What an OKR is
An OKR has two parts. The objective is qualitative and a little uncomfortable: what you want to be true by the end of the quarter, in plain words. The key results are the three to five numbers that will tell you whether it happened, each with a baseline and a target.
A useful test for any OKR: if every key result hits its target, is the objective obviously achieved? If not, a key result is missing or set too low.
Objectives, key results and initiatives
The most common mistake when writing OKRs is mixing these three up.
- Objective: "Make checkout something on-call stops dreading."
- Key result: "On-call pages per week from 14 to 5." A result you can measure, not an activity.
- Initiative: "Delete the 11 alerts that paged with no action taken." The work you bet will move the key result.
Keep initiatives in their own list under the objective. If an initiative is done and the key result did not move, that is the most useful thing the quarter can teach you, and you only see it if the two are separate.
How many OKRs
One to three objectives per team per quarter, three to five key results each. Fewer is better. The point of OKRs is to say what matters most this quarter, and a list of eight objectives says everything matters.
Committed and aspirational OKRs
Label each objective. Committed OKRs are promises: the team expects to hit 1.0 and will move other work to get there. Aspirational OKRs are stretch goals: reaching 0.6 to 0.7 is a good result, and hitting 1.0 every quarter means the targets are too safe. Without the label, a stretch goal at 0.7 reads as failure to anyone outside the team.
The weekly check-in
Most OKRs are written in the first week and read again in the last. In between, nothing connects the numbers to the work. A ten-minute weekly check-in fixes that. Write three lines under the OKR note:
- Moved: which key results changed, from what to what.
- Confidence: which estimates went up or down, and why.
- Blocked: what is in the way, and who can unblock it.
Confidence moves before numbers do. In the first example, the reliability team's confidence on Sev-2 incidents dropped in week six because one incident came from a vendor. That is a conversation to have in February, not a surprise to explain in April.
Closing out the quarter
Score each key result from 0.0 to 1.0 as the share of the distance from baseline to target that you covered. Then write the part that usually gets skipped: what you learned and what happens next. For each objective, decide one of three things.
- Carry it to next quarter with the same key results.
- Change the key results, usually because one measured activity instead of outcome.
- Drop it, and say why, so it is not quietly revived in two quarters.
OKRs vs KPIs
KPIs are the gauges on the dashboard: numbers you watch continuously to know the business is healthy. OKRs are the change you are trying to make this quarter. A KPI often becomes the metric in a key result when you decide it needs to move. When it reaches the target, it goes back to being a KPI you watch.
Personal OKRs
Personal OKRs work when a goal has a date and depends on more than one thing. The hiking example has two objectives (fitness and money) because the trip needs both. Keep it light: no confidence scores if they feel like overhead, a check-in on Sunday, and a score at the end. For a single goal, a SMART goal is simpler. For goals across a whole year, start with the goal setting template.
OKRs that are still read in week eight
Keep each quarter's OKRs in one Scribelet note with weekly check-ins underneath, track initiatives as tasks with due dates, and score the quarter from what you actually wrote down. Encrypted, free to start.
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