The Ten-Thousand-Word OKR Practical Handbook

“Objectives and Key Results” (OKR)

• This is a method for companies, teams, and individuals to co-create goals. OKR is not a cure-all; it cannot take the place of sharp judgment, decisive leadership, or a creative culture. Yet when those foundations exist, OKR can guide people and teams to the summit.
• OKR is a management system that keeps the entire organization focused on the work that matters equally to everyone.
• OKR is a flexible, data-driven approach that suits open, data-loving organizations.
• OKR expresses the organization’s most important objectives, guiding people to work and collaborate together, linking separate initiatives, and giving the organization clarity and cohesion.
• OKR is a simple tool that institutionalizes a founder’s mandate to “think bigger.”
• A healthy OKR culture rests on absolute honesty, putting aside personal agendas, and loyalty to the team—core tenets of Andy Grove’s philosophy.
• We will eventually reach certain goals, and key results are how we measure whether we have.
• Remember: at any point in the OKR cycle you can adjust or even discard what you set earlier. Sometimes the “right” key results only emerge weeks or months into the work. At its heart, OKR is living work, never frozen in place.
• That vitality lets OKR knit dispersed departments tightly together. Thanks to a structured, visible goal-setting system, the boundaries between us disappear.
• The value of OKR is indisputable—especially in rallying everyone behind leadership’s true intent and enabling every employee to contribute.

Objectives

• Before you pursue bold, stretch objectives, recognize that everything starts with identifying the root of the problem.
• Objectives point the direction.
• An objective is what you want to accomplish—neither exaggerated nor diminished. By definition, objectives should be important, specific, action-oriented, and inspiring. When they are designed and executed well, objectives keep both thinking and execution from drifting into ambiguity.
• Edwin Locke noted that, first, “difficult goals” usually raise performance more than easy goals do; second, specific, difficult goals “generate higher output” than vague ones.
• When judging importance, begin by asking: over the next three, six, or twelve months, what matters most? Successful organizations focus on a few moves that create a material difference and defer what is less urgent.
• If we cannot see and admit our limits, we cannot accomplish the objective. “We can’t do everything. We have to make choices.”
• Two ingredients are essential to OKR success: conviction and executive sponsorship. Leaders must have objectives of their own.
• Top-level objectives must matter. OKR is not a wish list of everything we hope to complete, nor a tally of routine tasks. It is a carefully planned set of objectives that merit special attention and push us forward right now. At the same time, they stay linked to the larger outcomes we seek. Grove wrote, “This is the art of management—the art lies in choosing one, two, or three activities that carry the greatest leverage and deserve your focus among options that all seem equally important.”
• Setting objectives is an art, not merely gut instinct. If you temporarily elevate a key result, be transparent about it. Leaders should tell the team, “Yes, I want us to concentrate on this and treat it as the top objective. When it no longer needs extra focus, we’ll return it to being a normal key result.” It is a dynamic process that leaders must adjust as reality shifts.
• Two forces often distort goal setting: people hate to abandon ideas they believe in, and they habitually underestimate how long work will take.
• Focus on the critical few. Do the important work first, or you may never get the chance to do it at all.

Key Results

• Key results must be measurable, visible, and leave no doubt: did we do it or not? Yes or no—there is no need to squint.
• Key results are the gauges we use to check and monitor progress toward the objective. Effective key results are specific, time-bound, and challenging yet attainable. Above all, they must be measurable and verifiable. As Marissa Mayer said, “If it doesn’t have a number, it isn’t a key result.” You either meet the criteria or you don’t; there is no gray area and no room for doubt.
• Key results are the levers and checkpoints that pull an objective into reality. When an objective is well designed, three to five key results are usually enough to ensure success.
• Completing every key result is the prerequisite to declaring the objective done. If the objective is not achieved, it wasn’t really an OKR.

Cadence

• The planning cadence for objectives is typically a quarter.
• OKR doesn’t require daily tracking, but it does demand regular check-ins—weekly if possible—to keep performance from sliding.
• To get the best results, managers and their reports should hold several in-depth reviews each quarter to report progress, surface obstacles, and refine key results.
• OKR does not expire once the work is done. In any data-driven system, retrospective evaluation and analysis yield outsized value. Whether in one-on-one conversations or team meetings, those reviews cover three parts: objective assessment, subjective self-evaluation, and reflection.

Keys to OKR Success

• Conviction and executive sponsorship. If senior leaders do not carry their objectives with near-religious commitment, OKR will never take hold.
• Because OKR disrupts the established order, it helps to weave it intentionally into that order.
• OKR needs a dedicated structure, a leader who steers the process, and a coordinator who tracks scoring and reviews.
• Clear company objectives—and how they connect to individual ones—are, as we said when discussing “Objectives and Expectations,” essentially what OKR is.
• Invest in training that boosts managers’ and leaders’ effectiveness. Rather than shipping people off to class, we guide them through one-hour online sessions, often via role-play, which makes the learning stick.

The Challenge of Implementing OKR

• Practicing OKR demands rigor, commitment, clear thinking, and active communication. We are not simply making lists and checking them twice—we are building capability and setting direction. There is no free lunch; meaningful results come only after a bit of pain.

Designing Effective OKR

• OKR design must be effective. Setting objectives that are impossible or outside your control wastes everyone’s time—it is management theater.
• Crafting effective OKR is hard; keep these basic rules in mind.

First, objectives are the “what.” Clarify the intent.

• Be ambitious, yet grounded in reality.
• Objectives must be tangible, objective, and explicit.
• A rational observer should be able to tell at a glance whether the objective has been achieved.
• Achieving the objective must deliver clear value to Google.

Second, key results are the “how.”

• Set measurable milestones that, once achieved, advance the objective efficiently.
• Describe outcomes, not actions. If an OKR contains verbs like “consult,” “help,” “analyze,” or “participate,” it is describing activity. Instead, state the impact on end users. For example, “By March 7, publish the average and tail latency metrics for six Colossus storage cells” beats “Assess Colossus latency.”
• Include complete evidence. Proof must be accessible, credible, and easy to spot: change lists, documentation links, notes, and published measurement reports all count.

The Four “Weapons” of OKR

Focus and Commitment

• Focus and commitment to priorities: high-performing organizations concentrate on critical work and are equally clear about what is not important. When leadership faces hard choices, OKR forces a decision. For departments, teams, and individuals, OKR is a precise communication tool that clears confusion and directs us to the critical success factors.
• As Larry Page likes to say, successful organizations are those that “maximize the resources they already have and focus them on building best-in-class products.” In other words, simplicity and focus sit at the heart of this first weapon.
• You can only execute one big thing well at a time, so you must know exactly what that big thing is.
• OKR should deliver the organization’s greatest benefit—focus. Only when we keep the number of objectives small do we truly focus. Every commitment we make closes off other options. That is the nature of allocating finite resources. Planners therefore need courage, honesty, and discipline. You have to be willing to shut down one initiative to launch another. Shaking your head and saying “no” matters just as much as smiling and saying “yes.” Paying attention to everything is the same as paying attention to nothing, and we must live that principle.
• Three to five OKR per cycle are enough to show the company, the team, and the individual what matters most. Typically each objective should pair with five or fewer key results.
• To weigh importance, ask yourself: over the next three, six, or twelve months, what matters most? Successful organizations focus on a handful of moves that create real impact and postpone the rest. Senior leaders back those choices with both words and actions, defend the top-level OKR, and give the team direction and a yardstick. As results emerge, bad decisions can be corrected in time. Indecision or rash retreats help nobody. What are the priorities for the coming stretch? Where should people focus? Effective goal setting begins with deliberate thought at the top; leaders must put in the time and energy to choose what counts.
• Whatever top objectives leaders choose, they must set objectives for themselves as well. OKR only works when leaders make public commitments in word and deed.
• When you are the CEO or the founder, you have to say, “This is what we are doing,” and then you must set the example. If you do not walk the talk, no one will truly care about the goal.
• Managers must publicly commit to their objectives when implementing OKR and stay consistent. To spark genuine commitment, leaders have to model the behavior.
• Management needs to show unwavering commitment to their own OKR and help everyone else do the same.
• To keep good decisions, strong morale, and outstanding results, everyone must understand the organization’s top objectives clearly. Yet two out of three companies admit they fail to communicate those objectives consistently. Leaders must tell people why and how. Employees are energized not only by milestone wins but by knowing why their work matters and how their goals connect to the mission. Announcing OKR at a quarterly all-hands is not enough. As LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner says, “When you’re tired of hearing yourself talk about it, that’s when people are just starting to listen.”
• Even though leadership had adopted OKR, I knew celebration was premature. As a team lead, reminding people was my duty. I emailed employees to commit to personal OKR. If they did not reply, I pinged them on the team chat. If that failed, I texted them. And if nothing worked, I found them in person and said, “Please create your OKR.”
• Dual-tracking may be the best way to set goals: short-term OKR support the annual OKR, while long-term strategy stays in play. Remember, short-term objectives drive execution, but annual plans have to match reality and remain executable.
• Nothing spurs us forward like a deadline. A three-month window helps prevent procrastination and delivers tangible performance gains.
• Matched key results should stress quality. In accounts payable, the number of vouchers processed should line up with the number of errors auditors or suppliers uncover. Likewise, the square footage assigned to janitorial staff should align with senior executives’ evaluations of service quality.
• Remember: at any point in the OKR cycle you can revise or even abandon what you set earlier.

Alignment and Connection

• Alignment and connection in teamwork: OKR is transparent. From the CEO down to individual contributors, everyone’s objectives are visible. Each person links personal objectives to company plans, clarifies dependencies, and collaborates across teams. This top-down alignment connects personal contribution to organizational success and lends work meaning. Bottom-up OKR deepen ownership, participation, and innovation.
• To encourage engagement, invite teams and individuals to negotiate with managers. Roughly half of their OKR should come out of those conversations. If every objective is dictated from the top, motivation takes a hit.
• OKR exists to align priorities collaboratively and define how to measure progress. Even after company objectives are set, key results can—and should—be debated and adjusted. Collective agreement is essential to maximizing achievement.
• Once the top objectives are in place, the real work begins. As objectives shift from planning to execution, managers and contributors must connect daily tasks to the organizational vision. That connection—alignment—is invaluable. Harvard Business Review found that companies with high alignment are twice as likely to rank among top performers.
• Alignment is rare. Studies show only 7% of employees fully grasp their company’s strategy and what the organization expects from them. In a global CEO survey, lack of alignment was the number-one obstacle between strategy and execution.
• Moderate cascades and linkages can make organizations run more coherently, but when every objective is forced down a rigid hierarchy, the exercise deteriorates into a mechanical numbers game that does four kinds of damage.
• Strict hierarchies overlook front-line effort. In purely top-down ecosystems, employees hesitate to surface issues or promising ideas tied to the objectives.
• When an objective serves a larger one, it can skip levels. A CEO-level objective might flow straight to a manager, or a director might assign it directly to an individual contributor, instead of pushing it through every layer.
• Andy Grove said, “People on the front lines usually sense impending change first. Sales reps spot shifts in customer demand before managers do; financial analysts are often the first to know business is changing.”
• In an ideal OKR system, employees can set part of their objectives—and most or all of their key results—on their own. OKR push members to aim higher and farther, to define bolder goals, and to strive harder for bigger wins. “The higher the target, the higher the performance.” People who know where they are going tend to figure out how to get there.
• To build an advantage, leaders and employees must connect laterally and break down barriers.
• Alignment simply means helping people understand what you need them to do.
• Beyond synchronizing internal goals, alignment also means keeping your objectives true to the “North Star”—the organization’s core values.
• When front-line employees can see how their work maps to company-wide objectives, they act with greater agency.

Accountability

• Accountability tracking: OKR is data-driven. Regular check-ins, scoring, and ongoing reassessment keep OKR alive, all rooted in objectivity and accountability. Risky key results prompt action to bring them back on track—or to modify or replace them when necessary.
• Research shows that making measurable progress motivates people more than public praise, monetary rewards, or even the goal itself.
• If circumstances change and an objective becomes unrealistic or unattainable, adjust or drop key results during the cycle.
• Still, we hold fast to OKR’s values of transparency and accountability.
• If no one can see the objectives you share, how can the system claim to be transparent?
• People are most engaged when they see clearly how their work contributes to the organization’s success.
• If you cannot find an objective and key result that gets you excited to come to work every day, something is wrong.
• As Teresa Amabile observed, “For individuals, the single biggest motivator is the experience of making progress at work.” People feel the most positive and engaged when they are moving forward.
• OKR systems do not require daily tracking, but they do need regular check-ins—ideally weekly—to prevent performance from sagging.
• Peter Drucker warned, “Without a plan of action, managers are prisoners of events. As the business grows, if they do not establish checkpoints for reviewing the plan, they cannot tell what really matters and what merely distracts.”
• When you track OKR for continuous feedback, your results do not lurch from highs to lows—you stay steady.
• When a key result or objective becomes outdated or unrealistic, end it promptly. There is no need to cling to a stale forecast—drop it from your list and move on. Objectives serve the purpose, not the other way around.
• When an objective is retired mid-cycle, be sure to inform everyone connected to it. Then reflect: What did I fail to anticipate at the start of the quarter? What lessons will guide me next time?
• OKR do not simply end when the work is done. In any data-driven system, postmortem analysis can uncover tremendous value. Whether in one-on-ones or team meetings, the wrap-up includes three parts: objective evaluation, subjective self-assessment, and reflection.
• Weak numbers do not automatically mean the team slacked off; pretty numbers can still mask manipulation.
• People vary in self-evaluation. Some are tough on themselves; others are not. Either way, a perceptive facilitator or team lead must help recalibrate. In the end, situational feedback and candid team discussions matter even more than the raw numbers.
• Reflection: to produce satisfying outcomes, set ambitious objectives, strive to accomplish most of them, pause to reflect on the wins, and repeat. Philosopher John Dewey put it bluntly: “We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience.”

Here are a few prompts for reflecting at the end of an OKR cycle.

• Did I accomplish every objective?
• If yes, what drove that success?
• If not, what got in the way?
• If I were to rewrite the objective, what would I change?
• What lessons will help me craft better OKR next cycle?
• If circumstances allow, throw a team celebration—you are tapping into the power of OKR.
• Mission sets the direction; objectives are the concrete steps that demand personal involvement and relentless effort.
• OKR let us stay ambitious and disciplined at once. When measurable key results show stalled progress or an impossible objective, we reallocate resources.
• Sometimes we are measuring the wrong thing, even when we are striving to stay accountable.

Stretching for the Impossible

• Stretching to challenge the impossible: OKR pushes us to exceed the possibilities we once set, even those that outstrip our imagination. By chasing the limits and permitting failure, OKR coaxes out our most creative and ambitious selves.
• Andy Grove wrote, “If everyone sets goals higher than what they can easily accomplish, the results are usually better. If you want the best from yourself and your reports, setting goals this way is essential.” Operational objectives may need perfect completion, but aspirational OKR should feel daunting—even unattainable. Grove called them “stretch goals,” capable of lifting the organization to new heights.
• To grow and stay vibrant, a company must believe in pushing limits and scaling new peaks.
• Bill Campbell observed, “If a company fails to innovate continuously, it will die—note that I said innovate, not repeat.” Conservative goal setting smothers innovation. Innovation is like oxygen: without it, you cannot breathe or win.
• Jim Collins urged leaders in Good to Great to set “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” and believe that a spark can burn the prairie. NASA’s moonshot in the 1960s was an irresistible stretch target; it ignited imagination and potential everywhere.
• The more challenging the objective, the better the results. Although the gap between target and outcome is often larger with tough goals than with easy ones, the final outcome of the former still beats the latter.
• Entrepreneurs—who not only imagine possibilities but build them—must set stretch goals in scope and scale. That goes for startups and market leaders alike. Stretch goals shape entrepreneurial cultures; they force people to break mental limits and run the business better.
• Achieving bold objectives depends on the power OKR generates. Focus and commitment are prerequisites for delivering outcomes that truly differentiate.

Google sorts its OKR into two buckets—committed and aspirational (or “stretch”)—and the two work very differently.

• Committed objectives tie directly to Google’s daily scorecard: launches, bookings, hiring, customers. Leadership sets them at the company level; teams set them at the departmental level. These objectives—revenue or sales targets, for example—are expected to be fully delivered (100%) within the timeframe.
• Aspirational objectives sketch a grander vision, carry more risk, and lean toward the future. They can originate at any level and aim to energize the entire organization. Stretch objectives are, by definition, hard to achieve; the average failure rate is around 40%, yet they remain a vital part of Google’s OKR.
• How you balance the two depends on culture. Different companies—and even the same company in different quarters—choose differently. Leaders must ask: What kind of organization do we want to be over the next year? Are we boldly entering new markets, or defensively shoring up the ones we hold? Are we operating in survival mode, or investing for outsized returns? What does the business need right now?
• If leaders want top performance for themselves and their teams, setting stretch objectives is nonnegotiable.
• Larry Page said, “Most people tend to assume things are impossible rather than looking for the possibilities in the real world. When you set a crazy, ambitious goal, even if you fail you’ll still achieve something remarkable. Ten percent improvement is what everyone else is doing. You may not fail, but you’ll never be great.” That is why he expects Google teams to ship products ten times better than the competition. Incremental efficiency gains or minor tweaks won’t satisfy him. Achieving “10x” improvements demands reframing the problem, exploring technical possibilities, and enjoying the ride.
• When you chase high-effort, high-risk objectives, employee belief is essential. Leaders must communicate two things: the importance of the outcome and the conviction that it can be achieved.
• In our work we set ourselves unsettlingly hard goals, then we must hit them. After a brief celebration, we set another grueling goal—and hit that one too. One reward for meeting those stretch objectives is the opportunity to keep leveling up.
• On teams full of top talent, you had better think deeply before answering; this is not your solo stage. No one wins alone.
• If people don’t believe a stretch objective is achievable, it won’t be. That is the art of setting goals.
• When you choose priorities and direct resources, remember: if we do nothing, that moonshot will never happen.
• Stretch objectives can force an organization to redesign itself.
• People need a ruler to orient and measure their direction and performance. Our job is to find the right ruler.

CFR, OKR’s Close Cousin

• OKR and CFR reinforce one another. Like OKR, CFR emphasizes transparency, accountability, empowerment, and teamwork at every level. CFR is the catalyst for effective communication; it galvanizes OKR and keeps them on track. It is a complete delivery system for measuring what matters, making performance management hit the mark. CFR captures the spirit and power of Andy Grove’s innovations and makes OKR more human.
• If OKR is the muscle of goal setting, CFR is what keeps the muscle supple and responsive. “Pulse” check-ins reveal organizational health in real time—physical, psychological, operational, and cultural.

Conversation, Feedback, and Recognition

Conversation: real, high-quality exchanges between managers and employees that drive performance improvements.

• One-on-one meetings should be led by the report. The topics and tone belong to them; the manager’s role is to listen and coach.
• Unlike mere criticism, coaching focuses on the future results we want to create.

Manager-employee conversations usually cover five domains.

1. Goal setting and reflection: employees draft OKR for the coming cycle, focusing on how to align personal objectives and key results with the organization’s urgent priorities.
2. Continuous progress updates: leaders use data to monitor work in real time and stand ready to unblock issues.
3. Two-way coaching: managers help employees reach their potential, and employees help managers grow.
4. Career development: expand skills, spot growth opportunities, and illuminate potential career paths inside the company.
5. Lightweight performance reviews: a feedback loop that summarizes what the organization invested and what the employee delivered since the previous conversation.

Feedback: two-way exchanges—face-to-face or online—among peers to assess progress and explore ways to improve.

• Feedback is observation-based insight that reveals how we come across to others.
• Today’s employees want empowerment and inspiration, not micromanagement. They want to share their perspective with managers instead of waiting a year to hear a verdict. They want to exchange goals and plans regularly and stay on top of their peers’ progress.
• By building connections across the organization, two-way feedback becomes invaluable for cross-functional work. Horizontal communication is the new normal. Combined with 360-degree feedback, OKR will soon make traditional performance reviews obsolete.

Feedback is only useful when it is concrete.

• Negative feedback: “Because last week’s meeting started late under your watch, everything fell apart.”
• Positive feedback: “Your presentation was terrific! You opened by grabbing everyone’s attention and closed with my favorite part—the crisp next steps.”

Recognition: celebrating individual contributions in proportion to their impact.

• In service businesses, nothing is more valuable than confident employees who believe they create value and plan to stay.
• Recognition is the most underrated—and least understood—piece of CFR.
• Modern recognition is performance-based and peer-driven, almost like crowdsourcing. Anyone can recognize someone else at any time—and receive recognition themselves.
• JetBlue created a values-driven, two-way recognition system that drew leadership’s attention to front-line employees and doubled employee satisfaction.

Here are some ways to raise the level of recognition.

• Encourage peer-to-peer appreciation. When colleagues celebrate each other’s wins, a culture of gratitude emerges. At Zume Pizza, the whole company meets each Friday to “retrospective.” At the end, every person offers heartfelt praise to those who made standout contributions.
• Set clear standards. Distinguish between effort and outcomes: did someone finish a special project, achieve a company objective, or live the organization’s values? Swap “Employee of the Month” for “Performance of the Month.”
• Share stories that build identity. Real-time chat tools or internal blogs are great for telling the stories behind achievements, giving recognition more meaning.
• Increase the frequency and accessibility of recognition. Praise even small wins—meeting a tight deadline, polishing a proposal, or doing a “small” task that keeps everything running.
• Tie recognition to company goals and strategy. Whether it’s customer service, innovation, teamwork, or cost control, surface and support anything that advances the organization’s top interests.
• OKR platforms are built to enable such two-way recognition. Where feedback and recognition are strong, quarterly objectives are constantly written and rewritten. OKR transparency ensures that big breakthroughs and small victories alike earn sincere congratulations. Everyone’s accomplishments should be seen and celebrated. As teams and departments interact this way, more people join in, and a recognition-rich culture reenergizes the whole company.
• Conversation reshapes how individuals think, then how they act, and ultimately how the organization behaves.
• Albert Einstein reminded us, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
• When companies replace annual performance reviews with continuous communication and real-time feedback—or at least add more of it—they are far likelier to improve all year long.

Continuous Improvement

• Step away from instinct, pause, and clear your mind. Close your eyes and take stock of everything in front of you, then choose the path that best fits the organization’s needs. One of OKR’s most brilliant traits is how it systematizes reflection.
• Every process requires iteration. Andy Grove admitted that Intel made “many mistakes” when it adopted OKR: “We did not fully grasp its real purpose at first, but over time we got better at it.” Organizations may need four or five quarters to really absorb the system, and crafting mature objectives takes even longer.
• You will not nail OKR on the first try—or the second or third. Don’t get discouraged. Keep going. Keep adjusting, adapting, and experimenting until you find what works for you.
• Each OKR planning and execution cycle moves us forward a bit. Our objectives get sharper, key results more measurable, and success more likely. It took us two to three quarters to truly understand OKR, especially for broad product initiatives. Forecasting an entirely new market is hard; in execution we either wildly overshoot or miss. So we tweaked the OKR. We locked key results to deadlines rather than revenue or projected users—for example, “Ship the ProDiet update by May 1, 2015.” Once the feature launched and real data arrived, we could judge its impact more accurately.
• To help IT adjust to new conditions and demands, Adikes first introduced OKR to the managers who reported directly to him. One quarter later he extended it to the supervisors. Another quarter later the entire 600-person IT team was using OKR. Intuit’s experience shows the value of piloting before a full rollout.

The Importance of Culture

• We live in a new management era where everyone must know how to take the next right action. A rule book may tell me what is allowed, but what I really need is a set of cultural values that motivate me to do the right thing.
• For front-line employees, their OKR represent the sum of their contributions, but managers still shoulder day-to-day responsibilities. If my aim is a beautiful rose garden, of course “keeping the lawn green” is part of the job. I have never written “Walk around and keep morale high” as a key result. We write down what deserves special attention—and we remember it.
• In an OKR system, even the most junior employee can see everyone’s objectives. From the front line to the CEO, anyone can critique and correct. Every employee has the right to participate, even to challenge flaws in the goal-setting process itself. Meritocracy flourishes in the sunlight. When people publish “Here is what I’m working on,” it becomes easier to see where the best ideas originate. Unsurprisingly, the fast promotions go to those focused on the organization’s most important work. Organizational toxins—suspicion, blame-shifting, politics—wither under OKR.
• Culture is the common language that keeps individuals and the organization aligned, ensuring everyone is discussing the same things in ways that add value.
• Jeff Bezos says you need a culture that encourages innovation, no matter how small the innovation may appear.
• Leaders are passionate about shaping culture, and founders constantly ask how to defend it as the company grows. Many big-company CEOs now view OKR and CFR as instruments of cultural change.
• As CEO, Andy Grove saw himself as the chief standard-bearer for Intel’s values: culture is the expression of our beliefs and the code of conduct in the organization. A company’s success stems from building a vibrant, powerful culture.
• Employees who embody the culture behave consistently across situations, so managers do not have to rely on cumbersome policies and procedures. Management should cultivate shared values, shared goals, and trusted ways of working. How? Through words and writing—and, more importantly, by setting the example. Grove viewed himself as the ultimate role model for Intel’s culture.

Google studied the performance of 180 teams and found that five questions determined how well they did.

1. Structure and clarity: Are our team’s objectives, roles, and plans explicit and well understood?
2. Psychological safety: Do we feel safe and confident taking risks together?
3. Meaning: Are we doing something that matters to each of us personally?
4. Dependability: Can we count on one another to deliver high-quality work on time?
5. Impact: Do we genuinely believe the work we do makes a meaningful difference? The first question—structure and clarity—has the strongest influence on objectives and key results. The other four shape a healthy work culture, unlock OKR’s power, and make CFR effective. In a high-performing OKR environment, transparency and alignment encourage people to fulfill their obligations. At Google, teams share ownership for success or failure. At the same time, each person is accountable for specific results. The best performance emerges when teams collaborate tightly and feel deep responsibility for the product.

• Companies that empower people more fully will outperform their rivals.
• In transparent cultures, people are open, share the truth, welcome others, and move faster. The culture advocated by OKR and CFR is exactly that transparent culture.
• To change a culture, you need the right people in the organization, you need to remove those who are not a fit, and you must put the right people in the right seats. Most of the time people simply do not know how to link their goals to the outcomes they want; there is a lot of “theatre” in their work.
• Culture is a filter that governs whom the organization hires and which values the promoted employees hold.

Why OKR Matters

• Many people treat OKR as a tool, a solution, or an operating process. I see it as a launchpad. Whether you are starting up or leading a giant enterprise, OKR can help your business take flight.
• Ideas are easy; execution is everything. Without execution, ideas are castles in the air.
• OKR invites you to see your work from the perspective of the whole business, not just your own desk.
• OKR makes you ask: What ignites your passion? What will that passion drive you to do?
• OKR lets us keep the passion yet gives us a framework for thinking and acting. Without the framework, the thinking would be too abstract.
• For startups, OKR is a survival tool. In tech, young companies must grow fast enough to attract the next round before the money runs out.
• The tougher the mission, the more vital OKR becomes.
• Startups commonly face fuzzy positioning. As Nuna Health grew—from serving self-insured employers, to building a massive Medicaid database, to launching a whole suite of health-plan products—we relied on OKR more than ever. The entire team needed sharper focus and clearer priorities, the prerequisite for deeper commitment. Thanks to OKR, conversations that otherwise would never happen suddenly did, and we aligned. Each quarter we planned with intent rather than reacting to external events. Deadlines were tougher, yet people felt more confident about delivering what we promised.
• Many founders skip structured goal setting. They insist they do not need it, that growth is already fast, that problem solving is enough. Sure, they can improvise. But they squander the chance to grow great managers before scale kicks in. If you do not build these habits early, the company will outgrow the management team—leading either to failure or replacement. Both outcomes hurt. Better to cultivate management awareness from day one, even if the “department” is a solo act. OKR trains your people. It forges stronger managers, helps them avoid rookie mistakes, and plants big-company discipline and order inside small companies. At Zume, the biggest payoff from OKR was the process itself. The simplest way to raise performance is to force people to think deeply, thoroughly, and in context about the business.
• Implementing OKR is not about writing reports, staging a campaign, or keeping score. It is about forcing ourselves to think bigger and more strategically.
• OKR has such vast potential precisely because it is adaptable. There is no rigid dogma or single correct way to use it; everything must be tailored to context. Organizations at different stages have different needs. For some, setting clear, open objectives is a giant leap; for others, quarterly course corrections redefine the game. Everyone can identify their own focal objectives and manage them with OKR—it all depends on you.

Common Mistakes and Traps in Setting OKR

Trap 1: Failing to distinguish committed OKR from aspirational OKR

• Treating a committed OKR like an aspirational one raises the risk of failure. Teams may downplay it or refuse to re-order their priorities to deliver it.
• Conversely, mislabeling an aspirational OKR as committed creates artificial constraints. Teams struggle to find a workable path, priorities flip, and people who should focus on committed OKR get pulled toward moonshots instead.

Trap 2: Business as usual

• Teams often set OKR based on what they can achieve without changing anything they are doing, instead of what the team or customers truly need. That is the second trap.

Trap 3: Timid aspirational OKR

• Aspirational OKR usually start with the status quo but must answer: If we had surplus talent and a little luck, what else could we do? Or better yet: If resources were unlimited, what kind of world would we—or our customers—live in a few years from now? When you first draft an OKR, you often have no idea how to get there—that is why it is aspirational. But if you cannot understand and clearly describe the desired end state, you have no chance of reaching it.
• Litmus test: When you ask customers what they want, does the aspirational objective already meet—or exceed—their expectations?

Trap 4: Carrying too much weight

• Committed OKR should consume most, but not all, of a team’s resources. Taken together, committed and aspirational OKR should exceed the total resources available. If they match perfectly, you are just running a portfolio of committed OKR.
• If a team can satisfy every OKR without using all people or resources, they are hoarding capacity, setting unambitious objectives, or both. That should prompt leaders to reassign resources to teams that can use them better.

Trap 5: Low-value objectives (no one cares)

• OKR must deliver clear business value. Otherwise they are not worth the investment.
• A low-value objective is one that no one would notice even if it scored a perfect 1.0. A classic example: “Increase CPU utilization by another 3%.” That delivers no direct value to users or to Google. A better related objective would be “Reduce peak-query core usage by 3% without sacrificing quality or latency, and return the surplus cores to the pool,” which carries obvious economic value.
• Litmus test: If an OKR can earn a perfect score without producing end-user benefits or financial gains, rewrite it around tangible outcomes. “Launch X” is a weak objective because success measures are fuzzy. A better version is, “Deploy X to 90% of Borg storage cells to double Y.”

Simple Tests for OKR Quality

• If you can draft them all in five minutes, they probably aren’t good enough—keep thinking.
• If the objectives lack internal consistency, they need more maturation.
• If key results are written in inside jargon (like “ship Foo 4.1”), they probably still fall short. Shipping is less important than the impact. Why does Foo 4.1 matter? A better key result is “Increase registrations by 25% through releasing Foo 4.1,” or simply “Raise registrations.”
• Use real data. If every key result is achieved on the last day of the quarter, you likely did not truly deliver the plan.
• Ensure key results are measurable. Each key result needs an objective scale at quarter’s end. “Improve registration” is weak; “Increase daily registrations by 25% by May 1” is strong.
• Make the metrics explicit. Does “one million users” mean life-to-date signups or one million weekly active users?
• If major activities—or critical components of the work—fall outside the OKR, add them.
• Larger organizations should tier their OKR. The whole team sets high-level OKR, while subteams define the details. Make sure “horizontal” OKR—projects requiring multiple teams—support each team’s key results.

A Typical OKR Cycle

Imagine you are setting OKR for the company, the team, and individuals. Use the following as a guide.

OKR Software

• World-class OKR platforms offer mobile access, automatic updates, analytics dashboards, real-time alerts, and integrations with tools like Salesforce, JIRA, and Zendesk.
• In cutting-edge goal-management platforms, OKR scores are generated automatically. The data is objective; there is no need for manual tallying.

John Doerr, Measure What Matters. Citic Press Group. Reading notes.

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Published at: Oct 2, 2025 · Modified at: Oct 26, 2025