How to Write OKRs: A Step-By-Step Guide

Key takeaways

Develop OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) by defining clear objectives and establishing measurable results for your employees to achieve.

• When writing OKRs, establish your objective, or goal, and determine how you will measure progress toward achieving that goal.

• Structure your OKRs as a single sentence that defines your goal and how you’ll achieve it, or as a succinct list.

• You can encourage team collaboration and ensure company-wide alignment across your organization as you work together to achieve OKRs.

Discover the critical attributes of OKRs and learn how to write effective OKRs that support your company or organization, and how to overcome challenges. Then, explore Coursera for Business to discover how you can drive business growth using this expert-powered learning platform that offers expert-led courses and tailored learning paths.

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What is an OKR?

OKRs, or objectives and key results, are a goal-setting technique that allows you to define clear objectives for your company along with specific measures to track results. You can use OKRs at various business levels, whether your focus is learning and development, increasing sales, improving employee or customer retention, or growing your business. The spirit of OKRs is when you identify measurable goals for your company, create alignment, and encourage collaboration to pursue and achieve those objectives.  

According to Amazon, OKRs are essential for your company because they “are like the trophy at the end of a long tournament that the team wants to win. They provide a measurable target for an organization, team, or individual to hit” [1]. Businesses worldwide, including Google, Allbirds, and Netflix, use OKRs.

Defining OKRs and their purpose

OKRs are a framework for defining your goals and measuring your progress. However, before you can understand what you use OKRs for, it’s helpful to examine their definition in more detail and get a sense of how you might implement OKRs into company strategies. 

Objective: What you are aiming to achieve, or your goal. For example, the objective of an NBA team's general manager might be to make the owner a lot of money. 

Key results: This provides details about the measurement you will use to define whether you meet your objective. For example, the key results for achieving this objective might be winning an NBA championship and selling 90 percent of the tickets to every game during the season.

Your objective can be anything you want it to be, but it usually pertains to a company-wide or team goal. OKRs are an excellent way to build a framework for a group to follow and work together toward a common goal. OKRs keep each division throughout your company focused on taking the necessary steps to achieve the desired objective.

Your key results must be clear and measurable, either quantitative (90 percent ticket sales) or qualitative (winning an NBA championship), with no ambiguity. 

What are good OKR examples? How to structure your OKRs

You have two primary ways to structure OKRs, both of which are relatively straightforward. 

First, you can write it as a statement, such as:

“We will (objective) as measured by (key results).”

Or, you can structure it in a list format. For example:

Objective: We will … 

Key results: List up to three

Example 1

We will increase our tech division's artificial intelligence (AI) skill set by having each current employee earn an AI certification, hiring three new employees with AI backgrounds, and purchasing the best AI software.

Example 2

Objective: Increase the tech division’s artificial intelligence skill set.

Key Results:

• Each current employee earns an AI certification.

• Hire three new employees with AI experience.

• Purchase and implement effective AI software.

However you choose to structure your OKRs, they must be clear, specific, and measurable. It’s also helpful to review them periodically—some organizations do so weekly—and adjust them as needed. 

How to write OKRs: Step-by-step guide

Follow this step-by-step guide to writing effective OKRs by first aligning your objectives with your company strategy. Also, ensure your objectives and key results are impactful, relevant, clear, and easy to measure, with team buy-in and a clear timeline. 

1.  Align OKRs with company strategy.

For OKRs to be effective, they must make sense in the context of your organization. Your objective must align with company goals and strategy so that it seems an obvious fit to all involved and people feel motivated to work together to achieve a shared, relevant goal. When setting an objective, think about how it fits into the company's overall mission and what you are trying to achieve. Each OKR needs to contribute to the overall success of the company. 

2. Define clear and ambitious objectives.

It’s essential to create easy-to-understand objectives so that everyone knows the goal they are setting out to achieve. Be very specific to avoid any ambiguity, and keep objectives concise. Having clear objectives means everyone knows what management expects of them.

When writing objectives, consider how they will motivate and inspire your team. Practical objectives are realistic but challenging and typically involve change beyond normal business operations. You want people to feel motivated by your goals, so they need to see that they are achievable, which is more likely to compel them to put in the work. 

3. Choose the right key results.

When choosing your key results, make sure they are measurable. They can be quantitative or qualitative, but you must be able to measure whether the individual, team, or company has met the goals. While considering if you met a key result, it’s imperative to be able to answer “yes” or “no.” For example, you may have a quantitative key result such as “increase sales by 10 percent” or a qualitative result such as “assess customer pain points,” which you can measure in several ways, including feedback, a survey, and customer reviews. 

Another critical element is the number of key results you include for each objective. Too many results to measure makes it complicated, and an insufficient number means you might be unable to accomplish your objective. Around three key results per objective is a good number to aim for. The quality of your key results is integral to understanding the progress made toward your objective, the level of commitment from your team, and their effectiveness. You can use the key results to hold team members accountable, measure their performance, and make necessary adjustments.

Read more: Using Key Performance Indicators for Business Success

4. Ensure company-wide alignment. 

OKRs ensure uniformity across a team or organization when working towards a common goal or objective. Furthermore, the clarity of an OKR allows everyone to know what they are aiming for, thus creating more alignment between team members, which saves time and resources. Also, when you utilize OKRs to establish a clear representation of success, your employees will likely feel more aligned in pursuing this goal, contributing to worker retention. It also encourages collaboration between individuals and teams. It inspires a sense of interconnectedness, which can help employees understand the importance of their responsibilities and how their efforts affect their coworkers. 

Using OKRs should help propel the company forward in meeting its vision and organizational priorities. Next, consider establishing a clear time frame for accomplishing your key results. Having a deadline can allow you to remain aware of your progress while sticking to the overall plan for achieving your objective.

5. Set realistic time frames.

As with any goal, setting a time frame is important for OKRs. Having an appropriate time frame helps your department utilize resources effectively while keeping the overall pursuit of your objectives on track. Also, when establishing your time frame for completing the goals, you can choose from a variety of options, such as quarterly or yearly, or you may choose to frequently reassess and update your objectives. 

One way of doing this is to use an OKR cycle. An OKR cycle outlines the timeline from setting objectives to achieving results. For example, if your OKR cycle is quarterly, you might set objectives before the start of the quarter, review progress weekly throughout the quarter, and complete an evaluation at the end of the quarter. Use the SMART analogy when setting your OKRs: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. 

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Overcoming challenges and resistance

When introducing OKRs to an organization, you may find some resistance from staff, which you will need to overcome. Essentially, OKRs are about making changes, and people can resist change. For your OKRs to be effective, it is critical to involve the entire team. 

Firstly, it is important to embed OKRs into the working culture so that staff members see them as an integral part of their work and performance management. Start small, with easily achievable goals, so that your employees can understand what it feels like to use OKRs successfully. You can also build OKRs into already established routines, which can make it easier for your employees to form new habits. For example, maybe you implement OKRs to steer the focus of a management meeting.

Best practices for writing OKRs

When developing OKRs for your organization, keep in mind these best practices, such as establishing manageable objectives and setting challenging but reachable goals. Explore a few of these tips in more detail:

• Create manageable objectives: Focus on a small number of objectives at a time so your team can concentrate its efforts on achieving them. Ensure your objectives are detailed so each team member knows exactly what tasks to focus on.

• Ensure high-visibility tracking: Track OKR progress so the entire organization can follow along and each department can keep up with the others.

• Set realistic goals: Set challenging but reachable goals. This will ensure greater progress than if your goals are too easy to reach.

• Implement OKRs for long-term goals: You want to design OKRs to guide your organization's long-term strategy, rather than your employees' daily tasks. Routine duties are meant to support OKRs.

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