Apply the OKR formula to draft a well-constructed Objective and Key Results before adding them to 15Five. A complete draft makes data entry faster and reduces revisions after publishing.
Before You Begin
- Identify the initiative or outcome you want to drive this quarter.
- Know whether your OKRs are aspirational (target 50–70% completion) or commitment-based (target 100% completion).
Steps
- Write your Objective as a headline answer to the question: "So what?"
- Make the Objective aspirational, qualitative, and time-bound.
- Apply the formula: "I will [Objective] as measured by [Key Results]."
- Write 2–4 Key Results for each Objective.
- Make each Key Result numeric, time-boxed, and grounded in data.
- Run the quality test on each Key Result: ask whether completing it moves the needle significantly on the Objective.
- If a Key Result does not move the needle, revise or replace it.
- Run the quality test on the Objective: ask whether it communicates the impact of the initiative.
- If the Objective does not communicate impact, revise it before continuing.
- Use the examples below to validate your draft structure.
OKR Examples
Customer Success
- Objective: Delight our current customers in Q3
- Key Result 1: Achieve a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 50 or better in Q3
- Key Result 2: Reduce customer churn rate to 2% or less in Q3
- Key Result 3: Generate 50 new online customer reviews in Q3
Marketing
- Objective: Improve our brand health in Q3
- Key Result 1: Increase unaided brand awareness from 20% to 35% in Q3
- Key Result 2: Increase total market perception that our brand is "good value" from 3.5 to 4.0 in Q3
Product
- Objective: Improve the way we validate our product roadmap in Q3
- Key Result 1: Develop and market-test a user testing questionnaire in Q3
- Key Result 2: Conduct 30 or more user testing and interview sessions in Q3
- Key Result 3: Prepare a retro deck of findings from the first round of user testing in Q3
Top-Down Alignment Example
- Company Objective: Rethink the product foundations to meet enterprise needs
- Team Objective: Design a flexible method for customers to categorize and find data
- Key Result 1: Discover the top 3 pain points from enterprise customers through interviews and the annual feedback survey
- Key Result 2: Confirm solution with engineers and internal stakeholders with 100% approval on the design
- Key Result 3: Validate the best solution with 2 customers through feedback that has 80% average approval on the design
If Something Goes Wrong
| Issue | Check | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Key Result feels vague or subjective | Does it include a number, a deadline, or a measurable threshold? | Rewrite it with a specific metric, percentage, or count and a time boundary. |
| Objective sounds like a task, not an outcome | Does it answer "So what?" rather than "What will I do?" | Reframe toward the impact or change you want to see, not the activity. |
| Key Results don't connect to the Objective | Does completing each KR directly advance the Objective? | Remove KRs that measure unrelated work; replace with direct drivers of the Objective. |
| Too many Key Results | Are there more than 4 per Objective? | Reduce to the 2–4 results most critical to declaring the Objective met. |
Not Covered Here
This article covers drafting OKRs on paper or in a worksheet — for steps to enter a completed OKR into 15Five, see the article on creating an Objective.