OKR Example Library

Move From OKR Examples To Your Own OKRs With Ease

We are going to start to show you more specific examples of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). What is important to know is that there are a number of different types Key Results available to you. The types of Key Result you use will depend on a number of factors. This guide will tell you more about these types and help you use the right ones for you. So use the OKR examples as inspiration and resist imitation as much as possible. 

What Makes A Good Objective?

Financial Objective Examples

• Increase profitability so we can re-invest more in growth
• Diversify revenue sources so we are more resilient to change
• Reduce the Cost of Production so we are more price competitive

Customer & Product Centric Objective Examples

• Increase levels customer of satisfaction as this is the foundation for growth
• Launch a product that customers clearly value and prefer
• Achieve Product Market Fit so we can fund growth
• Deliver customer value faster and usage and revenue will grow
• Increase customer choice and we will grow AOVs and order frequency
• Lead the way on price and sell way more
• Proactively provide support and deal with issues faster
• Be seen as trusted advisor and business partner
• Be the ‘go-to’ company for X
• Provide more opportunities for customers to grow and we grow
• Be considered a long-term partner
• Build deeper relationships with customers so we know how and when to help
• Provide expert guidance when needed
• Understand customer needs and we can help them succeed

Process Centric Objective Examples

• Make our complicated reporting process simple
• Improve target account selection process to sell more
• Improve Marketing & Sales alignment to drive more sales
• Expand into new territories to grow our sales
• Strengthen Key Account relationships to remove high value churn
• Improve management of Risk & Compliance
• Create a plan for fast full system recovery
• Use technology to improve efficiency of X
• Improve the Procurement Process to we have the best suppliers
• Make distribution more efficient so we improve margins
• Gather and share customer insights systematically

People & Learning Centric Objective Examples

• Company-wide continual learning and development helps everyone succeed
• Make high levels of Psychologically Safety a company-wide standard
• Make goal, role & executional plan clarity a given so we know how we all succeed
• Ensure all of the work we do has a know impact
• Make appraisals a positive experience
• Help our managers become multipliers and never diminishers
• Provide wellbeing support to those that need it
• Compensation & benefits are fair, consistent and competitive

 

Key Result Examples

Key Results Are How You Track Progress & Know  If Your Objective Has Been Met

 

Metrics / KPIs Make Great Key Results

Key Results that are trying to improve metrics make great Key Results. The debate then becomes about which and how many metrics to measure, and what the target values should be. We will discuss Key Result difficulty and OKR grading in a moment.

• Increase [METRIC /KPI] from X to Y
• Reduce [METRIC /KPI] from X to Y
• Keep [METRIC /KPI] above X
• Keep [METRIC /KPI] below X
• Keep [METRIC /KPI] between X & Y

Give thought to how the target is achieved as well. If you are trying to increase a KPI to a target value, is success measured by:

• The metric value at the end of the year or quarter
• The sum of the weekly or monthly value updates
• An average of the weekly or monthly updates across the year or quarter

 

Add Ambition By Design To Measurable Key Results

There are two ways to build in ambition to Key Results. The first is to use labels like ‘Committed’ for targets you need to hit and Aspirational’ for targets that are a stretch and if you fall a little short, that’s still a win. The other is to set two targets and Committed and an Aspirational. The approaches would make Key results look like this:

• Increase [METRIC /KPI] from X to Y (Aspirational)
• Increase [METRIC /KPI] from X to Y, or Z (Aspirational)

Why should Key Result targets be hard?

There is over 35 years of research on goal setting that beyond telling us what we know, which is goal setting is an essential part of achievement, the research tells us why goal setting works and the conditions that make some goals way more effective that others.

• Goals increase our focus on the relevant activities – Goals serve as a directive function. They direct attention towards goal relevant activities, and away from irrelevant ones.
• Hard goals prolong effort – When employees can control their time, e.g. they work remotely, hard goals prolong their effort, with sustained effort helping to achieve more.
• Hard goals increase effort – Hard goals are energising and lead to greater effort. Easy to achieve goals have low levels of impact and value so should be avoided.
• Hard goals accelerate learning & improved collaboration – Hard goals cause the arousal, discovery and use of task relevant knowledge and strategies. Easy goals don’t.

Milestones Can Work As Key Results As Well

If your Objective is to achieve specific milestones in a period then your might set-up a Key Result that looks like this in ZOKRI. This type of Key Result could easily be an To-dos as it’s an Activity / Project.
 

Open New Office Location

0% Start
5% Propose Region
10% Agree Region
15% Propose Location
20% Agree Location
50% Hire Region Head
70% Acquire Office
80% Hire Team
100% Up & Running

The definition of what success looks like for Milestone Key Results is a little more complicated as it might be Hard to achieve but unlike KPI based Key Results, 70% might not be a good result. So if you do want to use Milestones as a Key Result and not an To-dos, where possible we would recommend setting the difficulty as Business-as-Usual, where 100% is the definition of success.

Binary Key Results

There’s no rule that says Key Results can not be binary – either done or not done. It is however hard to track progress between weeks. In early stage companies where you’re learning curve is steep and your KPIs maturity is low these are often used for Key Results that are targeting and discovery and learning.

Activity Based Key Results

Best-practice guidance is that if you’re doing an activity that involves: completing, defining, providing, helping, developing, launching, planning, creating, delivering, building, implementing, releasing, or launching, then this might be better denied as an Initiatives. Initiatives can have more flexible due dates that can be within a period or extend beyond the standard OKR planning periods. Which is common for activities.

Mixing It Up Can Create Great OKRs

There is no rule that says you can’t use a number of the Key Result types in your OKRs. For example:

Objective

Wow customers with a next generation pet insurance app.

Key Results

• Pinpoint the pain points and friction is in the current buying process (Learning)
• Solve these pain points in a new app by the end of Q1 (Project)
• Generate over 1,000 quotes (Metric)
• Achieve an CSAT score over over 8 (Metric)

This OKR might be used to unify a cross functional team involving Marketing, Product Management and Engineering.

You could also choose to turn the Learning and Project based key Results into Initiatives. Here’s a bit more about how that can work.

How To Reveal Possible Measures To Use In Key Results

If you are using Key Results involve:

• Completing
• Defining
• Providing
• Helping
• Developing
• Planning
• Creating
• Delivering
• Building
• Implementing
• Releasing
• Launching
  Etc…

Success probably means completing projects and tasks. A good question to ask yourself is:

Which metrics / KPIs would be impacted as a result of delivering this project or task?

 

What would be the desired measurable outcomes?

If we ‘build’ the new feature we ‘think’ we will:

• Increase Weekly Active User from X to Y
• Increase Free to Paid Conversions from X% to Y%

If we ‘launch’ a campaign we ‘think’ we will:

• Increase Organic Traffic from Paid Search Keywords by 20%
• Generate 1000 downloads
• Generate 200 MQLs for Sales

If we ‘complete’ the re-platforming of our tech we ‘think’ we will:

• Increase Story Points Per sprint from X to Y
• Increase release frequency from X to Y
• Reduce Customer Reported Bugs from X to Y