Tips for crafting impactful objectives and key results (OKRs) that get results

When set up and managed correctly, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) help align teams and improve results. In these good situations, OKRs bring focus, accountability and engagement.

OKRs that are not well set up - or not well managed - can frustrate teams, slow things down, and undermine engagement.

All of us get more from making progress on meaningful results.

This guide teaches how to craft impactful OKRs so that they fit into a strong management framework, and keep you on track toward your vision in a way everyone can see and understand

Basic things to know.

Source: whatmatters.com

“Objectives” are goals, stated in broad terms. The science-y term is that they are “qualitative.” Popular ways of explaining objectives include thinking of them as “what” you want to achieve.

“Key results” is a term for how you will make your objective something you can measure. They make your objective quantitative by spelling out criteria for success.

Key results are best understood when they complete a sentence in this format:

{your objective} as measured by {your key result}.
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Another way to state it, according to whatmatters.com is
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​"I will {objective} as measured by {key results}."

Example OKRs

Here is an example of a marketing OKR:

Objective: Increase brand awareness and customer engagement

as measured by

• Key result 1: achieving 500,000 social media impressions per month by Q3.

• Key result 2: increasing website traffic by 30% year-over-year.

• Key result 3: hosting 5 events with partners by Q3.

An example of a customer success OKR:

Objective: Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty as measured by (Key Results)

• Key result 1: increasing NPS score from 7 to 8 by Q4.

• Key result 2: reducing average time to resolution by 20%

• Key result 3: launching a live chat support channel that allows us to resolve 50% of inquiries through chat.

You can find more examples and a further explanation here.

Here are tips for setting your objectives.

Tips for setting meaningful objectives

• Focus on 3 or fewer objectives. More dilutes focus.
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• Set significant objectives that contribute to the mission. You can check on both in the mindmap view.
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• Make sure your objectives have some impact on your business or your team; don’t shy away from audacious goals.
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• Make objectives concrete enough to act on; avoid vague objectives.
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• Use action words to start your objective. Examples “launch”, “build”, “create”.
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• Focus the objective on your desired result; the outcome, not activities. For example, “reduce customer response time” is better than “hire more reps;” and better still is “Improve the customer experience.” (Then make a specific reduction in response time a key result)
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• Review your drafts with your teams so they can contribute and help clarify any ambiguities. This also improves understanding and creates a sense of ownership.
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• Have one and only directly responsible individual. Experts from companies like Apple call this the one "Directly Responsible Individual". Even if the person who owns it needs help from others, make sure one person is the sole final accountable person. Having 2 people introduces a range of friction points and ambiguities.
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• It is ok to have different individuals responsible for each key results.

Pitfalls to avoid when setting objectives

• Avoid vague objectives that lack clarity, or don’t push you in a specific direction. Work to make them clear.

• Avoid a wish list - a wish list is when you have more than 3 objectives at any level. This will dilute everyones focus, scatter resources and slow progress on any specific objective.

• Avoid misaligned objectives; they frustrate people and lead to disengagement. Ensure your objectives align to your overall strategy, are easy to connect to your vision, and are constrained by your core values. Then ensure that everyone understands these connections. (the easier you make these connections to see, the easier execution becomes).

• Don't aim high without focusing (focusing means cutting out other objectives) This can demotivate quickly because it's perceived as asking for more work to be done in more difficult conditions. If you are going to have an audacious objective, give people permission to say “no” to things that don’t advance that goal.

• Avoid forgetting about objectives; lay out a rhythm for keeping them front and center and in focus.

Make your objective measurable with key results.

Key Results quantify success and allow you to track progress on objectives.

Effective key results are specific and unambiguous by virtue of being measurable and having a specific time frame.

Tips for creating your key results

• Create 2-5 key results per objective

• Include a date in your key result, for example "by October 1"

• Work to frame key results around outcomes to the extent possible

• While you can create "binary" key results - for example, "deliver our new marketing manifesto" is something that will be either true or false - it's best to limit the use of these to places where a measurement is difficult or impossible.

• Have one and only directly responsible individual for each key result. This is true even if the result requires collaboration. The one directly responsible individual is the person who makes sure proper collaboration happens.

• A key result owner can be different from the objective owner, typically in this case the key result owner reports to the objective owner.
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Avoid key result pitfalls

Avoid a laundry list of activities or a task list. Keep things focused on results, not activities, outcomes not outputs.

Advanced Tips

Sometimes teams or organization go through many changes at once. This can occur when you have a fast moving company such as a tech startup, or when there are many other changes happening in your organization. In these cases, you may benefit from setting OKRs only at team levels. This means the team will collectively own the OKR(s).

In these cases:

• The team leader is the owner of the objective

• They may also own the key results, or delegate specific key results to one directly responsible individual

• Use your Team Weekly Prioritizer (under Team Alignment tools) to report on progress, decide next steps, and solve issues together.

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