Best OKR Examples for every team (with tips)

Want some great OKR Examples to help with company and team OKR setting? This article has you covered. We cover loads of Objective and Key Result examples and tips on how to write incredible OKRs with you team. 

If you're just here for the examples, you can skip ahead: 

What is OKR and why have OKR Examples?

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It's a lightweight goal setting framework used by teams and organizations to set, align and track measurable goals. OKR empowers your teams to achieve their biggest goals with focus.

It's game chaining for any business wanting to get the entire business behind the biggest priorities.

OKR is used by industry giants like Google, Amazon and LinkedIn to inspire their teams and drive growth. They've been using it since they were small start ups. Here's why... 

It's been proven time and time again to drive growth for highly competitive business. In fact, this is why it was created. Andy Grove invented OKR at Intel in the late 60's during the chip wars with Motorola. It was the secret sauce for Intel winning the chip war, and that's why so many tech firms have embraced it to drive their success.

Why is it important to have good OKR examples? Wether you're starting out or highly experienced with OKR, you can get inspiration from well written OKR Examples. They show you how to structure a well written OKR and what content you should include.

On that note, let's look at what makes a great OKR!

Tips: What in a great OKR?

First, why another OKR example blog? Yes there is loads of them out there. Most of the examples out there are terrible. Here's why...

Most examples have Key Results that are actually a todo list. 

This mistake creates busy work and stops the team from thinking about what success looks like. Instead, they just try and get the job done (and miss out on the benefits). So before we get into the examples, let's look at some tips for great OKR writing.

Objective writing tips

The Objective is a statement of what you want to achieve. A good OKR is inspiring and exciting. It focuses on solving one problem for the quarter, usually your biggest growth constraint.

When writing the Objective, consider the following tips.

1. Be Inspirational: Your objective should excite the team. Think big picture and make it something that excites everyone.
2. Focus on Change: Objectives should aim to improve or change something, not just maintain the status quo.
3. Keep It Simple: It should be clear and easy to understand. Everyone on the team should know exactly what it means.
4. Achievable Within a Quarter: While it should stretch the team, it must be realistic and possible to achieve within a quarter.
5. Action-Oriented: An objective should guide the team's actions. It should make people think about what they need to do to achieve it.
6. Provides Focus: It should help the team prioritize their work, distinguishing what’s important from what isn’t. Keep it to one OKR per team.

So now you know how to write a great Objective, let's explore the ingredients of a great Key Result!

Key Result writing tips

Let's look at a good vs bad OKR example. Let's say “Release a new version of the app” is a terrible example of a Key Result. Maybe the outcome they’re looking for is  “Increase customer satisfaction from a score of X to Y”. For most products (but not all), that's still a lagging indicator. So maybe, a good leading indicator of people liking the app is repeat users. So that would give 

This is a common mistake we see in OKR Examples in other blogs. If it's not that, they using lagging indicators instead of leading indicators. Otherwise, you can do a load of work, but not actually achieve the Key Result within the quarter.

So what makes a good OKR? Our OKR Cheat Sheet summarises the key attributes, but here’s a breakdown of a good OKR.

Here's 6 Key Result writing tips to consider:

1. Be Measurable: Key results need to have clear metrics. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
2. Set Clear Targets: Always include a starting point and a target metric. This helps in tracking progress accurately.
3. Outcome, Not Output: Focus on the results and impact, not just the tasks. For instance, "Increase user retention by 20%" is better than "Launch new feature."
4. Aligned with Objectives: Each key result should directly support the achievement of the objective.
5. Challenging but Realistic: Aim for about 70% achievement to push the team without setting them up for failure.
6. Use Leading Indicators: Use metrics that can be influenced and tracked within the quarter. Avoid lagging indicators that only show results long after the actions.

OKR Examples for every team

Now you know how to write a great OKR, let's get on with some examples These Objective and Key Result Examples cover just about every team type.

While this may not be the longest or complete list, it’s the best examples we have seen that articulate quality OKRs. Most are based on real-world examples from companies we have worked with. Seen a better article? Please let me know!

Company OKR Examples

Objective: Make customers our biggest advocates

• Key Result 1: Create a better product experience increasing the trial to paid conversion rate from 5% to 7%
• Key Result 2: Become a customer problem solving machine by increasing first call resolution from 75% to 90% maintaining our per customer case rate
• Key Result 3: Improve referral engine to increase referral rate from 2% to 30%

Objective: Become the number one accounting provider for Small businesses in San Francisco

• Key Result 1: Build an awesome experience which increases the reorder rate from 45% to 70%
• Key Result 2: Become a customer problem-solving machine by increasing first call resolution from 75% to 90% maintaining our per customer case rate
• Key Result 3: Business see the benefits of generating an increase in Marketing Qualified Leads from 60 MoM to 200

Sales Team OKR Examples

Objective: Have our customers fall back in love with our offering

• Key Result 1: Increase customer number of customers who return twice in a week from 10% to 40%
• Key Result 2: Customers referral rate from 25% to 60%
• Key Result 3: 50% increase in customer satisfaction
• Key Result 4: Increase first-month customer satisfaction from 3 to 4.

Objective: Become the go-to accounting platform for NCY independent consultants

• Key Result 1: Increase Marketing Qualified Leads from $600K to $1M for NCY independent consultants
• Key Result 2: Increase Sales Qualified Leads from $400K to $600K NCY independent consultants
• Key Result 3: Reduce time from Marketing Qualified Leads to Sales Qualified Leads from 10 days to 2 days
• Key Result 4: Increase Sales journey customer satisfaction from 4 to 5

Objective: Crush our launch in Melbourne, Australia

• Key Result 1: Generate $200K in Sales Qualified Leads in Australia
• Key Result 2: Progress leads from Marketing Qualified Leads to Sales Qualified Leads within 2 days
• Key Result 3: Maintain a Sales Qualified Leads to Close conversion ratio of above 20%
• Key Result 4: Maintain a profit margin ratio of 45%

Objective: Be the best sales team in the industry

• Key Result 1: Increase speed to respond to leads from 2 days to 2 business hours
• Key Result 2: Increase Sales journey customer satisfaction from 4 to 5
• Key Result 3: Reduce cool down period cancellations from 5% to 1%
• Key Result 4: 100% of customers are informed of cool down cancellation policy (countermeasure for KR3)

Finance Team OKR Examples

Objective: Create a lean and mean Finance machine

• Key Result 1: Speed up the end of month cycle time from 2 weeks to 4 days
• Key Result 2: Increase accuracy of financial inputs from 95% to 100%
• Key Result 3: Increase end of month cycle employee satisfaction from 2 to 5

Objective: Create a lean operation business

• Key Result 1: Reduce failure demand across technology and operations teams from 25% to 10%
• Key Result 2: Increase team turnaround time from an average of 20 days to 10 days
• Key Result 3: Increase customer satisfaction from 4 to 4.5

Objective: Prime ourselves for growth with stellar funding options

• Key Result 1: Reduce average funding costs from federal funds rate +2% to federal funds rate +.5%
• Key Result 2: Reduce additional funding approval time from 30-day average to 2-day average
• Key Result 3: Increase loans with an early repayment option from 25% of loans to 75% of loans

Operations Team OKR Examples

Objective: Create a world-class customer contact centre

• Key Result 1: Increase first call resolution form 90% to 98%
• Key Result 2: Increase customer satisfaction from 4 to 4.5
• Key Result 3: Increase customer retention rate from 85% to 95%

Objective: Surprise our customers with rapid delivery

• Key Result 1: Reduce average time to ship from 48 hours to 10 hours
• Key Result 2: Reduce parcel damage rate from .02% to .01%
• Key Result 3: Increase delivery address accuracy from 98% to 100%
• Key Result 4: Speed up return restocking from an average of 10 hours down to 2 hours

Objective: Crush our approach to managing risk events

• Key Result 1: Increase flow efficiency of risk events from 20% to 60%
• Key Result 2: Reduce 12 month or greater open risk events from 55 to 10
• Key Result 3: Increase risk event closure customer satisfaction from 20% to 60%

Technology Team OKR examples

Objective: Launch the new Business Intelligence tool to empower internal teams with enhanced data-driven decision-making capabilities within this quarter.

1. Key Result 1: Increase user adoption of the new BI tool from 0% to 70% among eligible internal team members.
2. Key Result 2: Elevate trainee confidence in using the new tool of 80% or higher.
3. Key Result 3: Make it easy to use with an average customer effort score of 2 or less (on a scale of 1-5, where 1 is very easy and 5 is very hard).

Objective: Boost team collaboration and productivity with a new video conferencing tool.

1. Key Result 1: Increase video conferencing tool adoption from 0% to 80% among team members by the quarter's end.
2. Key Result 2: Reduce technical issues from an estimated initial 30% to below 10%, enhancing user experience and reliability.
3. Key Result 3: Improve user satisfaction score from initial feedback of 3.0 (out of 5) to 4.5, reflecting better usability and feature quality.

Objective: Strengthen organizational cyber defenses and improve overall cybersecurity resilience.

1. Key Result 1: Reduce phishing email click-through rate from 15% to below 5%, showing increased employee vigilance.
2. Key Result 2: Achieve a cybersecurity drill response time under 30 minutes, down from the current average of 60 minutes.
3. Key Result 3: Increase monthly system scan completion rate from the current 70% to 100%, ensuring thorough and proactive vulnerability identification.

NGO & Charity OKR Examples

Objective: Have our donors become our biggest advocates

• Key Result 1: Reduce time to thank donors for contributions from 7 days to 8 business hours
• Key Result 2: Increase twice-weekly use rate from 2%of donors to 15%
• Key Result 3: Increase donor referral rate from 5% to 15%

Objective: Save lives in 1 village of a developing nation by reducing preventable disease

• Key Result 1: Observation and survey results show 80% increase in handwashing with soap
• Key Result 2: Rate of communicable disease decreases by 60%

Product and Engineering Team OKR  Examples

Objective: Have our customers fall back in love with our products

• Key Result 1: Deliver an incredible experience to increase satisfaction from 40 to 80
• Key Result 2: Deliver an incredible first-time user experience to increase initial satisfaction from 10 to 80
• Key Result 3: Make the experience sticky to increase customers who return twice in a week from 10% to 40%
• Key Result 4: Help our customers share the love by increasing the referral rate from 25% to 50%

Objective: Grow by making our upgrade path feel like butter

• Key Result 1: Increase sign-up to trial conversion ratio from 10% to 30%
• Key Result 2: Increase trial to paid conversion ratio from 5% to 7%
• Key Result 3: Increase referral rate for < 1 month paid accounts from 2% to 30%

Objective: Make it easier than ever to share an article

• Key Result 1: Reduce time to publish a post from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
• Key Result 2: Reduce time reshare a post from 7 seconds to 2 seconds
• Key Result 3: Increase customer share satisfaction from 3 to 4

Agile Coach OKR Examples

Objective: Create a digital team that can consistently deliver awesome

• Key Result 1: Reduce cycle time for planned and structured work from 10 days to 2 days
• Key Result 2: 100% of all work items > 2 weeks follow pull based delivery lifecycle
• Key Result 3: Consolidated mission teams where 100% of team members believe they have a near term roadmap

Objective: Trained teams are crushing it with Agile

• Key Result 1: 100% of teams self-report as “Proficient” with their agile ways of working
• Key Result 2: Increase flow efficiency from 10% to 25%
• Key Result 3: Mean time to deploy down from 7 days to 5 days

HR Team OKR Examples

Objective: Create high impact leaders across the business

• Key Result 1: Leaders believe they have the tools and practices needed to effectively lead from 50% to 100%
• Key Result 2: Team members believe managers help set performance goals from a median of 2 to 4
• Key Result 3: Team members believe their leaders communicate an inspiring vision from 52% currently to 75%