Product Management: Foundations to Practice · Goal Setting: OKRs and North Star Metrics
Writing Good Objectives and Key Results
The gap between a well-written OKR and a poorly written one is not stylistic, it changes whether the framework actually drives useful behavior or becomes empty bureaucratic theater.
An Objective should be a qualitative, inspiring statement of where a team wants to go, answering the question, where do I want to go. It should be motivating enough that a team genuinely wants to achieve it, not merely a restated task. A weak Objective simply restates a project name; a strong one names the meaningful change the team is trying to create in the world.
Key Takeaways
- A strong Objective names a meaningful change the team wants to create, not a restated project name.
- Key Results should measure outcomes (behavior or metric changes), not outputs (things shipped).
- Hitting 100 percent of every Key Result every quarter is a warning sign the targets were not ambitious enough.
- Too many Key Results per Objective, or Objectives broad enough to justify any activity, both defeat OKRs' purpose.