Okr Framework

Purpose

Set Objectives and Key Results that translate strategy into measurable, time-bound goals teams can actually rally behind. This skill covers OKR writing, vertical alignment (company → team → individual), and the pitfalls that make OKRs into pointless bureaucracy.

Key Concepts

OKR Structure

Objective: Qualitative, inspiring, memorable. Answers "Where are we going?" Key Results (2-5 per objective): Quantitative, measurable, time-bound. Answers "How do we know we arrived?"

The Alignment Cascade

Company OKR:  "Become the category leader in PM analytics"
     ↓
Team OKR:     "Prove product-market fit with mid-market SaaS PMs"
     ↓
Individual:   "Ship onboarding redesign that doubles activation"

OKR Grading (Google-style)

Key Principles

• Outcomes, not outputs: "Increase activation rate to 60%" NOT "Ship 3 features"
• Aspirational (stretch): If you hit 100% every quarter, your goals are too easy
• Public: Everyone sees everyone's OKRs to enable alignment
• Not compensation-linked: OKRs ≠ performance reviews (or people sandbag)

Application

Step 1: Write the Objective

**Objective:** [Inspiring, qualitative statement of direction]

**Quality checks:**
- [ ] Memorable — can you say it without reading it?
- [ ] Aspirational — does it stretch the team?
- [ ] Time-bound — achievable within the OKR period?
- [ ] Aligned — does it connect to company/team OKR above?

Step 2: Write Key Results (2-5)

**KR1:** [Metric] from [baseline] to [target] by [date]
**KR2:** [Metric] from [baseline] to [target] by [date]
**KR3:** [Metric] from [baseline] to [target] by [date]

**Key Result quality checks (for each):**
- [ ] Quantitative — is there a number?
- [ ] Has a baseline — do you know the starting point?
- [ ] Measurable today — can you actually track this?
- [ ] Outcome-focused — does it measure impact, not effort?
- [ ] Not gameable — can someone hit the number through the wrong behavior?

Step 3: Check Alignment

**Alignment check:**
- Company OKR this supports: [Which one?]
- Dependency on other teams: [List them]
- Potential conflicts with other team OKRs: [Any?]

Examples

✅ Good OKR

**Objective:** Make our onboarding so good that new users can't help but invite their team.

**KR1:** Increase 7-day activation rate from 28% to 55%
**KR2:** Decrease median time-to-first-value from 45 min to 10 min
**KR3:** Increase organic invitations from 0.3 to 1.2 per activated user

❌ Bad OKR

**Objective:** Improve onboarding

**KR1:** Ship redesigned onboarding flow
**KR2:** Complete 10 user interviews
**KR3:** Update help docs

Why this fails: Objective is vague, all KRs are outputs (tasks), not outcomes (impact). Could ship all 3 and have zero improvement.

Quality Rubric

Common Pitfalls

Pitfall 1: KRs Are Disguised Tasks

Symptom: "Ship onboarding v2", "Write 5 blog posts", "Complete research"

Fix: These are initiatives, not key results. Ask: "If we did this thing, what would change?" That change is the KR.

Pitfall 2: Too Many OKRs

Symptom: 5 objectives with 5 KRs each = 25 things to track.

Fix: 1-3 objectives max, 2-4 KRs each. If everything is a priority, nothing is.

Pitfall 3: OKRs That Punish Risk-Taking

Symptom: People set easy goals they know they'll hit because OKRs affect compensation.

Fix: Separate OKRs from performance reviews. OKRs track strategic progress, not individual performance.

References

Related Skills

• skills/strategy/product-vision-statement/SKILL.md — OKRs operationalize the vision
• skills/strategy/north-star-metric/SKILL.md — NSM often becomes a company-level KR
• skills/planning/roadmap-planning/SKILL.md — OKRs inform roadmap prioritization

External Frameworks

• John Doerr, Measure What Matters (2018)
• Christina Wodtke, Radical Focus (2016)
• Google OKR Playbook

Skill type: Component Domain: Strategy & Vision