What Are OKRs and Why Do People Use Them?
OKRs Objectives and Key Results are one of those workplace ideas that look tiny on paper and then grow legs once people start living with them. At their simplest: I will [objective] as measured by [key result(s)]. That sentence has shipped ideas and built businesses, but it’s also been blamed for months of painful meetings and a few angry Slack threads.
The story matters because OKRs were born out of the ordinary Intel managers wanted better focus and they were sharpened at Google to become a lightweight system for aligning work to strategy. What surviving that history gives you is a tool that can help teams focus, align and learn when it’s used as intended.
An objective is an aspirational, short statement of what you want to see happen. Key results are measurable signals that tell you whether the objective is turning from a wish into reality. The secret is: objectives are the destination; key results are the odometer and speedometer.
After shipping a paragraph explaining the example above, here’s a tiny table to make it concrete.
| Objective | Key Result | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| Make sign-up fast and delightful | Decrease median sign-up time from 15s → 6s; increase sign-up conversion from 3% → 6% | You can see whether changes actually improve the funnel and user experience |
Why people actually pick OKRs
There are three clean reasons managers and teams pick OKRs, and each reason solves a different pain point at work:
- They force focus, you pick the handful of outcomes that matter right now.
- They create alignment, everyone can trace daily work back to a clear goal.
- They encourage ambition, Big goals that push teams to try things they may not otherwise attempt.
Taken together, these turn fuzzy priorities into a shared language. For companies trying to scale communication, that shared language wins half the battle.
Where OKRs trip people
- They measure activities, not outcomes. Ship feature X becomes a KR which measures effort, not impact.
- They attach pay or promotions to rigid OKR scoring, which removes stretch and rewards gaming.
- They treat OKRs as once-a-quarter rituals instead of a rhythm of check-ins and learning.
Beyond that, there’s a human truth: not everybody thinks in quarters. Some folks introverts, people with ADHD, anyone who struggles with long-term plans find quarterly next-level goals stressful rather than motivating. That doesn’t mean OKRs are bad; it means the rollout needs empathy and flexibility.
Guardrails that actually help
Keep objectives small and memorable. If your team needs to re-open a doc to remember what it’s working toward, the objective is already too long. Short objectives act like a compass you glance at them and know which way to steer. That makes them useful in the moment, not just on paper.
Make key results measurable and outcome-focused. Look for signals that actually reflect user or business impact conversion, latency, churn, Net Promoter Score rather than a list of tasks. When your KRs are true outcomes, the team has room to decide the best way to get there, and you avoid turning strategy into a checklist of activity.
Check progress often and treat OKRs as a learning rhythm. Hold weekly or biweekly check-ins so small issues surface before they become wasted quarters. The cadence matters OKRs do their job when teams keep experimenting, measuring outcomes, and adjusting quickly.
Finally, don’t make OKRs a blunt instrument. They should help teams decide whether the work is valuable, not become the sole metric of people’s worth. Avoid using OKRs as the single truth in performance reviews that turns stretch goals into safe-boxed targets and encourages sandbagging. And don’t use OKRs as a replacement roadmap. OKRs tell you the outcome to chase; your roadmap and tickets are the how. Keep those things separate and the framework will stay a tool for alignment and learning rather than a source of friction.
Realistic example
Lets talk about first is the objective: reduce churn of new users in the first 30 days.
THE key Results: will cut churn in the first month from 12% down to 8%. Get the 7-day activation rate up from 18% to 30%. Try out three different onboarding experiments and aim for at least one that actually moves the numbers up.
What makes this helpful is that it connects a real issue and its people dropping off.
- Limit KRs to 2–5 per objective. Too many KRs dilute focus.
- Choose at least one leading metric per objective.
From working with teams, I’ve seen OKRs do two things really well: they get people talking the same language, and they force teams to be explicit about what success looks like. But I’ve also seen the pain when leaders treat them as an HR lever or when teams confuse outputs for outcomes. My advice: try OKRs, but start small, protect the stretch, and don’t let them become a scoring sheet for raises.
What are the next steps
- Pick three company-level objectives and share them openly.
- Let each team propose KRs that clearly move those objectives forward.
- Run weekly check-ins and a short quarterly retro to learn from scores and decisions.
Asked Alot
- How many OKRs? Keep it to 3 objectives per level with 2–5 KRs each.
- Individual OKRs? They’re okay when aligned to team/company objectives but don’t use them as the sole perf tool.
- Measuring KRs? Prefer leading metrics you can check frequently; use lagging metrics for final grading.
FAQs
Q: Whats is the easiest and simplist way to write an OKR?
Use the sentence: I will [objective] as measured by [key result(s)]. Keep objectives short and key results measurable.
Q: What’s a good OKR score at the end of a quarter?
Many companies view ~0.6–0.8 on average as healthy stretch performance. Constantly scoring 1.0 suggests you’re not ambitious enough.
Q: Can OKRs be personal?
Yes. People use OKRs for personal goals (learning a skill, fitness). The same rules apply: make objectives inspiring and key results measurable.