Review best practices for writing OKRs

  • 6 minutes

The OKR goal setting framework enables organizations to define their strategy, align top to bottom, and achieve business results. While the concept is straightforward, the odds of implementing a successful OKR program are often directly tied to the quality of the OKRs that you've written.

In this unit, we'll establish the foundation for crafting high quality OKRs by reviewing:

  • Definitions
  • Best practices
  • Common pitfalls

Definitions

OKR is an acronym that stands for "Objectives" and "Key Results." Key Initiatives and Projects are the elements that drive the Objectives and Key Results.

  • Objectives are the goal you want to achieve. They ask, "Where do we want to go?" Objectives are actionable, aspirational, and meaningful.
  • Key Results are how you'll achieve your goal. They ask, "How will we know we're getting there?" Key Results are focused, measurable, and ambitious. Key Results are OUTCOMES.
  • Key Initiatives and Projects are focused efforts that help you achieve your Key Results. They ask, "What do we have to do to get there?" Key Initiatives/Projects are OUTPUTS.

Objectives

Objectives try to answer, "Where do we want to go?" In other words, what meaningful action are you trying to accomplish? Picture the following:

  • Your best friend asks you, "If you could accomplish just one thing at work this whole year, what would it be?" What would you say?
  • You have just a few minutes to communicate to your team, "what stands in the way of success, and what are you going to do about it?" What would those items be?

The answers to these questions will help you identify areas of focus that you can transform into Objectives. While it might be tempting to list out all the projects you want to tackle, remember:

  • Limit yourself to three to five objective, leveraging the superpower of focus.
  • Shift thinking away from projects - your outputs - and towards the end goal.

Key Results

Key Results try to answer the question, "How will we know we're getting where we want to go?" In other words, how can we measure if we were successful? Think about it this way:

  • If Objectives are the inspiring words of a Leader, Key Results would be the specific numbers of a Scientist.
  • If your best friend asked if you accomplished your ambitious goal, you'd be able to give a resounding "yes" or "no" - the results should be clear, measurable, and not open to interpretation.

Key Results can be owned by a single person or group who is responsible for achieving the metric. Just like with Objectives, limit yourself to three to five Key Results.

Key Initiatives and Projects

Key Initiatives and Projects try to answer the question, "What do we have to do to get there?" In other words, what are the tasks or tactics that we need to undertake in order to achieve the Key Results, and ultimately the Objective?

  • Ask yourself: What could get in the way of our Key Initiatives and Projects?
  • Stay realistically optimistic. Make sure you have the ability (resources and timeline) to achieve the Key Initiatives and Projects under your OKRs.

Key Initiatives and Projects are often delegated, and when they're delegated, they can become the Objectives or Projects of someone else.

With that baseline, let's also look at what OKRs are NOT.

  • They aren't unrealistic or ambiguous goals.
  • They're not an exhaustive task list or to-do list of everything you do in a workday - they should always be attached to an OKR for your team, department, or organization.
  • They're not so overly specific as to be constraining and inflexible based on new information.

Note

The difference between Key Initiatives and Projects is that Key Initiatives tend to come directly from the top of the organization, as a way to help shape the Objectives for departments and ensure alignment to leadership’s mission and vision. Projects occur at every level of an organization—they are the everyday work that each team does to contribute to OKRs.

Let’s say an organization-level Objective is Build a world-class company culture to attract and retain the best employees.

The Key Result attached to this Objective is Reduce voluntary attrition of our employees from 25% to 10%. The big Key Initiative put in place to support this Key Result and, ultimately, Objective, is: We are committed to increase diversity through recruitment at universities in 3 new geographic regions.

Since the Human Resources department is in charge of this Key Initiative, they build an OKR of their own: Launch a comprehensive diversity and inclusion program in order to enhance our culture. Nested beneath that are the Key Results and Projects which will ensure the success of the HR OKR and, in the end, the organization’s Key Initiative.

Diagram that shows the Key Initiatives and Projects from the example.

Best practices for writing OKRs

There are three core best practices to keep in mind as you write OKRs:

  1. Top down, bottom up

    Before you even get to writing your OKRs, you should be clear on your company's overall mission, vision, and values. What's your company's reason for being? What motivates and inspires you as an organization and team? What is your sense of purpose? Being clear on this will help inform the strategy and direction you want to take.

    Senior leadership should start with a top-down approach, taking ownership and defining annual Objectives. These will then cascade down through Key Results throughout the organization, ensuring alignment and clarity.

    However, at certain points you need to incorporate bottom-up input to fuel the specifics of your business and ensure the OKR process is collaborative. Individual employees are vital to communicating critical Key Results or Key Initiatives and Projects that will contribute to organizational OKRs and - ultimately - your mission, vision, and values.

  2. Think long term, then short term

    The most common time frame for goal setting is to first set long term goals to allow for a broader, more aspirational focus. Then, break out those goals into shorter segments to give enough time for projects that will take more than a few weeks, but are short enough to allow real progress to be made.

  3. Keep it simple

    At every point in the OKR process, we urge you to keep things as simple as possible. Organizations struggle when they try to do too much, too fast, with not enough focus. Brainstorm the top 12 - 15 things you'd like to accomplish. Then ruthlessly cut the list in half. Cut down until you're limiting yourself to 3-5 Objectives, and 3-5 Key Results for each Objective.

    In short, "Do less, accomplish more."

Common pitfalls

Some common mistakes when starting out with OKRs include:

  • Approaching OKRs as "business as usual" projects, that don't have an impact on your business.
  • Writing Key Results that aren't measurable, so defining progress is vague.
  • Creating too many Objectives or Key Results and losing focus.

Avoiding these common mistakes will set you up for success.