It is the start of the quarter. Your team gathers to write OKRs. Someone suggests "Launch the new dashboard" as a key result. Everyone nods. Two hours later you have a neat spreadsheet of tasks disguised as outcomes, and nobody is sure how any of it connects to what the business actually needs. Sound familiar?
OKRs — Objectives and Key Results — are one of the most widely adopted goal-setting frameworks in product. When done well, they align teams around impact instead of output. When done poorly, they become a reporting ritual that adds overhead without changing behaviour. The difference comes down to understanding what an OKR is actually supposed to do.
The Core Idea
An OKR has two parts. The Objective is qualitative and inspirational — it describes what you want to achieve. The Key Results are quantitative and measurable — they describe how you will know you achieved it. A good objective sounds like a mission. Good key results sound like metrics with targets.
For example: the objective might be "Make our product the preferred choice for SMBs." The key results could be "Increase NPS from 45 to 60," "Reduce monthly churn from 8% to 4%," and "Increase trial-to-paid conversion from 15% to 25%." Notice that none of the key results mention features or launches. They describe outcomes that the team can influence through many possible approaches.