15Five's Objectives feature enables teams to record, measure, and align their goals. This article walks through how to create objectives and select appropriate objective settings.
In this article, you will learn...
Access and availability
⛔️ Required access to Objectives.
👥 This article is relevant to all roles.
📦 This feature is available in the Perform, Legacy Focus, and Total Platform pricing packages.
Note
If you are an account administrator, you can set permissions for the Objectives feature here, including who can create company-wide objectives, who can create/edit/manage objectives, and much more.
Are you more of a visual learner? Check out this video ⬇️
Create an objective
Objectives are the things an organization, team, or individual wants to accomplish, and are typically qualitative and time-bound. Use the steps below to create an objective.
Note
The options denoted below with an asterisk may not be available based on your organization's feature settings. If you want these abilities, please reach out to an Account admin.
- Click on Objectives in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation.
- You will land on the 'All objectives' page. From here, click Create a new objective.
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Give your objective a name. The name should concisely and accurately describe the goal of the objective.
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Provide a description of your objective (optional). Use the text field to provide a description of your objective. This description will be visible to anyone who has permission to view your objective from the objectives details page.
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Select an owner. The person selected here should be the main stakeholder responsible for the objective's completion. Please note that the names that appear in this dropdown menu will vary based on your company's set permissions for Objectives.
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Select an objective type. Decide whether the objective is for: A person, A group, or The whole company. The options that appear in this section may vary depending on objective settings.
If you select "A group"...- Select the group type that the group you want to create an objective for falls under. If you don't see the group type on the list, please reach out to an Account admin and ask them to enable objective creation for that group type.
Note
A group type is an umbrella label used to organize groups. Learn more about groups and group types.
- Select the group you want to create the objective for.
- Select the group type that the group you want to create an objective for falls under. If you don't see the group type on the list, please reach out to an Account admin and ask them to enable objective creation for that group type.
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Align your objective (optional)*. Select a parent objective that you want to align your objective to. Read more about in our "Align an objective with a parent objective" Help Center article.
If aligned, decide whether or not you want the objective to impact the progress of the parent objective. -
Add tags (optional)*. Add tags to your objective to help with organization. If you are unsure what tags to use for your objective, it's best to leave this field blank.
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Create key results. Now's the time to create key results to measure your objective. You must add at least one key result.
- Name your key results. Choose a name for the key result. If you do not name the key result, the objective will not save.
- Decide how you want to measure progress. Select how to want to measure the key result. Measurement options are percentage, currency, number, or completed/not completed. For currency values other than $, click ... > Other currency, and use the drop-down to choose the currency that applies.
- Link the key result with a Jira issue*. If your company has the Jira integration enabled, you can link your key result(s) to Jira issues using the 'Link to' option at the bottom right of your key result field.
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Add objective start and end dates. Decide when the objective should begin and when it should be due. Please note that if you aligned the objective with a parent objective, the dates selected here must fall within the parent objective's start and end dates.
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Assign permissions for updating and editing the objective (optional)*. Use the "Who can update and edit this objective?" section to allow specific groups or individuals to view, edit, manage, update, and delete the objective.
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Select a privacy setting. Options are Public, 15Five permissions, and Specific-people. For more information on these settings, refer to our "Visibility settings for objectives" Help Center article.
Tip
If you'd like for the objective to be private to only you and your direct manager, select "Specific people." Your name and your direct manager's name will be auto-populated; simply don't add anyone else's name in the field.
- Click the Create objective button, and you're done! The objective can now be seen on the Objectives dashboard.
Note
Only Account admins can create objectives in bulk.
- Click on the Settings menu at the upper right corner of your 15Five account.
- Select Features from the dropdown menu.
- Click on 'Objectives'.
- Click on the 'Import' tab in the top navigation bar.
- Click Create new import.
- Download a template for your import CSV by clicking Download template.
Alternatively, if you already have OKRs in a separate spreadsheet, pull up that spreadsheet and make sure the columns match those in the "Prepare your CSV" section. Then, click Skip.
Tip
Even if you have OKRs in a separate spreadsheet already, we suggest downloading the template and adding your existing data to the template. This minimizes the leg work of adjusting your existing CSV to match our required format.
- Fill out your bulk import CSV and save it as a UTF-8 file. Refer to the "Prepare your CSV" section of the OKR creation page to see how columns should be formatted and which columns are optional and required.
- Click Create new import, then select your saved CSV file. The import will begin automatically.
- Review the upload. If you need to make changes, click Start over. If everything looks as expected, click Publish (#) objectives.
- You'll be redirected to the Import history page, which contains all previous imports. If you published changes that you didn't mean to, click Revert import to the right of the import.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I add a past objective to 15Five?
No. It is not possible to add past objectives into 15Five, as you cannot create an objective in 15Five whose end date is in the past.
Can I bulk import objectives?
Yes— by following the steps in our "Bulk import objectives" article. This option is especially helpful if you're adding a large number of objectives.
Can you give some guidance on creating impactful OKRs?
Absolutely! Here are some examples of Objectives in the most common categories where a company wants to create impact: "Recruit & hire phenomenal people to take us to the next level (company growth)", "Raise the bar on product UX (quality)", "Sustainable repeatable lead generation (revenue)". Here are some examples of not-so-great objectives: "Interview 5 applicants for Design Lead April 30", "Increase code coverage to 90%", "Hit 732 ICP leads by end of Q2", "Build out accurate job descriptions for 75% of our jobs." The first set of examples are great Objectives because they’re time-bound, qualitative, and meaningful— words like “raise the bar” and “phenomenal” are designed to motivate. In contrast, each of the not-so-great objectives above is too quantitative and specific, which may make them great key results.
Key results are concrete, specific, and measurable, and describe how you’ll accomplish the Objective. The objective is the "what," and the key results are the "how," "where," and "when." Here are some examples of good potential key results for the objective "Design a flexible method for customers to categorize and find data": 1) Have discovered the top 3 pain points from enterprise customers through interviews and the annual feedback survey, 2) Have validated solution with engineers and internal stakeholders with 100% approval on design, 3) Have validated the best solution with 2 customers through feedback that has 80% avg. approval on the design.
For more advice on how to create powerful OKRs and examples, you can also check out our "How to Write OKRs that Drive Impact" blog post.
Key results are concrete, specific, and measurable, and describe how you’ll accomplish the Objective. The objective is the "what," and the key results are the "how," "where," and "when." Here are some examples of good potential key results for the objective "Design a flexible method for customers to categorize and find data": 1) Have discovered the top 3 pain points from enterprise customers through interviews and the annual feedback survey, 2) Have validated solution with engineers and internal stakeholders with 100% approval on design, 3) Have validated the best solution with 2 customers through feedback that has 80% avg. approval on the design.
For more advice on how to create powerful OKRs and examples, you can also check out our "How to Write OKRs that Drive Impact" blog post.
If I give someone the ability to edit an objective, will that objective appear on their Check-ins?
No: objectives that a person has access to edit will not appear on their Check-ins. The person will not receive a notification that they have been added as an editor. The objectives a person is able to edit can be accessed through the 'All objectives' page.
How do key results contribute to an objective's completion?
All key results contribute equally to the overall completion of the objective. If the objective also has child objectives, the child objectives and key results will each contribute equally. For example: if an objective has three key results, each key result will contribute 33% towards objective completion. If an objective has three key results and two child objectives, each item will contribute 20% towards the objective completion.
How can I update my business calendar so that quarterly dates are aligned?
Account admins can customize your company's business calendar and update frequency for objectives under "Scheduling details" on the Objectives settings page.