OKRs stand for Objectives and Key Results. They are a goal-setting framework that helps teams and organizations define clear objectives (where you're going) and measurable key results (how you'll track progress). OKRs are important because they make goals actionable, measurable, transparent, and collaborative, ensuring everyone is aligned and moving in the same direction. Source
An OKR consists of an objective statement that is actionable, time-bound, and ambitious, followed by 3 to 5 key results that are clear, quantifiable, and actionable. For example: Objective: "Create an inclusive culture that's welcoming for everyone." Key Results: "Achieve an eNPS of 30 by end of Q2; Get 15 internal referrals; Reduce turnover by 10%." Source
Good OKRs are measurable, challenging, clear, and consistently reviewed. They should be ambitious but achievable, easily understood by the team, and tracked regularly to ensure progress. Source
Each objective should typically have 3 to 5 key results. This range keeps the team focused and ensures that progress is measurable without being overwhelming. Source
OKRs should be reviewed regularly, ideally as part of weekly stand-up meetings or 1:1s. Consistent review ensures that OKRs remain top-of-mind and progress is tracked effectively. Source
Best practices include understanding company goals, involving the whole team, writing clear and ambitious objectives, developing measurable key results, planning initiatives, tracking progress consistently, and celebrating partial success (e.g., achieving 70% of a stretch goal). Source
You can download Spinach AI’s free Excel OKR template to help establish and track your objectives and key results. Download here. Source
Spinach AI offers a library of over 360 free goal and OKR examples to help you get started and find inspiration for your team’s objectives. Browse the library.
Recommended tools include Miro for brainstorming, Google Sheets for tracking details, and Spinach AI for goal tracking and integrating meetings and goals into one workflow. Source
Spinach AI helps teams track OKRs by integrating meetings and goals into a single workflow, making it easy to stay aligned and monitor progress. It also provides a goal library and templates to support effective goal setting. Source
OKRs should be set collaboratively, with input from all team members. This bi-directional approach increases ownership and accountability, ensuring OKRs are relevant and motivating for everyone. Source
Initiatives are the specific actions or projects you undertake to achieve your key results. They put your OKRs into action and help you move from planning to execution. Source
It's important to celebrate progress even if you achieve only 70% of your OKRs. Challenging goals are meant to inspire, and partial achievement is still a success worth recognizing. Source
Spinach AI provides a library of over 360 goal and OKR examples, including for sales, engineering, customer success, and marketing teams. Browse examples.
Regularly review OKRs in team meetings and 1:1s, use tools like Spinach AI for tracking, and keep everyone updated on progress to maintain alignment and motivation. Source
Spinach AI offers a goal library with over 360 examples, downloadable templates, and integrated tools for meeting management and goal tracking. Source
Spinach AI integrates with popular tools such as Zoom, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, allowing seamless collaboration and workflow automation. Source
You can sign up for Spinach AI using your Google or Microsoft account, connect your calendar, and start using the platform immediately. No complex IT setup is required. Source
Spinach AI offers an AI Meeting Assistant, automated note-taking, workflow optimization, AI-powered insights, seamless integrations with tools like Zoom and Jira, and tailored solutions for different roles such as product managers, sales, engineering, and more. Source
Yes, Spinach AI automatically captures meeting notes, action items, and outcomes, allowing users to focus on discussions without manual note-taking. Source
Yes, Spinach AI automates tasks such as generating sprint plans, PRDs, and managing tickets, streamlining workflows for various teams. Source
Yes, Spinach AI analyzes user feedback to uncover trends, pain points, and opportunities, enabling data-driven decision-making for teams. Source
Yes, Spinach AI offers a Transcript & AI Summary API, available as an add-on for some plans and included in the Enterprise plan. Source
Spinach AI integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and more, enabling smooth collaboration and workflow automation. Source
Yes, customer feedback highlights Spinach AI's ease of use and intuitive design. Users report that it is natural and simple to adopt, with helpful integrations like Jira. Source
Spinach AI can be set up almost instantly. Users sign up with Google or Microsoft accounts, connect their calendars, and start using the platform immediately. No complex IT involvement is required. Source
Yes, premium users have access to an onboarding program to ensure a smooth transition and help teams fully utilize Spinach AI’s features. Source
Spinach AI is SOC 2 Type 2 certified (verified by EY), GDPR compliant, and HIPAA compliant. These certifications ensure robust security, reliability, and privacy for user data. Source
Spinach AI uses TLS and AES-256 encryption for data in transit and at rest, does not use user data for training, and offers features like SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, admin controls, and custom data retention policies. Source
Yes, Spinach AI is fully compliant with GDPR and HIPAA, including signing Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) and protecting Protected Health Information (PHI). Source
Spinach AI is designed for product managers, engineering teams, project managers, marketing, HR, recruiting, customer success, sales, finance, and accounting teams—essentially any team looking to improve productivity and collaboration. Source
Spinach AI addresses pain points such as manual note-taking, administrative overhead, workflow inefficiency, extracting insights from feedback, and team misalignment. It automates and streamlines these processes for better outcomes. Source
Yes, Spinach AI has case studies across sales, customer success, technology, product management, revenue operations, consulting, and healthcare technology. Customers report improved productivity, communication, and workflow efficiency. Source
Customers can expect increased productivity, streamlined workflows, enhanced collaboration, data-driven decision-making, customizable solutions for different teams, and improved customer engagement. Source
Industries represented in Spinach AI’s case studies include sales, customer success, technology, revenue operations, consulting, and healthcare technology. Source
Spinach AI provides tailored solutions: sales teams get CRM integrations and buyer insights; product managers get PRD generation and user feedback analysis; engineering teams get sprint planning; customer success teams get automated onboarding and follow-ups; HR gets meeting insights; finance teams get compliance-focused documentation. Source
Spinach AI stands out for its tailored features for different roles, advanced AI-powered insights, seamless integrations, and customizable solutions. Customers highlight its specificity for product management, sales, and customer success compared to more generic alternatives. Source
Spinach AI offers unmatched specificity for different roles, automates administrative tasks, provides actionable AI insights, and integrates with popular tools. Customer testimonials cite improved productivity and team alignment as key differentiators. Source
Customers consistently praise Spinach AI for its ease of use, workflow improvements, and positive impact on communication and productivity. Testimonials from Careviso, Do It Consulting Group, Authvia, and others highlight these benefits. Source
Notable customers include Infinite Ranges, AlfaDocs, Authvia, EDB, Do It Consulting Group, and Careviso, representing industries such as sales, technology, consulting, and healthcare technology. Source
Spinach.ai is enterprise-ready, offering robust security and compliance with SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA certifications. The Enterprise plan provides advanced features essential for large organizations, including SAML SSO, custom data retention, a dedicated API, compliance monitoring, and a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
Writing great OKRs can be simple once you know the best practices. We’ve got you covered with this guide on how to write OKRs that stick.
Nicole Kahansky
Every business has goals. Sometimes those are internal ones, like building a great culture. Other times they’re external goals such as delivering a fantastic experience for your customers. But achieving those goals takes more than putting your intentions out into the universe — you need a plan.
You need to understand how to write OKRs.
What are OKRs? They’re objectives (where you’re going) and key results (how we track our progress getting there) that make your goals actionable and measurable. They’re clear, transparent, and collaborative.
But if you’re wondering how to write OKRs that work, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll take you through:
As far as goal-setting frameworks go, OKRs are one of the most straightforward tools for almost every type of business.
Writing an OKR that works starts with an objective statement that’s actionable, time-bound, and ambitious. For example:
From there, use key results to measure your progress as you work toward the objective.
Writing great key results means keeping them clear, quantifiable, and actionable. There’s no concrete rule for how many key results an objective needs — but 3 to 5 is a good rule of thumb to use. Here’s an example of 3 key results for the last objective listed above:
Adding more key results doesn’t mean you’re tracking better. Less is more when it comes to key results — 3 to 5 key results will keep your team focused and moving forward together.
Now that you know the format of an OKR let’s go into the details of what separates good OKRs from bad ones. In our example culture OKR, you might have noticed that each key result is measurable, clear and time-bound.
These are a few key characteristics that make up good OKRs:
The core of a good OKR is that it’s measurable. If your OKRs aren’t clearly measurable, it’s going to be difficult to know if you’ve been successful. And if you don’t know if you’ve been successful, how will you know if your OKRs were effective? Or where to go next?
You need to track your progress towards the objective. Whether that’s a score like eNPS, the count of support tickets for a product, or the number of customer interviews done, ensure there’s a quantifiable way to measure success.
Writing good OKRs is not the time or place for lowered expectations. OKRs should be a challenge — no risk, no reward.
For many teams, writing OKRs that work involves stretch goals. These are goals that are slightly beyond what you and your team think you’re capable of accomplishing. Don’t worry about hitting that 100% mark, though. We’ll talk about what success looks like when it comes to OKRs later in the post.
This isn’t the time to get fancy — every OKR you set needs to be easily understood by your team. OKRs need to be clear, concise, and digestible. The objective needs to be straightforward, and the key results should show what you’re tracking and how you’re tracking it without the need for an explanation.
If no one remembers your OKRs, it’s going to be pretty difficult to hit them.
The most critical part of writing OKRs isn’t how you write them. It’s how you use them. You should revisit OKRs often so they stay preeminent and your team knows how they’re progressing. Our recommendation: make reviewing OKRs part of weekly stand-up meetings or 1:1s.
Pro tip: try our goals software to add OKRs to the top of your agendas.
One of the key reasons we love OKRs is that they’re not written in a boardroom. Everyone has input into what the objectives should be, and everyone has ownership of success.
Here are 8 steps to help set and achieve OKRs that work at a company, team and individual level.
Writing effective OKRs starts with understanding your organizational goals. Once you’re clear on the vision, you can break down those higher-level goals into actionable team OKRs to drive your business forward.
Remember that OKRs shouldn’t be set in isolation. Everything should ladder up into each other.
Starting with well-defined goals informs your team OKRs, which lead to individual OKRs. This will help everyone stay aligned and moving in the same direction.
Like any project, having the right tool for the job is critical. From brainstorming sessions on goals and objectives to tracking your progress, excellent tools are available to help support and stay aligned on your OKRs — especially when you’re working in a remote or hybrid workplace.
OKRs are bi-directional, not top-down. Each team member should have input into OKRs— leading to a shared sense of ownership and accountability on your team.
So once you’ve gotten clear on your company goals, and put in place the right tools, call a team meeting to start brainstorming and finessing your OKRs for the quarter. Then, don’t forget to meet one-on-one with team members to discuss how their individual OKRs fit into the bigger picture.
Then, as the quarter goes on, don’t forget to continuously keep the team in the loop on progress, so everyone can see the impact of their work and that of their peers.
Your objectives are the destination you’re heading toward — so they should be established before your key results and initiatives. Sometimes it can be tempting to start with results, but it’s the objective that guides the key results. Your objective should consist of one sentence, along with a short description.
Your objectives need to be ambitious, so it’s normal to feel a bit uncomfortable when setting them. If not, re-evaluate— you may be setting the bar too low.
Key results are how progress is measured towards the objective. If the objective is the destination, then your key results are the map to getting there.
It’s with key results where you get to define how you’re going to measure your progress. Remember, they should be relevant to your objective and easy to measure with a number.
Now, put all of this together with one more ingredient — initiatives. Initiatives are how you’re going to put the OKRs into action. Here are two examples of what the full combination of objective, key result, and initiative could look like:
| Objective | Key Result | Initiative |
| Be the best remote work company | Have an eNPS score of 30 | Conduct monthly eNPS surveys with employees |
| Be in the top 5 top-selling SaaS solutions | Generate 50 inbound leads | Start a new paid digital marketing campaign |
Too many organizations start with the best of intentions when it comes to OKRs. They do the work of brainstorming across their teams. They put their OKRs into great-looking templates. Then, sadly, they put them on a shared drive and forget about them.
OKRs work when you track and review them. Find ways to make OKR reviews part of your process. That could be reviewing individual OKRs at 1:1s, team OKRs at weekly team meetings, or organizational OKRs during quarterly town hall meetings.
When we talked about what makes a good OKR, we discussed the need to make it challenging.
The best OKRs are just out of reach — they’re meant to inspire your team. But not demotivate them by being completely unachievable. There’s a fine line between the two. That’s why it’s important to celebrate your successes, even if you don’t hit 100% of the key results.
To help you get started with your OKRs, we put together a template that you can use to establish and keep track of your objectives and key results:
Looking to set OKRs for your specific team? We’ve got a ton of other useful resources you can check out, plus a library of over 360 OKR examples:
👉 Get inspired with our library of 360+ goal and OKR examples
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