What is an OKR — OKR Foundations

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It is a goal-setting framework used by some of the world's most successful organisations, from Google and LinkedIn to small businesses and family-owned companies. The idea is simple. The impact, when done well, is significant.

The Objective: what you want to achieve. Qualitative and aspirational. It answers: where do we want to go? A good Objective is inspiring, not a number, a direction.

The Key Results: how you know you have got there. Specific and measurable. They answer: how will we know we have succeeded? Key Results are outcomes, not tasks.

The relationship: the Objective gives direction, the Key Results confirm arrival. The Objective is the destination on a map. The Key Results are the signs along the road that tell you how close you are. If you achieve your Key Results, you should have achieved your Objective. If the Key Results do not point toward the Objective, they need to be rewritten.

A worked example:

Objective: Become the most trusted service provider in our region
Key Result 1: Customer satisfaction score rises from 72 to 85 by end of quarter
Key Result 2: Net Promoter Score improves from 30 to 50
Key Result 3: Zero unresolved complaints older than 48 hours

How many OKRs: less is more. No more than three to five Objectives, each with three to five Key Results. This forces a choice, what matters most this quarter, everything else waits.

Who uses OKRs: the company sets OKRs for the organisation as a whole, teams set OKRs that contribute to the company OKRs, individuals set OKRs that contribute to their team OKRs. A connected chain from the biggest strategic goal down to what one person is working on this week.

Where they came from: Andy Grove invented OKRs at Intel in the 1970s, calling it iMBO, Intel Management by Objectives. In 1999, John Doerr introduced the system to a small startup called Google, in a single meeting using around 30 slides. Since then, LinkedIn, Adobe, Twitter, Spotify, and thousands of organisations across industries have adopted it. John Doerr wrote about the system in his book Measure What Matters, published in 2018.