OKR Examples that are ready to use
Measure what matters and Grow by Design
OKR Writing Tips
Good, well constructed OKRs increase performance. To help you we’ve created some OKR examples for you to use. But before you jump straight in, take a minute to read these basic OKR writing tips. They will help you write better OKRs and spot a bad one.
- OKRs run for periods e.g. Annually, Quarterly or Monthly
- OKRs have a single owner and can also have Collaborators
- OKRs can be set for Corporate Goals, Functional Team Goals e.g. Marketing, Project Team Goals e.g. Website, and Individually
- Objectives are goal statements that often contain and ambitious or aspirational elements
- You will need to pair 1 - 5 carefully chosen Key Results capable of measuring the success of each Objective
- Each Key Result will need a Metric that provides you with a way of measuring progress
- Metrics have a numerical target and this target should not be easy to achieve, it should stretch you
- Moonshots are allowed, and often encouraged, but not every OKR can be a Moonshot
- OKRs create natural alignment from the top-down and bottom-up with goal anomalies being obvious
- OKRs should not look or function like a task list of what you're going to do to achieve a goal - Initiatives are the execution layer
- Key Results should not contain Vanity Metrics that correlate poorly with business performance e.g. Sessions
Click on any of the above links and you’ll see OKR examples for corporate and team OKRs. Notice how they are constructed with a statement that defines the Objective, and between 1 and 4 Key Results that contain the Goal Metric. Together they define what success looks like and whether an Objective has been achieved or not.
OKRs are not tasks, are meant to contain quality not vanity metrics, and have a stretch component to them and low-balling target metrics is not to be allowed. This is why achieving between 70% and 100% of a Goal Metric can be seen as a success. But this depends on the OKR and needs to be looked at on an individual OKR basis. Sometime OKRs you may create as ‘Moon Shots’ and getting anywhere near is a victory. Some are solid and achievable goals where 100% achievement is possible and often necessary.
