Best Objectives and Key Result Examples

Do we really need another OKR example article?

Well, this was born of frustration. The original intent of this article was to create a consolidated list of high-impact OKR examples. Unfortunately, our search came back bare.

Most examples we see either replace Key Results with activities or leverage lagging indicators. For example “25 on-site user-testing sessions to bla bla bla” 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”. Knowing the problem is useless unless you’re doing something about it.

So what makes a good OKR? Our OKR Cheat Sheet summarises the key attributes, but here’s a breakdown of a good OKR. The key element is that Key Results:

• Is a leading indicator.
• There is a clear “To” and “From” metric to improve clarity.
• There’s clear scope to it.

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 us know!

Company OKR Examples

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

HR Example

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%

Sales 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 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 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%

NGO 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%

Research, & Development 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 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