A company OKR holds up when it is few, memorable, honest about the baseline, and clear enough for teams to write their own goals against.
Company-level OKRs set the direction the teams write their own goals against. They earn their keep by being few, memorable and honest about the baseline. A company objective that tries to cover everything guides nothing.
The strongest company OKRs share a trait that is easy to miss: a team reading them can tell what to stop doing. If every existing project still fits comfortably under the new objective, it has not made a choice.
Objective: Prove people want this before we scale it
Level: Company Company type: Startup Company type: SaaS
Coach’s score ★★★★★
Measurable ★★★★★
Outcome-based ★★★★★
Focused ★★★★★
Niklas Olsson · OKR coach
One to three objectives per cycle, and one is a respectable answer. Every additional company objective multiplies across the teams that align to it. Three focused objectives that every team can recite beat five that need the slide deck open.
Direction should travel down; the goals themselves should be written by the teams that own the work. A team that writes its own OKR against the company objective understands it and defends it at every check-in. A team handed a pre-cut slice of someone else's numbers executes it at half heart.
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Overall strong, clear, and very ambitious, which is common with startups. Many times startups are exactly the kind of organisation that can really benefit from ambitious OKRs. With a lack of baselines, experts, and experience of what actually works, you can see results that double or triple the current level.
Number three is a fun one: reach 40% of users who would be very disappointed without the product. At the same time it needs some kind of measurability settled up front. Will this be measured at the end of the quarter with a survey to all customers, or is there a better metric for this satisfaction score?