Measure What Matters

“Be better every day.”

We use OKRs to plan what people are going to produce, track their progress vs. plan, and coordinate priorities and milestones between people and teams.

Poorly done/managed OKRs are a waste of time, an empty management gesture. Well done OKRs are a motivational management tool that helps make it clear to teams what’s important, what to optimize, and what tradeoffs to make during their day-to-day work.

must describe outcomes, not activities. If your KRs include words like “consult,” “help,” “analyze,” or “participate,” they describe activities. Instead, describe the end-user impact of these activities: “publish average and tail latency measurements from six Colossus cells by March 7,” rather than “assess Colossus latency”; must include evidence of completion.

Committed vs. Aspirational OKRs

The expected score for a committed OKR is 1.0; a score of less than 1.0 requires explanation for the miss, as it shows errors in planning and/or execution.

Aspirational OKRs have an expected average score of 0.7,

Commitments are OKRs that we agree will be achieved, and we will be willing to adjust schedules and resources to ensure that they are delivered.

By contrast, aspirational OKRs express how we’d like the world to look, even though we have no clear idea how to get there and/or the resources necessary to deliver the OKR.

TRAP #1: Failing to differentiate between committed and aspirational OKRs.

TRAP #2: Business-as-usual OKRs.

A team’s committed OKRs should credibly consume most but not all of their available resources. Their committed + aspirational OKRs should credibly consume somewhat more than their available resources.

TRAP #5: Low Value Objectives (aka the “Who cares?” OKR). OKRs must promise clear business value—otherwise, there’s no reason to expend resources doing them. Low Value Objectives (LVOs) are those for which, even if the Objective is completed with a 1.0, no one will notice or care.

It is critical that KRs are written such that scoring 1.0 on all key results generates a 1.0 score for the objective.

A common error is writing key results that are necessary but not sufficient to collectively complete the objective. The error is tempting because it allows a team to avoid the difficult

Teams are expected to rearrange their other priorities to ensure an on-schedule 1.0 delivery.

Teams who cannot credibly promise to deliver a 1.0 on a committed OKR must escalate promptly. This is a key point: Escalating in this (common) situation is not only OK, it is required.

An OKR that requires no changes to any group’s activities is a business-as-usual OKR, and those are unlikely to be new—although they may not have previously been written down.

A committed OKR that fails to achieve a 1.0 by its due date requires a postmortem. This is not intended to punish teams.

Aspirational OKRs and their associated priorities should remain on a team’s OKR list until they are completed, carrying them forward from quarter to quarter as necessary.