Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
Why it matters
Without a shared method, marketing runs campaigns that sales does not need, product builds features nobody asked for, and a weak quarter hides behind a claim that things improved. Teams can all be busy and still pull in different directions.
Key results are measurable, so progress cannot be argued away. At the end of a quarter, each number was either reached or it was not. That makes the review a conversation about learning instead of a debate about effort.
The quarterly rhythm is long enough for real work and short enough to change course. For a small company, the discipline of choosing three objectives and saying no to the rest is often worth more than the scoring itself.
How to apply it
- Set one to three objectives per team per quarter, no more.
- Write key results as outcomes, such as clients gained, not activities, such as posts published.
- Give each a number and a finish date.
- Score each key result from 0 to 1 at the end of the quarter. For stretch goals, around 0.7 is a commonly cited good result, and 1.0 every time suggests the targets were too easy.
- Keep a short check-in every week or two so a slipping key result is seen early.
- Separate committed OKRs, which must be hit, from aspirational ones, which are meant to stretch.
What it is
An OKR has two layers. The objective says what to achieve in plain words: short, ambitious and memorable. The key results are three to five numbers that prove it was achieved. Andy Grove developed the method at Intel, and John Doerr introduced it at Google in 1999.
A bookkeeping agency might set the objective "become the finance team of choice for small software companies". Its key results could be signing eight new software clients, raising the proposal win rate from 25 to 35 per cent, and publishing three client case studies. At the end of the quarter, each number is either reached or it is not.
Common mistakes
- Writing tasks as key results, such as "launch the new website".
- Tying OKR scores directly to pay, which pushes people to set easy targets.
- Setting them once and never looking again.
