Over the past few years, OKR has gone through a familiar cycle in tech.
OKRs were everywhere. Blog posts, conference talks, internal playbooks. Then came the backlash.
“OKRs don’t work.”
“We tried OKRs and went back to KPIs.”
“OKRs just created more meetings and stress.”
If you spend enough time talking to product managers, you will hear these stories repeatedly.
What is interesting is that, in many of these cases, OKRs themselves were not the core problem. More often, teams ran into challenges because of how they interpreted, applied, and adapted OKRs within their organizations.
Teams used OKRs as performance evaluation tools, and turned Key Results into to-do lists. They mixed aspirational goals with hard commitments and punished teams for missing stretch targets.
Under those conditions, almost any framework would fail.
This post is not about defending OKRs blindly. This post explains how OKRs actually work, why teams often get them wrong, and how product teams can use them effectively in practice.
If you have ever felt that OKRs added pressure instead of clarity, or process instead of focus, this guide is for you.
Let’s start by revisiting why OKRs exist in the first place.
Table of Contents
- 1. Why OKRs Matter: How Modern Product Teams Use Objectives and Key Results
- 2. Understanding OKR Structure: Objectives, Key Results, and Scoring
- 3. Committed vs Aspirational OKRs: Understanding the Critical Difference
- 4. OKR Implementation Guide: Best Practices for Product Teams
- 5. 12 Common OKR Mistakes Product Teams Make (and How to Fix Them)
- 6. OKRs and Performance Reviews: Why You Shouldn’t Tie OKRs to Compensation
- 7. Complete OKR Checklist: Validate Your Objectives and Key Results
- Final Thought
1. Why OKRs Matter: How Modern Product Teams Use Objectives and Key Results
Annual performance reviews are slowly becoming irrelevant in modern tech companies.
Not because people dislike feedback, but because waiting an entire year to evaluate progress simply does not work anymore. Markets move faster than that. Products evolve faster than that. Teams learn faster than that.
Trying to manage a product organization with annual goals is like steering a ship while only checking last year’s map.
This is the context in which OKRs, Objectives and Key Results, started to gain traction.
1) The Origins of OKRs: From Intel to Google’s Goal-Setting Framework
OKRs are not new.
As John Doerr recounts in Measure What Matters, he introduced OKRs to Google in 1999, when the company was still in its early stages with a small team. Since then, companies like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Uber have adopted the framework as they scaled.
What these companies had in common was not their size or industry.
It was speed, uncertainty, and the need for alignment without micromanagement.
OKRs provided a way to answer a simple but powerful question:
“What really matters right now, and how will we know if we are making progress?”
2) OKRs vs Traditional Goal Setting: Key Differences
| Dimension | Traditional Goal Setting | OKRs |
|---|---|---|
| Time Orientation | Looks backward at last year’s performance | Focuses forward on outcomes for the next quarter or year |
| Core Question | “What did you accomplish last year?” | “What outcomes do we want to achieve next?” |
| Visibility | Goals are private, owned by individuals and managers | Goals are shared and visible across teams |
| Collaboration Effect | Requires constant coordination meetings | Alignment emerges naturally through transparency |
| Risk Posture | Encourages safe, easily achievable targets | Encourages ambitious bets without punishment |
| Team Behavior | Optimizing for explanations and justifications | Optimizing for learning, impact, and results |
| Product Impact | Delivery-focused, output-driven planning | Outcome-driven planning centered on customer impact |
People often think of OKRs as a goal-setting framework.
In practice, they represent a shift in how organizations think about progress.
Here are three changes that make the biggest difference.
(1) From past-focused to future-focused
Traditional performance systems ask:
“What did you accomplish last year?”
OKRs ask:
“What outcomes do we want to achieve next?”
This subtle shift changes behavior.
Teams stop optimizing for explanations and start optimizing for results.
For product teams, this means planning around learning and impact, not just delivery.
(2) From private goals to shared goals
In many organizations, goals live in documents that only managers and individuals ever see.
OKRs make goals visible by default.
When goals are shared:
- Designers understand product priorities without another meeting
- Engineers can anticipate trade-offs earlier
- Sales and marketing align with what is realistically shipping
Alignment stops being a coordination problem and becomes a byproduct of transparency.
(3) From safe targets to meaningful bets
When goals are tightly tied to compensation, people naturally play it safe.
OKRs, when used correctly, create space for ambition without punishment.
A team that consistently hits 100% of its OKRs, especially when those OKRs are framed as aspirational, may be under-reaching.
For product organizations, progress often comes from bets that feel uncomfortable at the start.
3) How OKRs Improve Daily Decision-Making and Prioritization in Product Development
When OKRs work, their impact shows up in everyday decisions.
- What to build now.
- What to delay.
- What to say no to.
This happens for three simple reasons.
- Transparency: Teams know what others are optimizing for. Fewer surprises. Fewer last-minute conflicts.
- Alignment: Product, design, and engineering use the same success criteria when making decisions. Less coordination overhead.
- Focus: Work that does not clearly move an Objective or a Key Result becomes easier to deprioritize.
As a result, prioritization discussions shift from opinions to outcomes.
Most importantly, OKRs create a shared language for saying “no” without politics.
2. Understanding OKR Structure: Objectives, Key Results, and Scoring
A frequent source of confusion with OKRs lies in how Objectives and Key Results are defined.
When that happens, objectives become vague slogans, and key results turn into task lists.
1) Objectives: Defining the Desired Destination
An Objective describes what you want to achieve. An objective is a qualitative statement that describes what you want to achieve. Think of it as your destination, not your map. Good objectives inspire action and provide direction without prescribing the solution.
- Not how.
- Not when.
- Not with which solution.
Think of an objective as a description of a better future state.
A strong objective has three qualities.
(1) Ambitious, but grounded
Objectives should stretch the team, but still be evaluable within the given time frame.
A useful test is this:
Can the team reasonably tell, at the end of the quarter, whether meaningful progress was made?
If the answer is no, the objective is not grounded.
- ❌ “Become the market leader” → No clear scope, no time horizon, no way to assess progress.
- ✅ “Establish our product as the preferred solution for mid-market B2B teams” → Clear target segment and a direction that can show progress, even if not fully achieved.
Grounded ambition means teams can debate how far they got, not what the objective meant.
(2) Clear value to the organization
Objectives exist to guide prioritization and trade-offs.
That only works when the value created by the objective is explicit.
A practical check:
If this objective competes with another one, do we know why this one should win?
If the answer depends on internal knowledge or personal conviction, the objective is underspecified.
Clear-value objectives make it obvious how success benefits the business or customers, which allows teams to align decisions without escalation.
(3) Customer- and outcome-focused
Objectives should describe the change you want to see, not the work you plan to do.
A simple distinction:
- Outputs: What the team delivers
- Outcomes: What changes because of it
- ❌ “Launch a mobile app” → Output. Delivery can succeed while customer value does not.
- ✅ “Make our product accessible for customers on mobile devices” → Outcome. Success depends on actual customer usage and experience.
Outcome-focused objectives keep teams aligned on impact while giving them freedom to choose the best solution.
2) Key Results: Defining Evidence of Progress
If objectives describe the destination, key results define the evidence that tells you whether you are moving in the right direction.
Key results answer a single question:
“What measurable change would convince us that this objective is being achieved?”
Because of that, key results must be specific, quantitative, and outcome-based.
A strong key result has three qualities.
(1) Directly tied to the objective
Every key result should clearly support its objective.
A simple test:
If this key result improves, does the objective become meaningfully closer?
If the answer is unclear, the key result is likely measuring the wrong thing.
This is why teams sometimes “hit all KRs” but still feel like the objective was missed.
The metrics moved, but not in a way that actually mattered.
(2) Outcome-based, not activity-based
Key results should measure impact, not effort.
Activities describe what the team does. Outcomes describe what changes because of it.
- ❌ “Launch new onboarding flow” → Activity. Can be completed without improving anything.
- ✅ “Increase activation rate from 45% to 60%” → Outcome. Success depends on user behavior.
- ❌ “Conduct customer research” → Activity.
- ✅ “Validate product-market fit with 30 qualified prospects, 70% indicating high purchase intent” → Outcome.
Outcome-based key results remove ambiguity. You either moved the metric or you did not.
(3) Specific enough to be unambiguous
A good key result leaves no room for interpretation.
- ❌ “Increase signups”
- ✅ “Increase daily signups from 200 to 300”
Specific numbers force clarity:
- What metric matters
- How much change is meaningful
- Whether progress is real or perceived
If a key result needs explanation during review, it is probably underspecified.
3) How OKRs Are Scored (and Why It Matters)
Many teams use a 0.0–1.0 scoring system.
- 0.0–0.3: Missed. Little or no progress.
- 0.4–0.6: Partial progress. Some movement, but below expectations.
- 0.7–1.0: Success.
At its core, the OKR scoring system exists to reinforce a specific mindset.
For aspirational OKRs, success is not defined by perfect execution. It is defined by meaningful progress toward an ambitious outcome.
That is why, in many organizations (including Google), a score around 0.7 is considered success for aspirational OKRs.
A team that sets an ambitious target and achieves roughly 70% of it has usually:
- Taken real risks
- Learned what works and what does not
- Delivered tangible impact
In contrast, a team that consistently scores 1.0 is often optimizing for certainty, not progress.
The point is the conversation the number enables.
3. Committed vs Aspirational OKRs: Understanding the Critical Difference
Not all OKRs should be treated the same way.
One of the most common sources of OKR failure is mixing two fundamentally different kinds of goals under a single set of rules.
Google makes a clear distinction between Committed OKRs and Aspirational OKRs. Each type serves a different purpose and requires a different mindset.
| Dimension | Committed OKRs | Aspirational OKRs |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Purpose | Deliver non-negotiable outcomes | Drive ambition, learning, and breakthrough impact |
| Mindset | Promise | Experiment |
| Success Definition | 1.0 only | ~0.7 is success |
| Risk Tolerance | Low. Risk should be minimized | High. Risk is expected and accepted |
| Clarity of Solution | Clear path and execution plan upfront | Solution unknown at the start |
| Resource Planning | Resources and ownership defined before commitment | Resources intentionally slightly insufficient |
| Time Horizon | Fixed, usually within a single quarter | May span multiple quarters |
| Progress Measurement | Binary: delivered or not | Gradual: how far we moved the needle |
| Failure Interpretation | Signal of planning or execution breakdown | Expected input for learning and iteration |
| Typical Sources | Customer promises, compliance, infrastructure, deadlines | Vision, strategy, customer transformation |
| Example Outcome | “Feature X launched by June 30” | “Product becomes mission-critical for customers” |
| What Goes Wrong if Misused | Treated as aspirational → missed commitments | Treated as committed → risk avoidance and sandbagging |
1) Committed OKRs: Setting Non-Negotiable Goals with 100% Success Criteria
Committed OKRs are promises. They represent outcomes the team must deliver within a fixed timeframe.
For these OKRs, success means 1.0. Anything less is a miss. Think of committed OKRs as the work that keeps the business running.
(1) What Defines a Committed OKR
A committed OKR has three non-negotiable properties.
- Clear schedule and resources The team knows what needs to be done, who is responsible, and when it will be completed. If major unknowns remain, it is not ready to be committed.
- Binary success criteria Committed OKRs are not graded on a curve. Either the commitment was met, or it was not.
- High-integrity commitments These often come from external or irreversible constraints:
- Customer or partner commitments
- Regulatory or compliance deadlines
- Infrastructure work required before peak traffic or launches
(2) Examples of Committed OKRs
- Migrate 100% of customer data to the new database architecture by end of Q3
- Achieve SOC 2 Type II certification by December 1
- Launch the iOS app in the App Store by June 30, per partner agreement
Each example has:
- A clear scope
- A hard deadline
- Real consequences if missed
Partial delivery still represents failure.
(3) When a Committed OKR Is Missed
Missing a committed OKR should trigger a post-mortem, not blame.
The goal is to understand what broke in the system:
- Was complexity underestimated?
- Were resources reallocated without adjusting scope?
- Were dependencies unclear or unmanaged?
Healthy teams treat misses as signals about planning and prioritization quality, not individual performance.
2) Aspirational OKRs: Driving Innovation with Stretch Goals and 70% Success Rate
Aspirational OKRs represent ambition. They describe the future you want to create, even when the path forward is unclear.
These OKRs exist to drive learning, experimentation, and breakthrough outcomes. For aspirational OKRs, 0.7 is success.
(1) What Defines an Aspirational OKR
Aspirational OKRs differ from committed ones in important ways.
- Stretch, not certainty These goals should push the team beyond what is achievable with current approaches.
- Solution uncertainty You know the direction, but not the exact plan. Discovery and iteration are expected.
- Above current capacity If achieved easily with existing resources, the goal is likely too conservative.
- May span multiple quarters What matters is priority, not whether the OKR can be “checked off” quickly.
(2) Examples of Aspirational OKRs
Objective: Transform the product into a mission-critical platform customers rely on daily
- Increase daily active usage from 30% to 65%
- Improve NPS from 28 to 50+
- Reduce time-to-value from 14 days to 3 days
Objective: Establish thought leadership in competitive intelligence
- Grow organic traffic from 12,000 to 50,000 monthly visitors
- Secure speaking slots at five tier-1 industry conferences
- Increase unaided brand awareness from 8% to 25%
These OKRs describe where the company wants to go, not exactly how to get there.
(3) Questions That Help Shape Aspirational OKRs
When ambition feels vague, these questions help:
- If we had slightly more resources and everything went right, what could we realistically achieve?
- If today’s constraints disappeared, what would success look like in two to three years?
- What outcome would genuinely surprise and delight our customers?
3) Why This Distinction Matters
Mixing committed and aspirational OKRs does not just create confusion.
- It changes how teams behave. When the distinction is unclear, teams stop optimizing for outcomes and start optimizing for safety.
- Aspirational OKRs treated as committed Teams become defensive. They lower ambition, pad estimates, and avoid risky bets because failure feels punished. Over time, OKRs turn into conservative planning artifacts, and innovation slows down.
- Committed OKRs treated as aspirational Deadlines start to slip. Dependencies are deprioritized. What was meant to be a promise becomes “close enough,” and trust with customers, partners, or leadership erodes.
In both cases, the damage is not immediate. It accumulates quietly through missed expectations and distorted incentives.
The fix is simple, but non-negotiable.
Always label OKRs explicitly as committed or aspirational.
Do it before execution starts, make the success criteria clear from day one, and revisit the label whenever scope, risk, or constraints change.
4. OKR Implementation Guide: Best Practices for Product Teams
Understanding OKRs is relatively straightforward. Making them work consistently, however, tends to be more challenging.
In practice, the difference often comes down to a small set of execution habits.
Step 1: Set the Right Cadence
Different levels need different time horizons.
- Company-level OKRs
- Cadence: Annual
- Purpose: Strategic direction and long-term bets
- Review quarterly, but change only if fundamentals shift
- Team-level OKRs
- Cadence: Quarterly
- Purpose: Execution and learning
- Long enough for impact, short enough to adapt
Why this matters
- Monthly OKRs create churn and shallow work
- Annual team OKRs lose relevance too quickly
- Annual strategy + quarterly execution strikes the right balance
Step 2: Keep the Number Intentionally Small
Focus is a constraint, not a preference.
- 1–3 objectives per team More than three means none are real priorities.
- 1–3 key results per objective More than three usually signals vague objectives or activity-based thinking.
Rule of thumb
- Absolute max: 9 key results per quarter
- High-performing teams often operate with 4–6 total
Why this matters
Every additional OKR dilutes attention. Limits force the prioritization conversations teams tend to avoid.
Step 3: Track Progress Weekly (Not Quarterly)
OKRs should not reappear only at the end of the quarter.
- Weekly check-ins
- Current score
- What changed since last week
- Blockers or help needed Takes 10–15 minutes.
- Visible progress Use a shared doc, dashboard, or tool. If others cannot see progress, alignment breaks down.
Why this matters
Weekly tracking surfaces issues early, when course correction is still possible.
Step 4: Cascade and Align Across Teams
OKRs should connect strategy to execution.
- Executive leadership Sets company OKRs based on strategy and market bets.
- CPO / CTO Translate company OKRs into product and technical objectives.
- Product teams Define team OKRs that clearly support higher-level objectives.
Critical principle
- Alignment is top-down
- Feasibility and ownership are bottom-up
Best practice
Draft OKRs in cross-functional teams (PM, Design, Eng) first.
Validate alignment with leadership afterward.
Step 5: Agree on Measurement Before You Start
Disagreement over metrics kills trust faster than missed goals.
- Define measurement upfront
- Data source
- Calculation logic
- Edge cases
- Standardize definitions across teams “Active user” should mean the same thing everywhere.
Example
- ❌ Increase customer satisfaction
- ✅ Increase NPS from 42 to 55, measured via monthly survey sent to customers onboarded >30 days ago, minimum 200 responses
Why this matters
Clear metrics turn OKR reviews into problem-solving sessions, not debates over numbers.
OKR Cascading Example: From Company Strategy to Team Execution
[Company Objective]
Increase retention for our B2B SaaS product
└─ KR: Improve 90-day retention from 42% to 55%
↓
[Product-Level Objective]
Help new teams reach value faster
└─ KR: Increase activation rate from 38% to 60%
└─ KR: Reduce time-to-first-value from 7 days to 2 days
↓
[Team-Level Objective: Onboarding]
Remove friction from the onboarding experience
└─ KR: Reduce onboarding drop-off from 45% to 20%
└─ KR: Increase onboarding completion rate from 55% to 80%
↓
[Execution-Level Objective: Engineering]
Improve onboarding performance and reliability
└─ KR: Reduce onboarding page load time from 4s to <1.5s
└─ KR: Decrease onboarding-related errors by 80%Code language: JavaScript (javascript)How to Read This (One-Minute Explanation)
- Company level defines the business outcome that matters most
- Product level translates that outcome into a user-centric success condition
- Team level focuses on a specific part of the user journey
- Execution level expresses what must change in the system to enable it
Each level answers the same question at a different altitude.
5. 12 Common OKR Mistakes Product Teams Make (and How to Fix Them)
Most OKR failures happen not because teams lack good intent, but because of predictable execution mistakes.
Use this section as a pre-flight checklist before locking your OKRs.
| Common OKR Mistake | What Goes Wrong | How to Fix It |
|---|---|---|
| Treating all OKRs the same | Aspirational goals become promises, or commitments become optional | Explicitly label OKRs as Committed or Aspirational |
| Turning routine work into OKRs | OKRs become task lists | Use OKRs only for work that requires disproportionate focus |
| “Safe” aspirational OKRs | Aspirational OKRs regularly score 1.0 | Set stretch targets where ~0.7 = success |
| Poor resource allocation | Burnout or wasted capacity | Design OKRs for ~110–120% capacity |
| Low-impact objectives | Measurable but meaningless OKRs | Tie every objective to customer or business impact |
| Missing dependencies in committed OKRs | KRs complete but delivery fails | Include all blocking dependencies in KRs |
| Conflicting OKRs across teams | ICs pulled in multiple directions | Align leadership first, resolve conflicts at the top |
| Vague objectives | Teams disagree on what success means | Ensure objectives can be anchored by clear KRs |
| Flattened OKR hierarchy | Goals, objectives, and KRs blur together | Maintain clear separation of goal → objective → KR |
| Quantity-only metrics | Metrics are gamed, quality drops | Balance quantity + quality + efficiency |
| Activity-based KRs | Effort ≠ impact | Measure outcomes, not completed actions |
| No validation before execution | Problems discovered too late | Review OKRs for structure and measurability upfront |
Mistake #1: Treating All OKRs the Same Way (Committed vs Aspirational Confusion)
What goes wrong
Teams treat all OKRs the same. Teams manage stretch goals like promises, and treat real commitments as “close enough.”
Why it’s dangerous
- Aspirational → treated as committed → teams become defensive
- Committed → treated as aspirational → deadlines slip and trust erodes
How to avoid it
- Explicitly label every OKR as [Committed] or [Aspirational]
- Align on success criteria upfront
- 0.7 = success only for aspirational OKRs
- Committed OKRs require 1.0
Mistake #2: Making Routine Tasks into OKRs Instead of Strategic Goals
What goes wrong
Teams turn their ongoing responsibilities into OKRs.
This is not because those tasks are unimportant, but because they feel urgent and visible.
Quick test
“Would this still matter if we did it at a normal, acceptable level?”
If the answer is yes, it is likely baseline work, not an OKR.
How to think about it instead
OKRs are not a list of tasks you do only because they are written down.
They are a way to signal:
- What deserves disproportionate attention
- Where the team should push beyond “good enough”
Business-as-usual work still needs to happen.
It just does not need to be elevated to OKR-level focus.
Better framing
- ❌ “Handle support tickets” → Expected responsibility
- ✅ “Reduce average support ticket resolution time from 48h to 12h” → Explicit improvement that requires prioritization and trade-offs
Key distinction
Maintenance keeps the system running. OKRs are about changing the system in a meaningful way.
Mistake #3: Setting “Safe” Aspirational OKRs That Score 1.0
What goes wrong
Teams label safe, easily achievable goals as “aspirational.”
Why it happens
Fear of missing goals and being judged.
Reality check
- If aspirational OKRs regularly score 0.9–1.0, they are not aspirational.
- Healthy aspirational OKRs average around 0.7.
How to fix it
Ask:
- “If everything went right, what could we realistically achieve?”
- “What outcome would actually surprise customers?”
If the goal feels completely safe, it is too small.
Mistake #4: Under or Over-Allocating Resources (The 110-120% Rule)
Two failure modes
- Too ambitious (200%+ capacity) Burnout, partial delivery, quality drops
- Too conservative (60–70% capacity) Wasted potential, no real progress
Practical guideline
- Total OKRs should require ~110–120% of available capacity
- Committed OKRs alone should not consume everything
This creates pressure to prioritize without breaking the team.
Mistake #5: Creating Low-Impact OKRs That Don’t Drive Business Value
What goes wrong
Objectives are measurable but meaningless.
The test
- How does this help customers?
- How does this help the business?
- Would leadership care if this succeeded?
If those answers are unclear, the objective is low-value.
Example
- ❌ “Migrate to new design system”
- ✅ “Reduce design-to-dev handoff time from 2 weeks to 3 days”
Always connect objectives to impact, not internal work.
Mistake #6: Missing Critical Dependencies in Committed OKR Key Results
What goes wrong
Key results miss critical milestones, so teams “hit KRs” but still miss delivery.
Typical symptom
Launch date slips even though most KRs were completed.
Fix
For committed OKRs:
- Work backward from the deadline
- Include every dependency in KRs (approvals, training, rollout, comms)
If a step can block delivery, it belongs in a KR.
Mistake #7: Conflicting OKRs Between Teams
What goes wrong
Design, engineering, or marketing OKRs pull people away from product priorities.
Impact
- Conflicting signals
- Fragmented effort
- ICs forced to choose which OKR to disappoint
How to resolve
- Align leadership before OKRs cascade
- Make trade-offs explicit in capacity planning
- Let product team OKRs take priority for cross-functional members
- Use committed vs aspirational labels to resolve conflicts at the top, not at the IC level
Mistake #8: Writing Vague Objectives That Can’t Be Measured with Key Results
What goes wrong
Teams write objectives that are broad in intent,
but too abstract to be translated into meaningful key results.
Phrases like:
- “Expand into the mainstream market”
- “Strengthen brand presence”
- “Become a leader in the space”
sound directional,
but provide no constraints for measurement.
Why it’s dangerous
When an objective cannot be anchored by key results:
- Teams interpret success differently
- Downstream OKRs drift apart
- Progress turns into opinion rather than evidence
The problem is not that the objective is qualitative.
It is that it cannot be made concrete through key results.
How to avoid it
Objectives should remain qualitative.
But they must be:
- Specific enough to constrain interpretation
- Grounded in a clear customer or market context
- Capable of being expressed through measurable key results
If teams cannot agree on what evidence would prove progress, the objective is not yet usable.
Mistake #9: Flattening OKR Hierarchy (Goals, Objectives, and KRs)
What goes wrong
Teams use OKR-shaped language but collapse multiple layers into one.
Common signals:
- Objectives that read like metrics
- Key results that describe tasks
- Goals that look identical to team OKRs
Everything becomes a flat list of numbers.
Why it’s dangerous
When intent and measurement are mixed:
- Teams lose a shared understanding of why they are doing the work
- Metrics are optimized locally without advancing the broader goal
- Alignment becomes accidental rather than designed
How to avoid it
Maintain clear separation:
- Goals describe where the business is heading
- Objectives describe what success should look like
- Key Results prove whether that success is happening
If you cannot explain your OKR structure in one sentence, it is probably collapsed.
Mistake #10: Optimizing for Quantity Metrics Without Quality Guardrails
What goes wrong
Teams optimize for “more”:
- More leads
- More conversions
- More activity
without pairing those metrics with quality or efficiency signals.
Why it’s dangerous
Volume-only metrics are easy to game.
Teams can hit targets while:
- Sales efficiency drops
- Customer quality degrades
- Long-term outcomes worsen
The OKRs look green while the business quietly suffers.
How to avoid it
Balance metrics intentionally:
- Quantity and quality
- Growth and efficiency
- Leading and lagging indicators
If every key result points in the same direction (“more”), something important is missing.
Mistake #11: Using Activity-Based Metrics Instead of Outcome-Based Key Results
What goes wrong
Teams define success by completed actions:
- Number of webinars
- Number of campaigns
- Number of initiatives launched
Effort becomes indistinguishable from impact.
Why it’s dangerous
Activities can be completed without creating any value.
Teams stay busy, but outcomes do not change.
How to avoid it
Activities belong in:
- Execution plans
- Roadmaps
- Backlogs
OKRs should measure:
- Changes in customer behavior
- Changes in business outcomes
If completing the activity is the success condition, it is not a key result.
Mistake #12: Not Validating OKRs Before Execution Begins
What goes wrong
OKRs look fine at the start of the quarter.
Problems only surface weeks later, when teams are already committed.
By then, it is expensive to change direction.
Why it’s dangerous
Late discovery leads to:
- Sunk-cost behavior
- Quiet de-scoping
- End-of-quarter justification instead of learning
How to avoid it
Before finalizing OKRs, review them explicitly for:
- Measurability
- Outcome vs activity
- Quality vs quantity balance
- Clear success definitions
Most OKR issues do not announce themselves on day one.Some only surface through real execution and learning.
But many structural problems can be identified before execution begins, when changes are still cheap and teams are not yet locked in.
6. OKRs and Performance Reviews: Why You Shouldn’t Tie OKRs to Compensation
This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of OKRs.
Not because the intent is wrong, but because incentives quietly change behavior. Handled poorly, performance reviews can undo everything OKRs are meant to enable.
1) The Critical Rule: Don’t Use OKR Scores for Performance Ratings
OKR achievement should not be used as the direct, primary input for compensation or performance ratings.
This feels counterintuitive. If goals matter, shouldn’t achieving them matter?
The issue is not motivation. It is how people respond when outcomes are tied too tightly to personal consequences.
2) How Tying OKRs to Compensation Destroys Innovation
When OKRs directly affect pay or ratings, three predictable things happen.
(1) Risk-taking disappears
People optimize for certainty.
- Ambitious goals feel unsafe
- Easy wins feel rational
- Innovation becomes optional
OKR scores look healthy, but progress slows.
(2) Transparency erodes
Missing an OKR becomes costly, so honesty fades.
Teams respond by:
- Lowering targets
- Reframing partial success
- Managing perception instead of learning
The visibility that makes OKRs valuable quietly disappears.
(3) Aspirational and committed OKRs collapse into one
Aspirational OKRs treat 0.7 as success.
But if reviews interpret 0.7 as failure, teams adapt:
- Aspirational goals vanish, or
- Everything gets relabeled to manage expectations
Either way, the system stops working.
A simple pattern emerges: ambitious teams lose, conservative teams win. Next quarter, everyone plays it safe.
3) How to Use OKRs in Performance Reviews: Input, Not Decision
OKRs should be one input into performance conversations, not the outcome.
They provide evidence, not judgment.
Performance discussions should still focus on:
- Impact created
- Quality of judgment and prioritization
- Learning and growth
- Collaboration and execution quality
OKRs help by showing:
- Where effort was focused
- How ambitious the goals were
- How trade-offs were made
They support the conversation. They do not replace it.
4) CFR Framework: Conversations, Feedback, and Recognition for OKR Success
To make this work, OKRs need a human system around them.
John Doerr pairs OKRs with CFR:
- Conversations: frequent check-ins on progress and priorities
- Feedback: timely input to course-correct
- Recognition: acknowledging meaningful contribution, including smart risks
CFR shifts performance management from annual judgment to continuous alignment.
7. Complete OKR Checklist: Validate Your Objectives and Key Results
1) Objective Check (Qualitative, but Anchored)
- The objective can be explained clearly in one sentence
- The objective describes an outcome or change, not an output or deliverable
- It makes the customer or business value explicit
- The team can reasonably judge whether meaningful progress was made by the end of the quarter
- The objective is specific enough to be expressed through concrete key results
- Reasonable people would not disagree on what the objective means
2) Key Result Check (Evidence, Not Tasks)
- Every key result measures a change in behavior or outcome, not completed work
- Each key result includes:
- a clear metric
- a baseline
- a target
- a deadline
- Improving a key result would clearly move the objective forward
- No key result relies on vague verbs such as “increase,” “improve,” or “optimize” without numbers
- It is possible to do the work and still miss the key result if impact is not achieved
3) Quantity vs. Quality Balance (Anti-Gaming)
- Key results do not measure volume alone
- At least one key result reflects quality or health (retention, churn, win rate, NPS, error rate, reliability, etc.)
- Where relevant, at least one key result reflects efficiency (cycle time, CAC, sales cycle, cost, latency)
- No single metric can be optimized while silently harming long-term outcomes
4) Committed vs. Aspirational Clarity
- Every objective is explicitly labeled as committed or aspirational
- Committed objectives require 1.0 for success and represent real obligations
- Committed key results include all critical dependencies (approvals, rollout, training, communication, compliance)
- Aspirational objectives assume solution uncertainty
- For aspirational OKRs, 0.7 represents meaningful success
- Aspirational OKRs do not feel completely safe or guaranteed
5) Operational Readiness
- Progress can be reviewed weekly, not only at the end of the quarter
- Data sources and metric definitions are agreed on before execution
- Metric definitions are consistent across teams
- OKR progress is visible to relevant stakeholders
- OKRs are not used as the primary input for compensation or performance ratings
6) 60-Second Sanity Check
- Would this work still matter if we performed it at an acceptable baseline level? If yes, it is probably not an OKR
- If all key results move, does the objective clearly become closer to reality?
- Can progress be evaluated with numbers during the quarter?
- Does this OKR encourage learning and impact rather than safe behavior?
Final Thought
OKRs are a tool, not a panacea.
They do not solve unclear strategy or replace leadership judgment. They do not automatically create alignment or better collaboration. Those things still depend on how decisions are made and how teams work together.
What OKRs can do is provide structure.
They offer a shared way to talk about priorities, progress, and trade-offs. They help teams surface assumptions earlier and make disagreements easier to discuss while there is still room to adjust.
When OKRs feel heavy or unhelpful, it is often because they are being used as something else: a performance score, a reporting artifact, or a substitute for real prioritization.
Used more lightly, OKRs tend to work best as a conversation aid. Not a grading system, but a reference point. Not a source of truth, but a way to keep attention on outcomes rather than activity.
If you are adopting OKRs, some friction at the beginning is normal. Early versions are rarely elegant, and that is fine.
What matters most is whether the process helps teams make clearer decisions, say no with less politics, and learn when things do not work as expected.
In the end, OKRs are not the goal.
They are simply one tool that can support the work of building products that create real value for customers.
Ready for Metrics?
If you now have a solid grasp of OKRs and want to take the next step in defining meaningful product metrics, check out the Product Metrics Playbook. It’s a practical guide to designing North Star Metrics, understanding AARRR funnels, and running impactful growth experiments.
👉 Product Metrics Playbook: How to Design North Star Metrics, AARRR Funnels, and Growth Experiments