How to write an OKR focused on an outcome

An important aspect of OKRs is that they are deceptively simple in structure. This is part of the appeal. Easy to draft, easy to consume.

Looking at an ancient city through the mists, over a cliff’s edge.

An important aspect of OKRs is that they are deceptively simple in structure. This is, I think, part of the appeal. Easy to draft, easy to consume. This is both true and misleading in both cases but that becomes apparent later and probably by that time some of the potential of OKRs as a tool for alignment has become apparent and we are hooked.

How a potential objective becomes a possibility can be varied. Sometimes it’s a leader coming to a team with an initiative to tackle, sometimes it’s from research which has identified a customer problem, or it surfaces when reviewing other opportunities, maybe it is a solution that the team knows instinctively could provide value. Whatever the source the task at hand is to draft an objective and key results.

If we have invested effort into exploring the WHY of the work you likely are in a good position to do this — to learn more about an approach to this read my post ‘Better objective setting; start with WHY’. Even better if you have built a causal chain or have linked your chain to a Result Map.

Qualities of outcome-oriented objectives

Here are several elements that can help with drafting an objective:

1. Objectives are Outcomes, not activities
   Most important is the objective is describing an outcome — for reasons established in ‘Thinking in terms of outcomes’ and ‘Subtle aspects of OKRs and their effects’. An outcome is easiest to write as a short description that, if achieved, will be true.

   
   An example we used is ‘There are no critical security vulnerabilities outside of our Service Level Agreement’. Ideally, this would be a health measure for the business but the reality there were more than a few vulnerabilities that had been identified and a significant effort to get to a healthy state, as such we set it as an objective for the company which all teams would align to.
   

2. Objectives reflect a step-change
   If we are elevating some objectives to focus on for a quarter, to be ambitious and to be transparently communicated broadly then it makes sense that we are choosing objectives which truly reflect a step-change from the current state.
   
   There are of course always other things that we measure and improve more incrementally over longer periods but what we choose as OKRs should be focused on significant impact; this can be a helpful discriminator in choosing your objectives.
   

3. Objectives are ambitious
   Teams in low-trust environments or who continue to find it difficult to conceptualise OKRs as being separate from an individual’s or team’s performance management will struggle with the idea of setting an ambitious target because of how they worry they may be perceived should they fail.
   
   Getting past this — because the organisation truly supports the team and because the team has internalised the benefit of an ambitious goal in terms of stimulating lateral thinking — is to unlock an extra benefit of OKRs.
   
   If the team is working with OKRs framed as activities this will also be challenging to grasp because it may be deemed a commitment to deliver to an estimate as opposed to a commitment to make progress towards achieving the objective.
   

4. Objectives are accessible
   The most beneficial element of OKRs is the ability to create alignment across an organisation. Given this, it makes sense to make your objective as accessible to the layperson as possible. Avoid jargon, acronyms and anything else that may alienate different parts of your organisation.
   
   The goal needs to be understood by the team working on it, other teams, leaders and other parts of the organisation alike. This is another important reason why goals should be outcomes. Most of the organisation will understand the broader purpose and its customers and their problems so talking in these terms is more accessible than in terms of HOW, implementation detail and aspects of what is done behind the scenes will be alienating, in addition to the drawbacks I shared in ‘Thinking in terms of outcomes’.
   
   It also helps to keep objectives as short, inspiring and memorable as possible. If the goal is something worth doing and impactful this will be half the battle already but important to remember that for organisations where OKRs are adopted throughout there can be a lot of competing for people’s attention so some effort to edit for clarity can go a long way.
   

5. Objectives are not measures
   Don’t put your measure in the objective — you have key results for this. You can use the key results to qualify such specifics, to be the evidence that the objective is true. To mix these is to make it likely your objective is not an outcome but an output of an activity.
   

Qualities of outcome-oriented key results

1. Key results are symptoms or evidence of achievement of the objective
   The key results can help qualify our understanding of the objective. We may have some alignment if the key results were outputs of some activity related to the objective but this leaves a large margin for misinterpretation because the connection between the objective and these details is implicit and it would be possible, even likely, that achieving those outputs did not reflect achievement of the objective.
    
   A great example often comes when a customer's (internal or external) satisfaction is low due to a problem with their experience. Usually, it can be quick to hypothesise a solution that may address the dissatisfaction which can seem adequate until you suggest measuring the improvement of customer satisfaction as the key result.
   
   Measuring with the output of a given solution leaves no room for adaptation — you are likely a quarter away from knowing you failed. Whereas using something more closely associated with the customer’s perception of their own experience — the real impact you are trying to achieve gives the opportunity to test, iterate and pivot your efforts ongoing throughout the quarter.
   

2. Key results often build upon or qualify other key results
   A common pattern I find helpful is to identify the most descriptive volumetric measure of achieving the objective. The ‘measure that matters’, is the thing that increases (or occasionally decreases) when you are making progress towards the goal. Of course, most would be familiar with the potential for measures to lead to perverse behaviour, either gaming or making progress as the consequence of some other important aspect of the organisation. For instance, when sales are made that deliver low value for customers, just so a salesperson can reach their quota.
   
   So it's helpful to establish other key results which are addressing other qualitative elements which reflect desirable and undesirable aspects of achieving the goal. For instance, sales are made but the value delivered is high and returns are low or unchanging maybe three complementary measures which help us be very aligned on what success is and isn’t.
   

3. Key results are leading indicators where possible
   It's a bit harder to be definitive about this one as it somewhat depends on what you are doing to compliment your approach to using OKRs.
   
   Many organisations combine OKRs with a longer-term goal-setting practice, sometimes additional OKRs of longer periods, sometimes KPIs or other organisational performance approaches such as the concept of Results from PUMP (a framework that’s comprehensive enough that you could altogether replace OKRs), balanced scorecard or any of a myriad of other options.
   
   Presuming something of this nature is in place then you lose nothing from opting for leading indicators as measures. The benefit of leading indicators is that they may change soon enough to have meaningful signals during the quarter to be useful for adapting your tactics towards making better progress in achieving your objective.

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