What is OKR: a complete guide with examples.

OKR is a method for choosing a few important things each quarter and measuring, with numbers, whether they happened. The acronym stands for Objectives and Key Results. The idea fits in one sentence: the objective says where you want to go; the key results tell you how you'll know you got there.

The method is simple to explain and hard to sustain. Most companies that try OKRs set great goals in January and drop them by March. This guide explains the concept, shows how to write key results that actually work, compares OKRs with KPIs and SMART goals, gives complete examples for five areas of a small company, and closes with the mistakes that sink the process.

What OKRs are, on one page

An OKR has two parts. The objective is a qualitative sentence that gives direction and motivates: "Be the fastest real estate agency to respond in our city." The key results (KRs) are two to four numbers that prove the objective was reached: "reduce the first response time to a lead from 4 hours to 15 minutes."

Three traits set an OKR apart from an ordinary goal list:

• Few. One to three objectives per team per cycle. Focus is the point of the method.
• Measurable. Every key result has a starting number and a target number.
• Short timeframe. The most common cycle is the quarter: long enough to change something for real and short enough to correct course.

Another trait, more cultural: OKRs are visible. Everyone in the company should be able to see other teams' objectives, which helps align priorities and spot early that two teams want incompatible things.

Objective, key result and initiative: three different layers

The most common confusion is mixing up the three. They answer different questions.

When someone writes "implement the ticket system" as a key result, they're describing an initiative. You can complete the task and the support can still be bad. The key result would be the expected effect: response time, satisfaction score, volume of reopened tickets.

The two-person test

A simple test to tell whether something is really a key result: if two people could disagree, at the end of the quarter, about whether it was achieved, it isn't one yet. "Improve customer support" fails the test. "Respond to 90% of tickets within 2 business hours" passes.

OKR, KPI and SMART goal: which is which

All three coexist well, but they aren't synonyms. Understanding the difference keeps you from using OKRs for what they aren't meant for.

OKRs and KPIs

A KPI is the car's dashboard: speed, fuel, temperature. You glance at it all the time and only act when something goes out of range. An OKR is the trip you decided to take this quarter. The two connect: often the key result is precisely to move a KPI. If your churn rate (a KPI) is 6% a month and you want 4%, that number goes into the quarter's OKR, along with the initiatives that support it.

The opposite mistake is putting everything that already works into the OKR. Keeping recurring revenue at R$ 80 thousand is not a quarterly objective: it's a KPI that needs watching.

OKRs and SMART goals

SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) is a quality criterion for writing any goal. A good key result is, in practice, a SMART goal. The difference is in the whole: the OKR forces you to have the objective that gives the number meaning and limits how many goals you set. A standalone SMART goal can be perfect and have no connection to the company's direction.

How to write good key results

Write every key result with the same structure: change verb + metric + from X to Y. The verbs "increase," "reduce," "raise" and "keep above" work well. Verbs like "improve," "implement," "study" and "analyze" tend to hide activity.

Right and wrong examples

Five rules that prevent most problems

1. Always have the starting value. If you don't know today's number, the first job of the quarter is to measure it, and that can be the key result itself.
2. Prefer outcomes to activities. Ask "what if I do this and nothing improves?" If the answer is "that could happen," it's an activity.
3. Choose numbers the team can influence. Company-wide revenue has no lever for the support team; response time does.
4. Two to four per objective. A single one is usually an isolated number you can "push" with tricks; with five or more, nobody tracks them.
5. Mix signals. If the only KR is volume, quality drops. If the objective is to grow, one KR can be quantity (new customers) and another quality (churn in the first 60 days).

Ambitious goals: how far to stretch

Many companies separate two types of OKR. The committed type is what the team must deliver: 100% is expected and anything less requires an explanation. The aspirational (or stretch) type is deliberately hard: reaching 70% would already be a good achievement. What matters is making it clear, when writing, which type each key result is. Mixing the two without saying so causes arguments at close-out: one person thinks 70% was a win, the other thinks it was a failure.

Cadence: what happens over the quarter

OKRs without a tracking routine become decoration. A working cycle has four moments.

1. Planning (before the quarter). Define the objectives, write the key results, measure the starting values and choose the initiatives. Set aside half a day to two days, no more.
2. Weekly check-in (10 to 15 minutes). For each key result: today's number, what changed since last week, the next step and what's blocking it. If the number doesn't move for three weeks in a row, either the goal isn't a real priority or the work has stopped.
3. Mid-cycle review (monthly). Time to decide. Adjust the scope, reassign people, drop a poorly chosen goal. Dropping something with a stated reason is a sign of maturity.
4. Close-out (end of the quarter). Score each key result, write down what you learned and carry the lessons into the next cycle. What wasn't achieved isn't "punished": it becomes a question (was the goal wrong, was the plan wrong or did the execution fail?).

If you work in short cycles, there's a shortcut: each sprint planning session is the natural moment to ask "what goes in here that moves the number?" If you work with long deadlines, you can ask the same question when reviewing the project schedule.

Cascading OKRs: aligning company, areas and teams

In a company with more than one team, objectives need to talk to each other. The typical design has three levels: the company defines one to three objectives; each area defines its own so they contribute to the company's; teams, where they exist, do the same relative to the area.

There are two ways to align, and good companies combine both:

• Top down. Leadership defines what matters; the areas respond with what they can do.
• Bottom up. The areas propose part of their objectives based on what they see day to day, and leadership adjusts. That way, the plan isn't just an order.

The main thing to watch is not confusing cascading with copying. If the company goal is "grow recurring revenue 30%" and the sales goal is the same sentence, nothing was cascaded. A correct cascade would be: sales takes "increase revenue from new customers from R$ 40 thousand to R$ 60 thousand a month"; support takes "reduce churn from 6% to 4% a month"; marketing takes "generate 120 qualified opportunities a month." Each area has its own number and they all add up to the company's.

Another concern is dependencies. If marketing's key result depends on a deliverable from the product team, both areas need to have agreed on it beforehand, with a name and a deadline. A goal that depends on someone who wasn't part of defining it tends to stall mid-quarter.

Complete examples for five areas of a company

For the examples below, imagine a Brazilian services company with 25 people that sells on monthly contracts. The numbers are illustrative: every company should start from its own real values.

1. Sales

Objective: Close more contracts with customers who stay.

• KR1: increase new-contract revenue from R$ 40 thousand to R$ 60 thousand a month.
• KR2: raise the proposal-to-contract conversion rate from 18% to 25%.
• KR3: shorten the average sales cycle from 32 to 22 days.

Possible initiatives: revise the proposal script, create an automatic follow-up after 3 days without a reply, build a list of customers who referred others.

2. Marketing

Objective: Be found by people who are already searching for what we sell.

• KR1: increase organic website visits from 3,000 to 5,000 a month.
• KR2: generate 120 qualified opportunities a month (today it's 70).
• KR3: reduce the cost per opportunity from R$ 95 to R$ 70.

Possible initiatives: publish four articles a month focused on bottom-of-funnel searches, rewrite the main pages, adjust the targeting of paid campaigns.

3. Customer service and support

Objective: Have support that customers praise.

• KR1: respond to 90% of tickets within 2 business hours (today it's 62%).
• KR2: raise the satisfaction score (CSAT) from 7.8 to 9.0.
• KR3: reduce reopened tickets from 14% to 6%.

Possible initiatives: define SLAs by priority, create canned replies for the ten most frequent questions, review reopened tickets weekly.

4. Operations

Objective: Deliver without rework.

• KR1: raise on-time deliveries from 78% to 92%.
• KR2: reduce rework (hours spent redoing work) from 12% to 5% of the total.
• KR3: shorten the average time between contract signing and the start of delivery from 12 to 5 days.

Possible initiatives: standardize customer onboarding, create a quality checklist before each delivery, review workload distribution per person.

5. People and finance

Objective: Grow with healthy cash flow and a healthy team.

• KR1: reduce delinquency from 9% to 4% of the receivables portfolio.
• KR2: shorten the average time to hire from 45 to 30 days.
• KR3: raise team retention (people who stay 12 months or more) from 70% to 85%.

Possible initiatives: automatic billing with a reminder before the due date, a hiring process with defined stages and deadlines, monthly one-on-one conversations.

Notice that every key result has a starting and ending value, that none is a deliverable and that each points to a number someone can influence. If you want to start from a ready-made structure, the OKR template brings this format in a spreadsheet.

Common mistakes that sink OKRs

1. Writing tasks as if they were results. "Launch the new site" is a deliverable. The result is what the site changes: visits, orders, tickets avoided.
2. Having too many objectives. When everything is a priority, the day-to-day decides and the OKR loses. Three objectives per team is the ceiling.
3. Tying bonuses to the number. The moment the result becomes compensation, the team negotiates easy goals and hides problems. The method starts serving the bonus, not learning.
4. Setting and forgetting. Without a weekly check-in, the goal only resurfaces at close-out, when nothing can be changed anymore.
5. Copying the goal from above. If every area has the same sentence as the executives, there's no alignment: there's repetition.
6. Ignoring capacity. An ambitious goal with a team swamped by recurring work is an empty promise. Look at the workload per person before locking in the quarter.
7. Using OKRs for everything. What is routine and just needs to be maintained is a KPI. What is a one-off job is a task.
8. Having a generic owner. "The sales area" is not an owner. Every key result needs a named person who updates the number and brings the topic to the meeting.

A subtler mistake deserves the same attention: updating the number "from memory" on the eve of close-out. The solution is to shrink the distance between the goal and the work, which leads to the last point of this guide. For supporting reading on the topic, see the article OKRs linked to tasks.

How to start your first quarter

1. Start small. Choose one team and one objective, with two key results. Run the full cycle before expanding.
2. Measure the starting numbers. If one doesn't exist, the first key result can be to create a way to measure it.
3. Choose an owner for each key result. One person, by name.
4. List the initiatives. For each key result, ask "what work moves this number?" If there's no answer, the goal doesn't have a plan yet.
5. Put the weekly check-in on the calendar. Same day and time, for 10 to 15 minutes.
6. Reserve the monthly review and the close-out. Put them on the calendar the day you define the plan.

The initiatives that support each number should become projects and tasks with an assignee and a due date. Small action plans can be put together with a 5W2H, and when several people share a deliverable, the RACI matrix removes doubt about who does the work and who approves.

How to do OKRs in Tasskee

The distance between the goal and the work is where OKRs usually die. In Tasskee, the goals and OKR screen sits alongside the team's tasks, and the flow goes like this:

1. Create the objective with an owner and a deadline, and add the key results that measure it.
2. Link the tasks or projects that support each key result. As the team completes the work on the board, the percentage moves on its own, with no parallel spreadsheet.
3. Update by hand what comes from outside. Indicators such as revenue or satisfaction score come in through check-ins, with the day's number.
4. Track the status. It's calculated against the deadline: on track, at risk or off track. That way, the weekly meeting starts with what's off track.
5. Build the hierarchy. The company goal breaks down into the areas' goals, and you can see the whole portfolio on one screen.
6. Get the weekly summary by email. The check-in conversation starts with facts, not memory.

Goals and OKRs are part of the Pro plan (R$ 39 per user/month), unlocked during the 15-day trial, no credit card. Reports dashboards help you check the team's workload and the off-track goals tied to the projects that support them.