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One of the most critical considerations when adopting OKRs is knowing how to write them well. Below I share valuable tips from Ken Norton on how to define good OKRs — and add practical commentary to each point.
Ken Norton was Senior Operation Partner at Google Ventures and former Product Manager at Google, responsible for Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Mobile Maps for Android.
What Should a Good OKR Look Like?
Direction Comes from the Top
When companies are small, everyone is close to the CEO and knows their reasoning. As the company grows, that becomes impossible. OKRs help the CEO define the company’s direction — and that is why they should be few and should not look like task lists or project plans.
It is the CEO’s role to lead and decide where the company is going. If that does not happen, bottom-up initiatives do not work.
Prioritize, Don’t Cover Everything
The central question each cycle is: what is the priority right now?
One of the biggest mistakes in creating OKRs is trying to cover all areas at once. Prioritize what you want to tackle in that period — and re-prioritize in the next cycle if needed.
OKRs Should Be Ambitious
OKRs should be hard to achieve. They need to force everyone to focus and step out of their comfort zone.
That said, there is an important nuance: as a best practice, it is recommended to start with more accessible OKRs and raise the bar after a few execution cycles. Starting with overly ambitious goals too early can generate the opposite effect — the team enters the “whatever, we won’t get there anyway” mode.
Measure — or It’s Not an OKR
OKRs are measurable. You will know when you have achieved them.
“We want our customers to be happy” is a beautiful objective — but we need numbers to know how much progress we have made. Without that, it is not an OKR, it is a wish.
OKRs Explain the “How Much,” Not the “How”
OKRs are valuable for communicating how much was achieved — that is, results. The how is the responsibility of project managers and team leads.
The OKR owner’s role is to ensure that those responsible have action plans and that those plans are transparent to the whole organization.
Top-Down and Bottom-Up: Both Together
OKRs work best with a combination of approaches. Top-down provides the CEO’s direction; bottom-up comes from the teams, who respond and decide what that direction means for their products and businesses.
Purely top-down OKRs create a command environment — not an engaging and enjoyable place to work. But purely bottom-up OKRs also fail, because they lose the purpose of providing strategic direction.
OKRs are a powerful communication tool that, done correctly and without hierarchical shortcuts, gives voice to all organizational levels — and allows hearing each department’s interpretation of the strategic objectives. This is unique to OKRs.
Avoid Silo-Oriented OKRs
It makes no sense to have “engineering OKRs” or “marketing OKRs.” As explored in OKR to Remove Invisible Fences, shared OKRs are precisely what breaks down barriers between departments. Create OKRs oriented toward products or the team’s mission. The goal is to build the feeling that we are working together, building something.
An important caveat: unless you are a startup, it is unlikely you will be able to implement cross-functional OKRs right away. Mapping interdependencies is the final phase of any scaling initiative. Creating OKRs dependent on other departments without prior alignment is counterproductive.
Think Like Your Customer Thinks
The more the team’s structure resembles the way your users or customers see the world, the easier it will be to remember to focus OKRs on what truly matters to them.
This is the challenge of the century — not only for OKRs, but for any organizational transformation initiative: departments entirely focused on service lines, responding agilely to constant changes, while the rest operates as an internal supplier. A prize for whoever truly achieves this.
Don’t Over-Decompose
Do not break down OKRs into excessively granular functional parts — otherwise they begin to lose sight of the final objective: what problem are we trying to solve?
OKRs were not created to solve specific problems. Using them that way turns them into KPIs. They are most effective when they function as actionable metrics that define organizational strategy.
What to Take Away
Writing good OKRs is a skill developed with practice, cycles, and feedback. The most common mistakes — wanting to cover everything, creating silo OKRs, not measuring, or delegating direction to teams without a strategic anchor — are avoidable with conceptual clarity and execution discipline. To dispel the misconceptions that block that clarity, it is worth reading 7 Myths About OKRs.
The good news: every poorly executed cycle is also a learning cycle. OKR is, by nature, iterative.