Overview
Key Results are outcomes by which success is measured for an objective. They provide clarity on where a team should focus its work, and what victory looks like.
Key results can be updated on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
Setting Key Results - Best Practices
Key results shouldn’t be action items, or be subject to interpretation.
There should be 4 - 6 key results for each objective.
A team should define their key results keeping the best possible in mind.
Best possible: What would be awesome to achieve this quarter? Best possible results likely won’t be hit 100%, as the main importance is discussing learnings for the quarter.
Update Key Results consistently on a weekly basis (when applicable), to inform your team and others of your progress to achievement.
Provide a narrative and additional context into why the number is the way it is when you update key results.
Questions to ask to shift focus from outputs to outcomes
How would we know we were successful?
What would be really great this quarter?
Is this both our best and possible result?
What would we have more of if we were successful?
What would we have less of if we were successful?
Anatomy of a Key Result
Description (what is being measured?)
Starting value
Target value (best possible)
Unit of measure ($, #, %)
Measurement frequency (risk, focus, and change adjusted)
Data source (person, system, workstream)
Pick the type of result that best suits what you're measuring. This may be a basic count that one person will provide, collected data from several people, or a result calculated from workstreams or other apps.
Choose what to measure
As you create key results in the OKR Wizard, the default is a basic count or percentage, but you can modify these measurement types to include numbers or currency.
For example:
Sales revenue from Jorge [would likely use Currency]
Number of developers hired from Alice [would likely use Number]
Completion % of an IT infrastructure overhaul from Percy [would likely use Percent]