OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a methodology for goal setting, first developed by Peter Drucker and later built upon by Andy Grove, CEO at Intel. John Doerr, author of "Measure What Matters", also worked at Intel during the time, later became advisor to Google and introduced OKRs in 1999. It's now used by thousands of companies worldwide including Netflix, LinkedIn, Twitter and Airbnb.
The Objective is what you want to achieve and should be inspirational to the whole team or organisation.
The Key results track how to achieve it. Like SMART goals, they should be specific, measurable, and work to a timeline.
Tips
- Try not to create more than 5 objectives at a time
- Create 2-5 Key results for each objective
- Make them short and simple
- Make them exciting
- Stretch your team/organisation - if you're reaching 100% of all of your goals, then they are too easy
- Regularly follow-up - they should not be "set and forget"
Examples
Objective: Land more customers than last quarter
Key Result 1: 50,000 click-throughs on our advert
Key Result 2: Achieve 2,000 signups
Key Result 3: 50% lower bounce rate on our landing page.
Objective: Reduce our carbon emissions to net-zero
Key Result 1: Finish decarbonisation of the final 3 factories
Key Result 2: 100% of employee flights to be carbon-offset
Key Result 3: 60% reduction of employee flights.
Here's an example from Gitlab's CEO:
Objective: CEO: Even prouder to work here
Key Result 1: 7 certifications with more than 10,000 certificates issued
Key Result 2: Graduate 2 internal projects from internal limited to public
Key Result 3: Raise monthly contributors from 80 to 150.
Further reading
https://felipecastro.com/en/okr/what-is-okr/