OKR Template for Teams

Read the company's objectives before your team drafts anything. Google's re:Work guide suggests committing to organizational objectives first, so teams can set theirs in service of them. It adds that not every company OKR needs to appear in every team's OKRs¹, but each team's should connect to at least one. If nobody has written the company's objectives down, start with a strategic plan.

Then check each connection in the goal's own words. A goal maps to an objective only if its wording supports the claim, not because its team usually works in that area. When a goal maps to nothing, don't force it in: mark it unmapped and decide which kind it is.

Upkeep is still worth tracking, just not as an OKR. What Matters, the OKR site John Doerr co-founded, draws the line this way: OKRs are measures for change, whereas KPIs are measures of health².

Keep the list short. Google's guide recommends three to five objectives, since more can spread a team too thin¹. Write each as an end state an outsider could check: "Ship the v3 platform migration," not "Continue platform work." Google warns against objectives like "keep hiring" or "maintain market position," which don't push for anything new.

Then label each objective committed or aspirational. Google's internal OKR playbook, which What Matters reprints with Google's permission, expects a committed OKR to score 1.0 and aspirational OKRs to average 0.7³. Mixing them up hurts both ways. A commitment labeled as a stretch may not be taken seriously, and a stretch labeled as a commitment makes the team defensive.

A key result is the evidence that an objective happened. What Matters notes that the pair can be written as one sentence²: "I will (objective) as measured by (key results)."

Describe outcomes, not activities. Google's guide says that if a key result uses words like "consult," "help," "analyze" or "participate," it describes an activity, not its impact¹. Its own example swaps "assess customer service satisfaction" for "publish customer service satisfaction levels by March 7th."

Make every number unambiguous and every date real. Google's playbook asks whether "1 million users" means all-time users or seven-day actives. It also warns that if every key result lands on the last day of the quarter, you likely don't have a real plan³.

Aim high, and be specific. Psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham reviewed 35 years of goal-setting research in 2002. They found that specific, difficult goals consistently led to higher performance⁴ than urging people to do their best. Pick measures the team can actually move, too: a 2017 Gallup report found that only 21% of employees strongly agree their performance metrics are within their control⁵.

A team can't report on a goal, but a person can. GitLab's public handbook describes the directly responsible individual⁶, a term it credits to Apple, as the one person ultimately accountable for a project's success or failure. Put one name against every key result. If two people truly share one, split it in two.

Owners should help write their key results. Gallup's report also found that only 30% of employees strongly agree their manager involves them in goal setting⁵. Those who are involved are 3.6 times more likely to be engaged. You can still assign a goal. Locke and Latham's review reports that an assigned goal works as well as one set together, provided the reason is explained⁴. Handed down with no reason, it does worse.

Goals need feedback to work. In the studies Locke and Latham reviewed, goals plus feedback were more effective than goals alone⁴. The template runs a 13-week quarter with a check-in every two weeks, six in all. Google's guide calls a mid-quarter check-in¹ helpful for every level of OKR before final grading.

Each check-in answers three questions, in a line apiece:

1. 1

   Where the measure stands

   The actual number, or how close the milestone is. "On track" is a conclusion, not a fact.

2. 2

   What changed

   What moved since the last check-in. If nothing did, say so.

3. 3

   What it needs

   One sentence on what has to happen for it to land on time.

Log a check-in even when nothing has moved. From the outside, a goal with no check-ins looks the same whether it's quietly on track or quietly abandoned. A regular one-on-one meeting with each owner is a natural place to collect updates.

At the end of the quarter, score each key result from 0.0 to 1.0 and average them for the objective, as Google does. Its guide puts the sweet spot at 60% to 70%¹ and treats low grades as data for writing the next quarter's OKRs. If someone scores 1.0 every time, their goals aren't ambitious enough. Committed OKRs are the exception: Google's playbook expects them to score 1.0, and a lower score needs an explanation.

Don't turn the scores into ratings or pay. Google's guide says OKRs are not synonymous with performance evaluation¹, and What Matters notes that, unlike the management by objectives they grew from, OKRs are divorced from compensation². If a 0.7 costs someone a raise, they'll stop writing ambitious goals. In a performance review, treat OKRs as a record of what someone worked on, and settle pay separately, against salary bands.

To check a whole company's goals in one pass, choose Edit with AI at the top of this page. River reads your objectives and every team's goals, then names each goal that connects to none of them.