Framework library · Strategic planning

Objectives and key results (OKRs)

An objective says what you want to achieve; its key results say how you will know, as numbers with a starting value and a target. OKRs are set for a short period, usually a quarter, kept to a few, visible across the organisation, and graded at the end against the numbers rather than the effort. Ambitious targets are expected, so a key result reached most of the way is a good result, not a failure.

LevelFoundational
TimeTwo hours a quarter to set, and fifteen minutes a week to update
Who to involveEach team with its leader, and the leader one level up to check that the team's objectives serve theirs.
Also calledOKR, OKR framework, objectives and key results

Use it when

  • A team or business needs to focus a quarter on a few outcomes and stop the rest.
  • Work across several teams needs to point at the same outcomes without a heavy planning process.
  • A new business, such as a digital-only mobile brand, is growing fast and an annual plan goes out of date within months.
  • You want progress visible to everyone and measured in results rather than activity.

Avoid it when

  • The work is steady operations with fixed service levels. Use key performance indicators and service level targets. OKRs are for change.
  • OKR scores will set pay or bonuses. People will then set targets they know they can hit, and the method stops working.
  • The strategy is unclear. OKRs carry out a direction; they do not set one.
  • You need to deploy multi-year objectives down a large organisation with formal monthly review. Hoshin Kanri is built for that.

How to run it

  1. Choose three to five objectives

    Qualitative and directional: "make switching to us effortless". If everything is an objective, nothing is.

  2. Write two to four key results for each

    Each a number with a start, a target and a date: "number transfers completed within two hours rise from 61% to 95% of switches". Outcomes, not tasks.

  3. Record the starting value

    Take it from data before the quarter begins, so progress can be measured rather than claimed.

  4. Update the latest value each week

    Progress is how far the result has moved from the start towards the target, from 0% to 100%. A measure that should fall, such as early churn, works the same way.

  5. Grade at the end of the quarter

    Read each key result's progress, write one line on why it landed there, and set the next quarter's OKRs from what you learned.

Work through it

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Mistakes to avoid

  • Writing tasks as key results ("launch the new app"). A key result is the change the task should cause.
  • Too many OKRs. More than five objectives per team spreads attention back across everything.
  • Setting only safe targets. If every key result is reached in full, the targets were not ambitious enough.
  • Setting and forgetting. OKRs reviewed only at the end of the quarter become a report, not a way of managing.

Where it comes from

Developed by Andrew Grove at Intel in the 1970s, building on management by objectives, and described in his book High Output Management (1983). John Doerr, who learned the method at Intel, introduced it to Google in 1999 and set it out in Measure What Matters (2018). Source.

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Further reading

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