OKR is an acronym for objectives and key results. It is a goal setting and management framework created by former Intel CEO Andy Grove that he used to increase Intel’s revenues from $1.9 billion to $26 billion. It utilizes qualitative descriptions of what you wish to achieve (objectives) and quantitative metrics that measure progress towards achieving an objective (key results). Andy Grove showed the framework to Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1999. Since then, other successful companies such as Microsoft, Asana, Linkedin, Atlassian and Netflix have adopted OKRs.

Objectives

Objectives are goals that are used to propel the company forward. They should be ambitious, seem slightly out of reach and be inspirational. Personal objectives can be derived from objectives from your manager. Google recommended having a maximum of 60% of objectives coming from higher-ups and the rest to be set by the individual, working on OKRs set by yourself can be very motivating. Having too many objectives coming from higher-ups can lead to people being uninspired as they don’t feel independent.

The maximum amount of OKRs a person should be responsible for is 5. A person with too many OKRs will be spread too thin.

Key Results

Key Results are quantifiable and are used to measure how well your objective is progressing. They should make the objective achievable and lead to being able to grade how well the objective has been completed. An objective should not have more than 4 key results, if an objective requires more than 4 key results, it might be too vague.

See also Creating Perpetual Progress using OKRs to find out how to create perpetual changes.