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Objectives and key results (OKR, alternatively OKRs) is a goal-setting framework used by individuals, teams, and organizations to define measurable goals and track their outcomes. The development of OKR is generally attributed to
Andrew Grove Andrew "Andy" Stephen Grove (born Gróf András István; 2 September 1936 – 21 March 2016) was a Hungarian-American businessman and engineer who served as the third CEO of Intel Corporation. He escaped from the Hungarian People's Republic dur ...
who introduced the approach to
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
in the 1970s and documented the framework in his 1983 book '' High Output Management''.


Overview

OKRs comprise an ''objective'' (a significant, concrete, clearly defined goal) and 3–5 ''key results'' (measurable success criteria used to track the achievement of that goal). Not only should objectives be significant, concrete, and clearly defined, they should also be inspirational for the individual, team, or organization that is working towards them. Objectives can also be supported by initiatives, which are the plans and activities that help to move forward the key results and achieve the objective. Key results should be measurable, either on a scale or with any numerical value (e.g. count, dollar amount, or percentage) that can be used by planners and decision makers to determine whether those involved in working towards the key result have been successful. There should be no opportunity for "grey area" when defining a key result.


History

Andrew Grove Andrew "Andy" Stephen Grove (born Gróf András István; 2 September 1936 – 21 March 2016) was a Hungarian-American businessman and engineer who served as the third CEO of Intel Corporation. He escaped from the Hungarian People's Republic dur ...
popularised the concept of OKR during his tenure at
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
in the 1970s. He later documented OKR in his 1983 book '' High Output Management''. In 1975,
John Doerr L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951) is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the ...
, at the time a
salesperson Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. A period during which goods are sold for a reduced price may also be referred ...
working for
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
, attended a course within Intel taught by Grove where he was introduced to the theory of OKRs, then called "iMBOs" ("Intel
Management by Objectives Management by objectives (MBO), also known as management by planning (MBP), was first popularized by Peter Drucker in his 1954 book ''The Practice of Management''.Drucker, P., ''The Practice of Management'', Harper, New York, 1954; Heinemann, Londo ...
"). Doerr, who by 1999 was working for
venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...
firm
Kleiner Perkins Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...
, introduced the idea of OKRs to
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
. The idea took hold and OKRs quickly became central to Google's culture as a "management methodology that helps to ensure that the company focuses efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization". Doerr published a book about the OKR framework titled ''Measure What Matters'' in 2018. Grove's simple but effective concept is explained by
John Doerr L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951) is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the ...
in his book:
Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman, computer engineer and computer scientist best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 when ...
, former CEO of
Alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...
and co-founder of
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, credited OKRs within the foreword to Doerr's book: Since becoming popular at
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, OKRs have found favor with several other similar large tech organizations including
LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...
,
Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
,
Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...
,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
and
GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...
.


Best practices

Doerr recommends that an organization's target success rate for key results be 70%. A 70% success rate encourages competitive goal-making that is meant to stretch workers at low risk. If 100% of the key results are consistently being met, the key results should be reevaluated. Considering this, OKRs are scored on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0, with 0.7 being the normal target for "aspirational" Key Results (where the aim is to make as much progress as possible), and 1.0 being the expected target for "committed" Key Results (where the outcome is the delivery of a product or feature, meeting a deadline, or a binary "done" or "not done" status). Organizations should be careful in crafting their OKRs such that they don't represent business as usual since those objectives are, by definition, not action-oriented and inspirational. Words like "help" and "consult" should also be avoided as they tend to be used to describe vague activities rather than concrete, measurable outcomes. When coming up with key results, it is also recommended to measure leading indicators instead of lagging indicators. Leading indicators are readily measurable and provide organizations with an early warning when something isn't going right so they can course-correct. Conversely, lagging indicators are those metrics which can't be attributed to particular changes and so prevent organizations from course-correcting in time. Ben Lamorte, author of ''The OKRs Field Book'', suggests 5 best practices for OKRs coaches: # "Less is more" - define a small set of OKRs # "Crawl-walk-run" - Deploy OKRs piecemeal. Begin with pilot teams rather than a full-scale deployment across an entire organization. In the first cycle, emphasize learning about OKRs. Reserve the second cycle to explore how best to scale the program, # "Outcomes, not output" - Write key results that mostly reflect outcomes (results) rather than output (amount of work delivered) # "OKRs are not everything" - Write OKRs that reflect the most important areas to make measurable progress rather than attempting to reflect everything you do. Distinguish OKRs from tasks and health metrics. Health metrics are monitored and important to track, but, unlike key results, they are not the focus for near-term improvement # The only way to learn OKRs is to do OKRs A 2025 study of 200 early-stage startups found that 68% reached $1M ARR faster using OKRs, with nearly 90% wishing they had started earlier. Top teams kept OKRs simple, ran regular check-ins, and focused on timely rollout Once planning and crafting OKRs is done, teams have the crucial task of managing their work effectively throughout the OKR cycle. Businessperson and author
Christina Wodtke Christina R. Wodtke (born October 22, 1966) is an American businessperson and specialist in the area of design thinking, information architecture and Management Science (specializing in objectives and key results (OKR) and team productivity.) She ...
recommends setting a weekly cadence to ensure progress toward the goals is achieved. In her framework, Wodtke suggests answering the following questions every Monday: # What is the team's confidence in achieving the OKRs? # Are the team's Health Metrics in a good place? # What are the most important things to get done this week? # What should the team prepare for in the coming four weeks?


Criticism

OKRs were once typically set at the individual, team, and organization levels; however, most organizations no longer define OKRs for individual contributors as these OKRs tend to look like a task list and lead to conflating OKRs with performance reviews. The motivation for starting OKRs at the company, team, and individual levels was inspired by the 2014 Google Ventures Workshop Recording in which Rick Klau explains that OKRs exist at 3 levels. Subsequently, in November 2017, Klau clarified via twitter: “6- Skip individual OKRs altogether. Especially for younger, smaller companies. They’re redundant. Focus on company- and team-level OKRs.” Additionally, there is criticism that creating OKRs at multiple levels may cause too much of a waterfall approach, something that OKRs in many ways intend to avoid.


Similar frameworks

There is an overlap with other
strategic planning Strategic planning is the activity undertaken by an organization through which it seeks to define its future direction and makes decisions such as resource allocation aimed at achieving its intended goals. "Strategy" has many definitions, but it ...
frameworks like objectives, goals, strategies and measures (OGSM) and Hoshin Kanri's X-Matrix. OGSM, however, explicitly includes "strategy" as one of its components. In addition, OKRs overlap with other
performance management Business performance management (BPM) (also known as corporate performance management (CPM) enterprise performance management (EPM),) is a management approach which encompasses a set of processes and analytical tools to ensure that a business o ...
frameworks, sitting somewhere between
performance indicator A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it e ...
(KPI) and
balanced scorecard A balanced scorecard is a strategy performance management tool – a well-structured report used to keep track of the execution of activities by staff and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. The term 'balanced scorecard' prim ...
.


See also

*
Management by objectives Management by objectives (MBO), also known as management by planning (MBP), was first popularized by Peter Drucker in his 1954 book ''The Practice of Management''.Drucker, P., ''The Practice of Management'', Harper, New York, 1954; Heinemann, Londo ...
* Objectives, goals, strategies and measures (OGSM) *
Key performance indicator A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it e ...
(KPI) *
Balanced scorecard A balanced scorecard is a strategy performance management tool – a well-structured report used to keep track of the execution of activities by staff and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. The term 'balanced scorecard' prim ...
*
SMART criteria S.M.A.R.T. (or SMART) is an acronym used as a mnemonic device to establish criteria for effective Goal setting, goal-setting and objective development. This framework is commonly applied in various fields, including project management, employee per ...
* Goal Question Metric (
GQM GQM, the initialism for goal, question, metric, is an established goal-oriented approach to software metrics to improve and measure software quality. History GQM has been promoted by Victor Basili of the University of Maryland, College Park a ...
)


References

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