OKRs: How to Turn Big Ideas into Real Outcomes
Build focus and accountability without micromanaging your team
In this issue:
Part 1: Understanding the OKR Model
What is the OKR Model?
How the OKR Model Works
Part 2: Applying the OKR Model
The 5-Step Approach to Applying the OKR Model
How OKRs help in real-life leadership scenarios
The OKR Model Worksheet
Part 3: Going from here
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Recommended Resources
Final Takeaway
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Let me tell you about a time I thought my teams were on fire, until I realized we were just spinning in circles.
It was the start of a new quarter. We had an inspiring vision, very capable and motivated teams, and an ambitious roadmap. We were, dare I say, ready to go.
But three weeks into the quarter, I noticed something strange. One of the teams was deep into building a feature that wasn’t in the plan. Another team was busy fixing a long trail of bugs that were non-urgent. Meanwhile, the third (DevOps) team was busy refining dashboards and metrics that we hadn’t decided to ship.
Everyone across all three teams worked hard, I give you that. Slack was buzzing, calendars were full, and email inboxes were flooded. But we weren’t really moving closer to our goals.
I realized that, as a leader, I had made the classic mistake of setting direction but not alignment. I had defined our priorities, but had failed to provide a way to measure if we were headed in the right direction.
In today’s article, I will discuss the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) Model, which is a great framework to counter such situations. We will learn about how it works, and more importantly, how you can apply this in your own leadership situation.
Ready? Let’s dive in. 🚀
Part 1: Understanding the OKR Model
In this section, we’ll explore what the OKR model is, how it works, and why it matters, especially for leaders who want clarity, focus, and real execution.
What is the OKR Model?
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It’s a simple yet powerful framework used by companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Spotify to set goals and track progress.
It was originally developed at Intel by Andy Grove and later popularized by John Doerr, who brought it to Google in its early days. Since then, it's become one of the most widely adopted goal-setting systems in modern organizations.
The OKR model helps answer three critical questions:
Where do we need to go? → That’s your Objective.
How do we know we’re getting there? → Those are your Key Results.
What will we do to get there? → These are your Initiatives.
At its core, the OKR model gives you a way to turn strategy into execution, by focusing teams on outcomes, not activity.
You might already be setting goals. But if your team isn’t clear on how to measure progress or decide where to focus their energy, you don’t have OKRs. You have wishful thinking.
How the OKR Model Works
Let’s break this down into its key elements:
🎯 Objective – Where do we need to go?
An Objective is a clear, ambitious goal. It answers the question:
“Where do we need to go?”
Objectives are qualitative. They are not meant to be measured directly. Instead, they provide direction and focus. A good Objective should be bold, motivational, and easy to remember. It should feel exciting, not like a task list.
Examples of Objectives:
Deliver an amazing onboarding experience for new users
Become the most trusted product in our category
Build a high-performance, high-trust engineering culture
If you’re leading a team, your Objective should help them see the “why” behind the work. It paints the big picture.
📏 Key Results – How do we know we’re getting there?
Key Results are how you know whether you’re making real progress toward the Objective. They answer:
“How do we know we’re getting there?”
Unlike Objectives, Key Results are quantitative. They are outcomes, not tasks. They force you to be specific, and they create clarity.
Examples of Key Results:
Reduce average onboarding time from 8 days to 3 days
Increase onboarding completion rate from 60% to 90%
Achieve NPS score of 45+ from new users within the first 14 days
Each Objective usually has 2–4 Key Results. If your Key Results are vague, you’ll never know if you’re winning or losing.
Also, if a Key Result can be “checked off” like a to-do, it’s probably not a real result. For example, “Launch onboarding emails” is a task. “Improve onboarding completion rate to 90%” is a result.
📋 Initiatives – What will we do to get there?
This is the third, and often missing, piece of the puzzle.
Initiatives are the concrete actions, projects, or experiments you’ll take on to influence the Key Results. They answer:
“What will we do to get there?”
Initiatives are not measured. They are executed. You can finish them, but that doesn’t guarantee success.
Examples of Initiatives:
Redesign the onboarding email flow
Build a guided product tour for new users
Launch a live welcome webinar every Monday
Interview 10 recent users to map out friction points
Putting It All Together
I find the ‘journey’ analogy to be easy to understand:
The Objective is your destination
The KRs are your milestones along the way
The Initiatives are the path/road itself
I do want to caution you though: this analogy isn’t perfect, since the KRs that are linked to an objective may be measuring different aspects of the goal, so they don’t necessarily need to line up or be sequential. But it’s an easy way to wrap your head around the concept at a high level.
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Part 2: Applying the OKR Model
We’ve now seen what OKRs are and how they work. But how do you actually use them in real leadership situations?
In this section, we will discuss:
A simple 5-step process for applying OKRs in your own team and projects
Real-world examples of common leadership challenges OKRs can help solve
A practical worksheet - The OKR Model Worksheet - you can start using today
Let’s begin with the 5-step process.