OKRs.

An organisation might have multiple levels of OKRs - top level company goals, departmental goals, and team goals. Some companies even use OKRs for individual and personal development.

3-5 objectives is about the right number, with 3-5 key results per objective. Any more and you probably have too many things to work on, any less and you're not being ambitious enough.

If possible, it's best for OKRs to "cascade". That is, so each level of objectives link to the objective or key results from the level above. That way everyone can see exactly how their work helps to deliver the top level goals.

Two examples of good and bad OKRs

Let's say a team is working on improving conversion on their website. They might have an OKR like this:

Objective: improve conversion through the checkout

• Key result 1: build 3 features by end of September
• Key result 2: surface product data sheets in the checkout

There are lots of ways to make this better:

Firstly, the objective is not aspirational nor is it qualitative and customer-focused in nature. It's more like a key result actually! It fails the "so that..." test.

A better objective would either focus on the outcomes, or perhaps rely on a specific bit of user research or insight to focus around a particular user need or known problem that users are suffering at a certain point in the funnel. The second key result gives us a clue... so let's try re-writing:

"Users get all the relevant information they need to confidently make a purchase"

Next, the first key result is too output focused. What if the features built are not what users needed? What if there's actually only one killer feature and that's enough? Quality over quantity. Plus it's not clear why September matters...

And the second key result is a deliverable too, which means there are no metrics in the OKR at all. Plus this is a very specific feature that's being described.

Let's think about how we'd be able to tell whether the objective was acheived. What signals could we observe?

Here's that same bad OKR re-written to be good:

New Objective: Users get all the relevant information they need to confidently make a purchase

• Key result 1: Increase progression from product details page to payment from 50% to 75%
• Key result 2: Decrease enquiries for extra information about products from 10 to 3 per day

What do you think? Here are some more good and bad OKR examples.

Who should have OKRs? Product, technical, design OKRs

The best OKRs are cross-functional.

The benefit of having OKRs is that in order to set them, there has to be a good conversation about what are the outcomes we're trying to achieve, and how might everyone across the business be able to contribute to that.

You have to agree, otherwise you won't be able to set a few clear goals.

There's no point having a different set of OKRs for each discipline, because then you introduce the risk of everyone setting themselves different goals and pulling in different directions.

So resist having "a marketing OKR", or "a design OKR", or "engineering OKRs". Agree on the business goals, and set key results that will measure everyone's combined efforts.

How many Objectives and Key Results should I have?

Rule of thumb is 3-5 objectives, and 3-5 key results per objective.

If you have multiple layers of OKRs across the org, have fewer at the top because they'll cascade to more. If you have too many at the top you'll end up with an avalance at lower levels, and then there's no point having OKRs because you still have too many things to focus on.

Should OKRs be exhaustive and cover all the work being done?

OKRs are about capturing the most important outcomes to achieve.

There will always be other work that has to happen in any organisation, and that's fine. OKRs shouldn't be a task list, or a wish list of everything everyone wants to do.

OKRs are there to allow teams to prioritise their time and focus on achieving the most valuable things first.

Getting everyone on the same page about what Must be done means less surprise and disappointment when the other "nice-to-haves" don't end up getting done.

Scoring OKRs - committed vs aspirational, and the 0.7 target

If your key result has a specific and measurable target, it is "aspirational". You're trying to hit the target.

If it describes a deliverable, or output, perhaps by a certain date, then it is "committed". You're trying to build a thing.

Aspirational key results are measured on a decimal scale from 0.0 to 1.0. When you set the target, you should set something stretching and ambitious. You shouldn't meet every single key result, if you did it means they weren't challenging enough. When you're setting the target, it should make you just a little bit uncomfortable!

• 0.0 - 0.3 means you didn't really make any progress
• 0.4 - 0.6 means you made some progress, but fell short of the target
• 0.7 means you hit the target!
• 0.8 - 1.0 means you went above and beyond and exceeded the target. Well done!

Committed key results are expected to be completed. By including them, you are saying with very high confidence (95%+) that will be definitely do the thing. So committed key results are scored differently:

• 0.0 means you didn't deliver the key result
• 1.0 means you did

There is no in-between. It's a binary score, either all or nothing. That's why committed key results should be used sparingly. You want to leave yourself room to exceed, and room to make some progress even if you don't end up achieving everything that you hoped for.

That's a wrap! Give OKRs a go

OKRs are a simple way to set goals for your team and organisation, focusing on the outcomes that you want to achieve.

Try out our free OKR software for tracking your OKRs and visualising progress through the quarter.