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A wish becomes a goal with a finish line
With OKRs you write down each quarter where you want to go and how you will know you got there. "More customers" is a wish. "Win more custom furniture jobs without a bigger ad budget", with key results of 40 requests a month, a quote within 48 hours and 25 new reviews, is an OKR. The objective may be ambitious; the key results must be measurable, so nobody argues at the end of the quarter about whether it worked.
A quarter is long enough to get somewhere and short enough to correct course. A team holds one to three at a time, not ten.
Drucker, then Intel, then Google
The root is management by objectives, described by Peter Drucker in 1954: managers and staff agree goals together. Andy Grove added measurable results at Intel in the 1970s and made goals shorter and more visible. John Doerr learned the method as an engineer at Intel and taught it to Google's founders in the fall of 1999, shortly after investing. His 2018 book Measure What Matters brought it to smaller companies.
Six weeks in: where the three key results stand
Key results, status after six weeks
KR1: from 20 to 40 custom quote requests a month31 of 40
New pages per type of cabinet live since week 3.
KR2: a quote within 48 hours for 9 in 10 requests8 in 10
Quote template with fixed prices per module.
KR3: 25 new Google reviews9 of 25
Review link not yet in the delivery email: action for week 7.
An objective says where you want to go, in words. Key results say how you know you are there, in numbers.
Goal, KPI or key result: the difference
| What | OKR | KPI | Plain goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A change you want this quarter | A number you track all the time | A wish or a task |
| Example | From 20 to 40 custom requests | Requests per month | "Sell more" |
| Period | One quarter | Always | Often open |
| Measurable | Yes, with a start and end value | Yes | Rarely |
| Ambition | Deliberately high | A healthy norm | Varies |
A KPI tells you whether the engine runs, an OKR where you drive this quarter. A key result often becomes a KPI later: once quotes go out within 48 hours, you keep watching that number.
A joinery that wants more custom work
Take a joinery with twelve people that wants more custom work, because that is where the margin is. The owner and two team leads write one objective and three key results in an afternoon. KR1 counts requests, and to move it he has a page per type of cabinet built, aimed at the search intent of people looking for made-to-measure furniture. KR2 measures how fast a quote leaves; a template with fixed prices per module helps. KR3 counts reviews, with a review link in the delivery email and the tips in get more Google reviews. Every Monday morning they spend ten minutes on the status. At the end of the quarter they score each KR: hit, half, missed, and why.
Scoring at the end of the quarter
At the end of the quarter each key result gets a score from 0 to 1: how much of the distance between start and target you covered.
| Key result | Start | Target | Reached | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Custom quote requests per month | 20 | 40 | 34 | 0.7 |
| Quotes out within 48 hours | 5 in 10 | 9 in 10 | 8 in 10 | 0.75 |
| New Google reviews | 0 | 25 | 15 | 0.6 |
At Google 0.6 to 0.7 on an ambitious objective counts as good: always hitting 1.0 means you aimed too low. Agree up front whether an OKR is ambitious or a firm commitment, such as a legal deadline, because then only 1.0 counts. Teams spread across countries can share one objective as long as everyone agrees where each number comes from: which form counts a request, which system holds the quote date.
One afternoon a quarter, ten minutes a week
OKRs need no software: a shared document or a marketing plan is enough for a small company. They cost an afternoon per quarter and ten minutes a week. What they return is focus. If you want to see the numbers without collecting them, a dashboard built into your own custom software pulls them from the systems you already use.
Where it goes wrong
Too many. Five objectives with five key results each are 25 goals, so no focus. Start with one.
Tasks instead of results. "Launch a new website" is a task. "From 20 to 40 requests" is a result; the website is one way to get there.
Tied to pay. Lose your bonus for missing an ambitious goal and you will write safe goals from then on. Keep OKRs apart from reviews.
No measurement. A key result nobody can read is a guess. If you measure return in euros, work with ROI, not revenue.
What teams ask before their first quarter
What is the difference between OKR and KPI?
A KPI is a number you track all the time, such as requests per month. An OKR is a change you want in one quarter, with a start and end value. A key result can become a KPI afterwards.
How many OKRs should a small company have?
One to three objectives per quarter for the whole company, each with three to five key results. More is no longer focus.
Do you have to hit an OKR 100 percent?
Not always. Many companies write deliberately ambitious OKRs and do not expect to hit them all; others use them as firm commitments. Agree up front which it is, or every missed goal feels like failure.
What does OKR stand for?
Objectives and Key Results: goals and the measurable results that show you reached them.