How OKRs get set, owned, pursued and rewarded decides the company you're going to become.
Designing that on purpose is some of the highest-leverage work a leadership team ever does. Most have never done it.
If you have OKRs. We will tell you, objectively, how good the implementation is and whether you could use the framework more effectively.
OKR maturity, read from your artefacts rather than your intent. And the wider system they sit in, so OKRs are used where they have most impact and nothing else is forced into that shape.
A report on where you are and how to improve, in plain terms. Yours to use, with us or without us. And confidence your teams are getting the outcomes you adopted OKRs for.
You are inside it, so everything looks normal. And you have a stake, so nobody on your SLT can chair it cleanly. We have watched bias dilute the right answer many times.
The most common optimisations
Clarity of Purpose
What are OKRs for, and what are they never for? OKRs that match the org chart are one of the many symptoms that can be traced back to an ambiguous clarity of purpose.
Company OKRs
Company OKRs describe and measure progress on your strategy, not lagging metrics like Revenue, Profit and NPS with targets. It's common to see Company OKRs that we could logo swap, and they'd remain the same.
OKR Elements
OKRs didn't start as a sentence and 2-3 bullets with measures, and they should never have. We often need to train and coach teams to write and communicate much better OKRs. Doing this also reveals a lot about a teams health.
Outcome Maturity
Outcomes are better measures of success than outputs, but teams are often not very good or reluctant to use the right metrics with targets. We unpick and solve this.
Investable Ideas
Product teams usually capture ideas, value them and get them to the point where they could become an OKR, all while maintaining a backlog. Other teams do this sub-optimally, with biases shaping the decision-making. Leaders are often the worst offenders.
OKR Streams
OKRs should stop if the evidence says so. They can be completed early so another can start. They can be threaded over many quarters using value streams. Many teams are doing none of this.
What Defines Success
What defines success at the end of the quarter shapes how teams set OKRs at the beginning and how they work to achieve them. There are many nuances to work through.
How Teams Organise For Progress
The best, highest-value OKRs usually require people from multiple teams. How orgs optimise for progress is usually sub-optimal, with the complaint that we have silos and we don't work well across teams being the symptom.
OKR Reporting
How OKRs and non-OKR efforts are tracked, reported and recognised as part of a portfolio of progress shapes how OKRs get used. It needs to be optimised.
Experimentation Mindset
Teams often miss the point that much of what we do is based on beliefs that could be tested. Training, workshops and coaching on how to think like this stop projects being completed without value realised.
Matt Roberts, ZOKRI's founder and principal consultant to senior leadership teams.
Ten years of implementations, which is why we can tell you why every observation in your report is there, and what excellent looks like on each one. Nothing in it is an opinion you have to take on trust.
“How OKRs are used and leveraged has evolved far beyond what you read in books, and what AI tells you. Few companies have caught up, and use them in a way that makes them more admin than performance catalyst.”
New to OKRs? We can implement them successfully, first time and at speed.
How we implement →What OKRs done well looks and feels like
Not a maturity score. Nine things you would notice from the inside, and the ones we look for from the outside.
More ideas, from more places
Great ideas exist in more places than most realise. You end up with a living funnel of them.
Think it, then know it
Ideas get evaluated rationally, so choosing between them stops being a matter of who argues hardest.
You read an OKR and get excited
They were never meant to be a sentence and a few bullets. Yours take a minute to read, and they land.
Progress you can see
Teams organise themselves for faster progress and shorter learning loops.
Success in more than one form
Metrics matter. So do learning and value horizons, and that is what stops OKRs feeling like admin.
Part of a portfolio of progress
OKRs are the few things that must move. The rest of the work still needs visibility, or the OKRs wither.
A rhythm that adapts
Set quarterly, but they also stop early, finish early, and carry on inside longer value streams.
AI-first OS
AI is making the OKR process better and faster. Reporting, action tracking, decision logs, learning-loop capture and more.
You would never stop
They become how you operate. If you stopped, teams would start them up again themselves.
Four of the hundreds of organisations that made us good at this
Single digit to 20% growth
A strategic review and OKRs created a focused, aligned leadership team. Sustained high growth followed, and OKRs are now a looked-forward-to part of every quarter.
Goal setting earned its place
A few conversations, a little training, two short workshops. No longer perceived as admin for the SLT: now how good ideas get funded and turned into value.
1,000 already, 3,000 follows
Converged on one framework in four quarters and met every success criterion. The learning we carry forward: change manage the longest-standing teams earlier.
Silos broken, progress rapid
Training, a facilitated workshop and coaching over two quarters. The OKRs landed, and how teams organised around them changed too.
Nuanced implementation details that make an enormous difference
An SLT needs to provide clarity on where OKRs should focus, such as risk appetite and the payback horizon, so people don't have to guess.
We work with leadership teams to make the right decisions, reach consensus and craft the comms that give people the clarity they need.
You need an objective process for evaluating ideas from all corners of the org, where ideas from those less senior can be funded if the idea is right.
If people have experienced sharing an idea and having it ignored or managed badly, learned behaviours have set in. We press reset and give the SLT and managers the tools to receive, filter and manage ideas in a funnel that works for everyone.
A room full of talented people is a huge opportunity and is also expensive, so it needs to pay back at a multiple of its cost.
We teach you a process that gets people primed for ideation and debate, and leaves them able to act on and stay focused on what is decided.
Seeing OKRs as strategic communications changes how you think about what is written, the questions, and the answers that follow.
We coach you to write much better OKRs. Goals that land, resonate and influence people to do and achieve amazing things.
Every OKR cycle tells people what OKRs mean to them, their team and the wider org. Sometimes this is positive; sometimes, without you even knowing, it's negative.
We architect the experience that matches intent to reality. Once they align two or three times, that becomes your truth and people like what OKRs are there to do.
Simple rules like “over 70% is good” don't make sense. In many situations they become hard to defend and cost you the high ground.
We give you the ability to direct, inspect and recognise differently for different kinds of OKR intent and work types.
How you manage OKRs is being revolutionised
This is what job ads for leaders at AI-native companies now say in the job description. You can work this way as well, and we can get you there quickly.
Part of the job description
Design how the company runs at scale
Set up an OKR-centric operating model end-to-end in an AI-native way, designing for how the company should run at scale and building the processes, tools and infrastructure to get there.
Setting and managing made efficient
Make OKR setting and management efficient, scalable and AI-native, so anyone in the company can set, review and update progress through AI tooling, with metrics flowing automatically from the data layer.
AI embedded in the cadence itself
Pre-reads, action tracking, decision logs and learning-loop capture, produced as a byproduct of the meeting rather than homework after it.
Can be built on the tools you already use
No new platform to adopt and no migration to survive. The operating model sits on the stack you have.
This is not a tool sale. We want to use your infrastructure, and we intend to.
45 minutes on how your OKRs actually run. Then a written read on what to change first.
Book the review →Questions we get asked first
What does ZOKRI actually do?
We design how a company sets, owns, pursues and rewards goals, then make that operating model AI native. That covers OKRs used well, the weekly and quarterly review cadence, the KPI and metrics layer, and the communication infrastructure around how decisions get made and followed through.
Do we need to adopt a new tool?
No. The operating model is built on the stack you already use. There is no platform to adopt and no migration to survive.
How does an engagement start?
With a 45-minute review of how your OKRs actually run today, followed by a written read on what to change first.
What does an AI-native OKR process change?
Reporting, action tracking, decision logs and learning-loop capture become a byproduct of the cadence rather than homework after it, and metrics flow automatically from your data layer.