Why OKRs Matter
I‘ll be direct: I almost didn‘t write this piece. There are thousands of OKR explainers online. Most of them say the same thing. If you want a textbook definition, Google will serve you fine.
What I can offer is something different: what OKRs look like when the stakes are real, the stakeholders are competing, and alignment isn‘t a corporate nicety—it‘s the difference between a team that moves and a team that spins.
I learned alignment negotiating in conflict zones—Iraq, Somalia, Sudan. Every party at the table had different objectives. Every objective had different measures of success. And unless you could get people to agree on what winning resembled—not just the aspiration, but the measurable evidence—you had no deal. You had theater.
OKRs are the business version of that discipline.
What OKRs Actually Are (And What They‘re Not)
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. The Objective is the direction—qualitative, human, compelling. “Become the market leader in customer experience.“ “Build a product our users can‘t live without.“
Key Results are the evidence—quantitative, measurable, time-bound. “Increase NPS from 32 to 55.“ “Reduce churn from 8% to 4%.“ “Achieve 40% repeat purchase rate.“
Three to five Key Results per Objective. Not more. More becomes noise. And noise is the enemy of alignment.
Here‘s what OKRs are not: a performance management tool. They‘re not how you evaluate people. They‘re how you align an organization around what matters. The moment you tie OKRs to individual performance reviews, people sandbag. They set easy targets they know they‘ll hit. The ambition dies.
OKRs vs. KPIs: The Distinction That Matters
People conflate these. They shouldn‘t.
KPIs—Key Performance Indicators—are the ongoing vital signs. Revenue, retention, operational efficiency, employee engagement. You track KPIs constantly. They tell you whether the car is running.
OKRs tell you where the car is going. They change. They‘re the ambitious bets you make for a specific period—usually a quarter or a year. They push beyond current performance.
You need both. KPIs without OKRs means you‘re optimizing what exists without deciding where you‘re headed. OKRs without KPIs means you‘re chasing a destination while the engine falls apart.
Why Most OKR Implementations Fail
Organizations adopt OKRs enthusiastically and abandon them within two quarters. The pattern is almost always the same.
Failure 1: Too many objectives. If you have seven objectives, you have zero priorities. The whole point of OKRs is forcing the trade-off conversation: What matters most? What are we not doing?
This is the discipline OKRs are supposed to enforce. What do we need to accomplish? What are the real constraints—budget, capacity, competitive reality? What‘s genuinely achievable versus aspirational fantasy?
Failure 2: Key Results that are actually tasks. “Launch new website“ is not a Key Result. It‘s a task. A Key Result measures the outcome of launching the website: “Increase conversion rate from 2% to 4%.“
The difference matters because tasks can be completed without creating value. Key Results force you to define the value you‘re creating.
Failure 3: OKRs handed down from above. OKRs that are announced rather than co-created don‘t create alignment. They create compliance. And compliance without commitment means people will hit the letter of the target while missing the spirit entirely.
Building OKRs That Actually Align Teams
Step 1: Get on the balcony.
Before writing anything, step back. What‘s the one thing your organization needs to accomplish this quarter that would genuinely shift the trajectory? Not what‘s urgent. What actually matters?
I do this by asking: “If we only accomplished one thing this quarter, what would create the most strategic value?“ Then I add two more, maximum three.
Step 2: Make the objective a conversation, not an announcement.
Bring your team together and say: “Here‘s what I think we should focus on. I‘m testing this with you. What resonates? What am I missing? What would you push back on?“
This isn‘t democratic decision-making. You‘re not taking a vote. You‘re using the Ladder of Inference—climbing back down from your conclusions to check the data and assumptions underneath them, asking genuine questions to surface perspectives you can‘t see from your vantage point. Half the time, someone on your team sees a constraint or opportunity you‘ve missed.
Step 3: Define Key Results that create honest accountability.
The best Key Results make someone say, “I know exactly what I‘m measuring, and I‘ll know exactly whether we hit it.“
“Increase market share from 8% to 12%“ is clear. “Achieve significant growth“ is meaningless.
And here‘s the ambitious part: if you‘re confident you‘ll hit every Key Result, you‘ve set the bar too low. The target for OKRs is 70–80% achievement. That means you‘re stretching enough to learn something regardless of whether you hit the number.
Step 4: Connect OKRs to the actual work.
Walk through: “If these are our objectives and key results, what needs to change in how we operate? What do teams need to start doing? Stop doing? Do differently?“
This is where conflicts surface. Marketing needs three campaigns. Product needs a new feature. Sales needs better tools. Those conflicts are the real alignment conversation. That‘s where you decide how to allocate finite resources against shared priorities.
The Alignment Payoff
I‘ve seen this pattern in every organization I‘ve worked with: talented people failing to collaborate—not because they lacked skill, but because they hadn‘t done the work of aligning on what success looked like. Everyone rowing hard. Just in different directions.
OKRs, done well, solve that problem. They create shared language about what matters. They give people permission to say no to distractions. They make trade-offs visible instead of leaving them buried in competing assumptions.
That‘s not a framework. That‘s organizational clarity. And clarity is the prerequisite for everything else.