What Are OKRs?
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It's a goal-setting framework used by everyone from Google to early-stage startups. The idea is simple:
- Objectives are qualitative goals — what you want to achieve
- Key Results are quantitative measures — how you'll know you achieved it
Example
Objective: Become the go-to task management tool for startups
Key Results:
- Reach 1,000 active workspaces
- Achieve a 60% weekly retention rate
- Get featured in 5 startup publications
The objective inspires. The key results measure. Together, they create clarity and accountability without micromanaging how the work gets done.
Why Startups Need OKRs
Focus
Startups can do anything — but they can't do everything. OKRs force you to choose 3–5 objectives per quarter and commit to them fully. Everything else is explicitly deprioritized.
Alignment
When every team's OKRs connect to company-level objectives, everyone pulls in the same direction. Engineering knows why they're building a specific feature. Marketing knows which narrative to push. Sales knows which deals to prioritize.
Accountability
Key results are measurable. At the end of the quarter, there's no ambiguity about whether you hit them. This creates a healthy accountability culture without blame.
How to Set Good OKRs
Step 1: Start With Company Objectives
The leadership team defines 3–5 company-level objectives for the quarter. Keep them qualitative and aspirational:
- ✅ "Build a world-class customer onboarding experience"
- ❌ "Increase onboarding completion rate to 85%"
The second example is a key result, not an objective.
Step 2: Define 2–4 Key Results Per Objective
Key results should be:
- Measurable — a number you can track
- Achievable but stretchy — 70% completion is success (this is the Google approach)
- Time-bound — within the quarter
- Within your control — don't set key results that depend on external factors
| Good Key Results | Bad Key Results |
|---|---|
| Reduce average onboarding time to 3 days | Make customers happy |
| Ship 5 onboarding improvement features | Work on onboarding |
| Achieve 90% onboarding checklist completion | Do a better job |
Step 3: Connect Team OKRs to Company OKRs
Each team creates their own OKRs that directly support the company objectives:
Company Objective: Build a world-class customer onboarding experience
Engineering Team OKR:
- Objective: Streamline the onboarding flow
- KR1: Reduce setup steps from 8 to 4
- KR2: Add an interactive tutorial with 80% completion rate
- KR3: Achieve page load time under 2 seconds for onboarding screens
Marketing Team OKR:
- Objective: Create onboarding content that drives activation
- KR1: Produce 5 onboarding guide blog posts
- KR2: Launch an email drip sequence with 40% open rate
- KR3: Create 3 video tutorials with 100+ views each
Step 4: Link Goals to Actual Tasks
This is where most OKR implementations fail. Teams set beautiful objectives and then never connect them to daily work.
The fix: link key results to actual tasks and projects. When an engineer works on the onboarding flow, that task should be connected to the "Streamline the onboarding flow" objective. Progress on tasks automatically updates goal progress.
The OKR Cadence
| Activity | When | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Set company OKRs | Start of quarter | 2 hours |
| Set team OKRs | Week 1 of quarter | 1 hour per team |
| Weekly check-in | Every week | 10 min per team |
| Mid-quarter review | Week 6 | 1 hour |
| End-of-quarter grading | Last week | 1 hour |
Common OKR Mistakes
- Too many objectives — if you have 10 OKRs, you have zero priorities
- Key results that aren't measurable — "improve quality" isn't a key result
- Setting OKRs and forgetting them — weekly check-ins are essential
- 100% completion = success — OKRs should be stretchy; 70% is good
- Tying OKRs to compensation — this incentivizes sandbagging
Track Goals Where You Track Work
OKRs work best when they live alongside your daily task management — not in a separate tool that you check once a month. When goals and tasks share a platform, progress tracking happens automatically.