An objective review of your OKR implementation
Also called an OKR audit, or an OKR health check
How goals get set, owned, pursued and rewarded decides what your strategy is actually worth. Designing that on purpose is some of the highest-leverage work a leadership team ever does.
What an OKR implementation review looks for
OKR maturity, and the evidence for it
Post-NDA, we read the artefacts, the training materials and the actual OKRs: how they're approached, written, shared, reported, ended and rewarded. Not what the intent was. What the documents show.
What sits alongside them - the wider system they are in
The complementary frameworks and artefacts let every team operate and report on a portfolio of progress, so OKRs are used where they have the most impact, and nothing else is forced into that shape.
What we'll give you
A report. Where you are today and how you can improve, in plain terms. Yours to use, with us or without us.
Confidence. That your teams are using the framework in a way that gets the outcomes you adopted OKRs for in the first place.
Matt Roberts, ZOKRI's founder and principal consultant to senior leadership teams.
His work is optimising how leadership teams set and pursue goals. Not a researcher, not a junior, and not a rotating cast.
Why the reviewer can't be you
You're inside it
Everything in there looks normal, because it's just how things get done here.
You have a stake
Nobody on your SLT has the time, the distance, or anywhere near the number of implementations behind them.
We know what great looks like
Ten years of implementations means we can tell you why every observation and every recommendation is in your report, and what excellent looks like on each one.
Nothing in the report is an opinion you have to take on trust. Each line comes with the evidence behind it and the better version we've seen work elsewhere.
Questions we get asked
What is an OKR audit?+
An OKR audit, or OKR implementation review, is an independent assessment of how your organisation actually sets, reviews, grades and rewards OKRs, read from the artefacts rather than the intent.
How do you audit an OKR implementation?+
We read the real OKRs, the templates, the training materials and the review artefacts, then test them against the checks we run on every implementation.
What does a good OKR implementation look like?+
Goals carry the measures that would prove the outcome, business as usual has its own way of reporting status and progress rather than being dressed as a goal, and exploratory work is judged on what it taught.
How long does it take?+
The session is 45 minutes. The written report follows within five working days.
What do you need from us beforehand?+
One or two real OKRs exactly as they're written today, and a short questionnaire that asks only for things you already know.
Is this the same as OKR coaching or OKR software?+
No. A review tells you where the implementation stands and what to change. Coaching moves practice once you know. Software reports what the practice produces, and can't fix a design problem.
What OKRs done well looks and feels like
Not a maturity score. Eight things you'd notice from the inside, and the ones we look for from the outside.
More ideas originate from more places
Great ideas exist in more places than most realise. The process is working, and you have a growing, living funnel of them.
You move seamlessly from think it to know it
Ideas get evaluated rationally, with a process that builds confidence and makes them easy to choose between.
You read an OKR and get excited
They were never meant to be a sentence and a few bullets. Yours take a minute or two to read, and they leave you excited.
Visible progress, rising confidence
Teams are learning to work together and organise themselves for faster progress and shorter learning loops.
Success comes in more than one form
Metrics matter, of course. So do learning and value horizons, which is what makes OKRs make sense to everyone instead of feeling like admin.
OKRs sit inside a portfolio of progress
OKRs are the few things that have to move. The rest of the work still needs visibility and recognition, or the OKRs won't thrive.
A regular, adaptive rhythm
They might be set quarterly, but they also stop early, finish early, and carry on as part of longer value streams.
You'd never stop doing them
They're how you operate. If you stopped, teams would start them up again on their own.
Four of the hundreds of organisations that made us good at this
Good Strategy + OKRs = Faster 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 earns its place in the calendar.
A look at what they did today, a few conversations, a little training, two short workshops. It's no longer perceived as admin for the SLT. It's how good ideas get funded and turned into value.
1,000 OKR users, 3,000 to go, converged in four quarters.
Raise the standard, bring the whole org to the same level, converge on one framework to deliver the big bets. It met every success criterion. The learning we carry forward: change manage the longest-standing OKR teams earlier than you think.
Collaboration stopped being the problem.
A European hyper-growth SaaS company was struggling with OKRs. Training, a facilitated workshop and coaching over two quarters. The OKRs made a real difference, and how teams organised around them changed too.
45 minutes on how your OKRs actually run, then a written read on what to change first.
Nothing to buy at the end of it. Bring one or two real OKRs exactly as they're written today.