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How to Implement OKRs: A Step-by-Step Guide from an Expert of 14 Years (Based on Webinar)
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Updated on:
May 15, 2026
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According to McKinsey research, around 70% of organizational transformations fail to meet their objectives. OKR rollouts are not exempt.
Across 14 years of implementations from startups to traditional enterprises, OKR consultant Hannes Albrecht has watched the same four mistakes derail teams that started with serious leadership backing and the right intent.
This guide explains how to implement OKRs without falling into those patterns. It is built from a 78-minute workshop Hannes ran with Teamflect, where he walked through the framework he uses with C-level teams.
The content below is structured around his methodology, with peer-reviewed research and answers to live audience questions worked in throughout.
By the end you'll have a step-by-step OKR implementation playbook with a realistic 6 to 12 month timeline, plus direct expert answers to the questions HR and operations leaders ask most often. Watch the full workshop above, then read on.
McKinsey identifies the typical reasons transformations stall: aspirations that aren't ambitious enough, and organizations that disengage before the work is finished. OKR rollouts hit the same wall, often before completing the second cycle. The methodology itself is sound. The operating rhythm and culture around it are usually where things break down.
Hannes Albrecht names four pitfalls that cause most early-stage failures.
This is the most common one. A team runs a kickoff workshop, drafts a clean set of OKRs, then goes quiet. Two or three months later someone surfaces the document and realises nobody has checked in since the launch. By that point the cycle is functionally over and there are no learnings to capture in a retrospective.
"You do a workshop, formulate OKRs, then put them in a mental drawer and forget about it for two or three months. That's why you need your routines." — Hannes Albrecht
OKRs cannot anchor onto something that does not exist. If leadership cannot state the company's two or three strategic priorities for the next 12 months, no amount of objective-writing will fix the problem. Fix the strategy first, then build OKRs on top.
When OKRs run in parallel with MBOs, KPIs, performance review goals, and departmental annual targets, teams cannot tell which framework matters. Implementation gets the blame, but the real issue is that the organization never sunsetted the older systems. Pick one primary system and retire the rest, or at least define clearly how each layer interacts.
Three objectives become five. Five key results per objective become eight. Within one quarter the OKR set has more line items than the team has capacity to track. The fix is the Rule of 12: no more than 12 key results across the entire OKR set, with two or three KRs per objective being the working norm.
These four are the focus of this guide. Each subsequent section is structured to head them off before they happen. For broader context on what OKRs are and how they differ from other goal frameworks, see Teamflect's OKRs ultimate guide. For a wider view of performance management failure modes beyond OKRs specifically, see the 5 most common performance management mistakes companies make.
The OKR framework began at Intel in the late 1990s under Andy Grove. Three problems with the dominant Management by Objectives approach pushed him to redesign it. Strategy conversations were happening only at the top of the company, even though it had been built on hiring smart people. Sandbagging had become normalized, with teams setting deliberately conservative goals so they could overachieve each quarter. And the practice of telling skilled employees exactly what to do contradicted the reason they'd been hired in the first place.
John Doerr learned the framework at Intel from Grove. He carried it to Kleiner Perkins, where in 1999 he introduced it to Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google, then a 40-person startup. Doerr later codified the system in Measure What Matters (Portfolio, 2018). The framework has three parts.
The clarity around what OKRs are not is just as important. They are not a task list. They are not a tool for measuring or rewarding individual performance. And they are not a project management framework.
"OKRs are about change. They are not for managing your business as usual." — Hannes Albrecht
This last point matters most for early implementations. Most of any team's capacity is consumed by the work it was hired to do. HR runs recruitment, support handles tickets, marketing publishes campaigns, finance closes the books. That work belongs in your operational planning. A smaller slice of capacity exists for change and strategic improvement. That smaller slice is where OKRs live. If your OKR set ends up describing the work the team would do anyway, the set has become a duplicate of the operational plan.
For teams weighing OKRs against the older MBO framework or against the Balanced Scorecard model, the difference comes down to this: OKRs are designed for change and stretch goals. MBOs and Balanced Scorecards are designed for execution against known targets.
Most OKR rollouts that stall do so because the organization wasn't ready. The methodology arrived ahead of the strategic and cultural foundation that would have made it work. Spending two weeks on a readiness check before the launch workshop is almost always cheaper than spending two cycles trying to recover.
Three prerequisites matter most.
"OKRs are not a tool to measure people's performance. We still need KPIs and health metrics for that." — Hannes Albrecht
Run this before locking a launch date:
Four or five yeses, and you're ready to run a pilot. Two or three yeses, and the prerequisites need work first. Fewer than two, and OKRs are not your most pressing problem. Fix the underlying gap, then come back to the framework.
OKRs are one of several performance management models for setting goals. What matters is whether they're the right fit for what your organization is actually trying to fix.
Once readiness is confirmed, implementation follows a predictable sequence. The exact order matters: skipping or reordering steps is one of the four named pitfalls. Each step below is designed to head off a specific failure mode that Hannes Albrecht sees in stalled rollouts.
The implementation has its own goal, separate from the OKRs you'll eventually set. The most useful framing is to write a one-line meta-objective for the rollout. Something like, "By the end of Q3, every department runs its own OKRs without external coaching." This becomes the standard against which you judge the rollout, separate from whether individual OKRs hit 100% of their targets.
Teams that skip this step end up evaluating the implementation by accident. After two cycles, someone asks whether OKRs are "working," and the answer depends on who you ask. A meta-objective set up front gives everyone the same lens.
The right pilot group is one team or one department. One team is small enough to course-correct mid-cycle and learn what actually breaks. The entire company is too large. By the time you discover something is wrong, it is wrong everywhere.
Pick a group with three properties:
Three roles need to be assigned before the workshop.
Each key result also has an owner. The owner is a per-KR role. They are the person accountable for movement on that key result during the cycle.
OKR cadence is the question that derails more implementations than any other. The rule from Hannes is firm: one cadence across the entire company.
"Please stick to one cadence across the entire company. If one team does OKRs based on four months and another team does it on three months, it just makes things more complicated." — Hannes Albrecht
Quarterly cycles are the standard. Trimester or 4-month cycles work for organizations whose strategic horizon is slower, often in manufacturing or regulated industries. The one acceptable two-cadence setup is yearly OKRs at the company top, with quarterly OKRs for teams that contribute to them. Mixed cadences between teams at the same level break the system.
The kickoff workshop uses Hannes Albrecht's five-step simple start:
The workshop produces a small, focused OKR set. The temptation is always to cover more. The discipline is to cover less.
Of all eight steps, this is the one Hannes calls "super important." It is also the one most often skipped. Biweekly check-ins run for 5 to 10 minutes inside an existing team meeting. They are not a separate ceremony. The agenda is simple: where the team stands on each key result, and what's blocking progress.
"Set yourself a biweekly routine during this execution phase, and really sit down for 5 or 10 minutes. Talk through where you are. Do you have everything in place?" — Hannes Albrecht
Skipping check-ins is the mechanism behind set-and-forget. A team that hasn't checked in for two months cannot course-correct. The biweekly cadence is non-negotiable. For specific check-in agendas and meeting structure, we put together an entire guide full of templates and tips for OKR check-in meetings.
The retrospective turns the first cycle into a learning event. Without it, the cycle is just a one-off attempt. The retro happens at the end of the cycle, before cycle two begins. Hannes recommends a start/stop/continue format:
The retro focuses on the operating rhythm. The OKR set itself will change in cycle two regardless. What matters is whether the check-ins ran on schedule and whether the team felt the framework actually helped the work.
Expansion comes after a minimum of two completed cycles, not after cycle one. Two cycles produce enough institutional knowledge to extend the framework without repeating early mistakes.
The expansion model matters. Most companies do not roll out OKRs everywhere at once. A common pattern:
The OKR set is where most teams either succeed or fail. A good set looks deceptively simple. A bad one looks busy and confused. The difference is craft. Hannes Albrecht teaches the craft as a small number of rules that work together.
The total number of key results across your entire OKR set should not exceed 12. The typical distribution is three or four objectives, each with two or three key results. The less you try to cover, the more force the set has. A team that walks out of the workshop with four objectives and five KRs each has not written ambitious goals. It has written a long task list with OKR formatting.
In a mature OKR cycle, roughly 40% of the OKR set is directional input from leadership and 60% is bottom-up contribution from the teams. The first one or two cycles will skew more top-down than that, which is fine. Teams need to see a working example before they're ready to generate their own.
The objective is the qualitative half of the OKR. Hannes describes a good objective as the catchy headline of an internal press release: someone reads it, immediately understands what you're aiming for, and feels engaged by it. Strong objectives:
A key result can only be one of five things:
Of the five, binary KRs are the weakest. They cannot be tracked mid-cycle. The team only knows it has missed the goal after the cycle ends. Use binary KRs only when no metric is available.
The most common KR-writing mistake is writing a task instead of a result. When someone proposes a KR that looks like a to-do, ask three questions:
The answers usually surface a result hiding underneath the task. A support team's first draft might read "Answer tickets within 5 days." Apply the three questions, and the team realizes what they actually want is faster resolution and higher satisfaction. The rewrite becomes "Improve time-to-solve from 48 hours to 24 hours" and "Maintain CSAT at 85% or above."
"It's about results, not initiatives. A lot of teams struggle with this part." — Hannes Albrecht
The instinct to write tasks isn't laziness. It reflects how humans default to specific, achievable outputs over harder-to-measure outcomes. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham's goal-setting theory, built on 35 years of empirical research, shows that specific, difficult goals consistently produce higher performance than vague or easy ones. OKRs work because they pull teams away from the comfortable default.
For starting points across functions, this OKR examples by department library shows what good objectives and key results look like in practice.
To help you draft the perfrect OKRs to accompany your OKR implementation process, we worked with Hannes Albrecht to build the ultimate OKR writing template. This was a one-time gift for the attendats of the actual webinar but after the positive reaction we received from all who received it, we decided to publish it for free as a part of this article. The template is in an editable PDF format so not only you can fully fill it out but it will also work as a perfect handout.
The seven questions below came up most often during Hannes Albrecht's live workshop with Teamflect. Each one is a real practitioner question, and the answers are taken from his responses, lightly edited for clarity.
In most cases, no. A KPI is a health metric you monitor continuously to make sure operations are running. A key result is an ambitious bet on a specific change you want to drive in one cycle. They serve different purposes.
The exception is when a KPI has gone wrong. Hannes uses a car dashboard analogy to explain it.
"Imagine the dashboard in your car. The gauges for oil, gas, and speed are your KPIs. If everything is green, you keep driving toward your mountain. If a light starts blinking, you take that one KPI and turn it into an OKR for one quarter, just to fix it." — Hannes Albrecht
Once the KPI is back in a healthy range, it returns to being a KPI. You don't keep it as an OKR forever.
This is one of the most common questions in struggling teams. The answer isn't to add more capacity. It's to dedicate one OKR per quarter to making your BAU more efficient.
If your team is buried in tickets, the OKR isn't "answer more tickets." The OKR is "reduce ticket volume by 30% through better self-service." If your team is drowning in manual reports, the OKR is "automate the three highest-frequency report types." Each cycle, one OKR points at the BAU itself. Over four cycles, your BAU footprint shrinks enough that you have room for genuinely strategic OKRs again.
This is also how you avoid the over-engineering pitfall named in the first section. Trying to capture all your BAU in OKRs produces a long list that drains energy. One focused improvement OKR per cycle does more.
Yes. Starting by setting OKRs in a top-down manner is a good way to get the ball rolling.
"Yes. That's a good way to start. The first one or two quarters are always more top-down than they should be." — Hannes Albrecht
The shift to genuine bottom-up contribution happens over cycles. Teams need to see what a working OKR looks like before they can write one. The OKR coach typically drafts the first set with the manager, the team adapts in cycle two, and by cycle three teams begin generating their own OKRs that contribute to higher-level priorities.
What matters is that you're moving toward the 40/60 split over time, not whether you start there.
Team OKRs only. Hannes is firm on this point: OKRs are a team-level instrument, not an individual performance tool.
On an eight-person team, maybe only half the members own a key result in any given quarter. The rest either contribute to KRs they don't own or work on initiatives outside the OKR set. This is normal. In the next quarter, ownership rotates.
The mistake to avoid is treating an OKR set as a list of individual goals stacked together.
The cadence depends on which level of OKRs you're reviewing.
Quarterly team OKRs get reviewed every two weeks during the cycle. The review is a 5 to 10 minute check inside an existing team meeting. You're checking progress against each key result and surfacing any blockers.
Yearly company-level OKRs get reviewed monthly or quarterly. The cadence is slower because the time horizon is longer. Monthly works for fast-moving companies; quarterly is sufficient for most.
The cardinal rule is that the cadence holds. A team that misses three check-ins is functionally not running OKRs anymore. For specifics on how to structure these meetings, make sure you visit our guide on OKR check-in cadence.
This is almost always a sign that you should rewrite it as a shared objective.
If a single KR genuinely advances two objectives, the two objectives are probably entangled. Either they should be merged into one objective, or the KR should be elevated to a shared objective owned across teams. Shared objectives force collaboration and prevent the "who's responsible" ambiguity that comes with shared KRs.
The technical workaround (linking one KR to multiple objectives in your software) is available in most OKR tools. The methodological answer is to question why the structure ended up that way and clean it up.
Don't lead with the framework. Lead with the problem.
If leadership is open to a conversation, align first on what they want OKRs to fix. The most common answers are weak cross-functional collaboration and unclear priorities. Once the problem is named, OKRs become a candidate solution rather than a methodology being imposed.
If leadership isn't there yet, run OKRs inside your own team or department as a pilot. Use the results to make the case. A working pilot with a measurable outcome is more persuasive than a framework explanation. For broader context on how OKRs compare to other goal-setting frameworks, the choice depends on the specific problem you're trying to solve.
A spreadsheet works for the first cycle. By cycle two or three, most teams need a dedicated tool.
Teamflect's OKR software was built to handle every OKR implementation problem this guide names. It does so inside Microsoft Teams, where most organizations already work.
Teamflect's tree view shows the full OKR set on one screen. Teams can see at a glance whether they've crept past 12 key results and where the over-engineering is concentrated. Parent objectives connect team OKRs to company priorities, making the contribution hierarchy visible. Teams can see how their key results contribute to the strategic priorities above them.
The operating rhythm runs on automated goal check-ins that remind owners to update KR progress on a cadence you set. The check-in happens inside Teams chat, with one click to update the value and add a comment. Notification cadence is configured once at the admin level and propagates across the company. The "one cadence across the organization" rule from Step 4 is enforced by the tool.
Teamflect syncs values from Power BI and Excel directly into key results. If your team already tracks NPS and CSAT in Power BI, those numbers flow into the OKR automatically. KR progress updates without manual data entry.
Teams switching from another OKR platform import existing OKRs via bulk upload. The customer team handles the structural mapping so you start cycle two without losing the work from cycle one.
The framework matters less than the routines and culture around it. Anyone can read a definition of objectives and key results. The harder work is what surrounds the methodology. The biweekly check-ins that hold, the strategy clarity that anchors the set, the discipline to keep the Rule of 12, and the cultural separation that keeps OKRs out of performance reviews. Implementations stall on the operating rhythm. The framework rarely fails on its own.
The four pitfalls Hannes Albrecht names in this guide are the failure modes worth watching for. The 8 implementation steps and the 5-step simple start give you the structural tools to prevent them, and the 5 dimensions of a key result give you the writing discipline.
If you want to go deeper, the full 78-minute workshop with Hannes Albrecht covers the methodology in greater detail and includes the live audience Q&A. And if you're ready to run the framework inside the workspace where your team already coordinates, Teamflect runs OKRs inside Microsoft Teams.
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00:00:00
Here's what we'll be covering. We are in the welcome phase, and then Hannes is going to lead the "How to Implement OKRs" workshop. It's not just going to be him talking — this is going to be interactive and we would love nothing more than your input. We would love to have you join in with your questions. This will be followed by a live demo of our OKR module with the one and only Carlos Santana, followed by a Q&A. The webinar does have a Q&A section, so if you ask your questions there, if it's something simple we can answer on the spot, we will answer it in the chat. All of your questions will be answered towards the end in the Q&A session, and our very own Casey will be with you in the chat to answer any questions you might have. If you have any technical difficulties, you can reach Casey at [email protected]. I think that covers us through the
00:01:08
intro. With that said, I just want to introduce the king of key results, the pioneer of purpose, the overlord of objectives, the OKR Oracle himself, the goal-setting man from Munich. I came up with all of these in hopes of breaking Hannes, but he's standing rock solid so far. I will pass the mic to the one and only Hannes Albrecht, the founder of How to OKR Consultancy. If anyone knows their stuff about OKRs, it's him. Hannes, welcome — the floor is yours.
00:01:48
Amazing. What an introduction. I can see hearts floating around in the Microsoft Teams chat — it's incredible. Let me take over the screen. First of all, thanks for having me. Welcome to all the AI note-takers and real people out there. We're going to spend about 20 minutes on OKRs. I'm Hannes Albrecht from howtookr.com. We have been in this space for
00:02:30
13 to 14 years, so we are true pioneers in OKR implementations. We've had the pleasure and privilege to work with amazing teams and companies all around the globe — and especially interesting is the range of companies we've worked with, from startups to very traditional industries, which makes things super interesting. We are a very small boutique consultancy, mainly concentrating on C-suite and management levels, because if these leaders don't live and breathe the purpose of OKRs, it's really tough to get things going. That's our key focus —
00:03:20
a small team, mainly working with online trainings to bring that knowledge into teams and organizations. My expectation for today's session is that you get a clear sense of what OKRs are and what they are not, and also a very actionable, practical
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view on how they are formulated and how you can actually start using OKRs within your team, your management circle, or — why not — even at home with your partner. We also have enough time to answer your individual questions. I know the group is big and people are probably hesitant to speak up, but please do. We're going to have a Q&A section at the end. Use the Q&A function within Microsoft Teams — whenever
00:04:45
I'm talking, just start typing your individual questions and we'll have enough time to go through them all. First, a bit of context. Where does it all come from? I won't spend a lot of time on this, but it's good to know. Up to the late '90s, the management world was basically driven by MBOs — Management by Objectives — a very top-down approach. In the late '90s, the management team at Intel
00:05:27
recognized three things that felt strange. First, whenever they talked about strategy and vision, those conversations were happening mainly at the top level of management. That felt odd. Second, at that time it was really hard to find good talent, and whenever they did find great people, the culture tended to be "we tell people what to do next" — which feels strange when you've hired someone because you think they're the best person for the job.
00:06:10
Third was the culture of sandbagging — setting goals for the quarter deliberately low so you could overachieve them. That culture felt very strange. And that was the starting point where those leaders said, "Let's rethink it. Let's modernize MBOs." That was essentially the starting point of OKRs,
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beginning in the early 2000s, mainly at Google, which implemented this methodology from scratch and still lives and breathes it today. The reason it makes sense: when people work based only on short-term, activity-driven thinking — doing stuff without knowing the purpose — we want to shift that towards something driven by results and impact. We want to use vision and strategy as our steady compass.
00:07:36
We also want to solve that feeling that everything is important, with tasks flying at us from every direction. We want to be in the driver's seat to differentiate what's more important, what's less important, and what we should not do at all. OKRs also drive collaboration and help us overcome the apathy of "we've always done it this way." And
00:08:17
ideally, we can get out of that rut with a lot of bottom-up input — because we hire good people, so let's use their brainpower. OKRs are definitely not a task list. They are not a tool to measure people's performance — very important. We still need KPIs and health metrics — those remain essential. OKRs are also not a tool to manage your business as usual, your daily operations — you're already doing that and don't need a new
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methodology for it. Psychologically, OKRs are also not a list to show how busy or how important you are — if that happens, the root cause is more of a cultural issue within those organizations. So what should be in there? Ideally, it's only about change — driving improvements, pushing us towards our strategy and vision — and it
00:09:44
should help us focus on the right things. Now let's talk about the terms "objectives" and "key results." An objective is like a catchy headline, like your internal press release. You read it and you immediately understand what it's all about. It describes where you want to
00:10:28
land — not something measurable, but something engaging. It describes a desired future state. These objectives are backed up by key results. Key results look like bullet points — metric, measurable, ambitious. All key results are based on assumptions. You shouldn't have too many. I like to call it the Rule of 12: in total, you should not have more than 12 key results. So you could have three or four objectives
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covered by two, three, or four key results each, summing up to a total of 12 key results in your OKR set. If it's more than that, be careful — it's going to become a long list covering too many things. The fewer you have, the better. And then there are initiatives, actions, and things people do in teams — these are the things you're going to do in order to get there. You don't pre-plan all of that, because there may be
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a thousand ways to reach your key results. The key result defines where you want to land. Your company will also likely have multiple ways to manage initiatives — a Kanban board, Scrum, a simple task list. Here's what a real example looks like. It's a random example from a company that apparently works with audio. The objective
00:12:25
for the quarter is: "We want to build brand awareness to facilitate end-user understanding of a feature called Sound ID." That's backed up by two key results. By end of quarter, the assumption is: grow monthly traffic to 30,000 monthly average visits. The second says: 2,000 monthly average users reached for an Android music app feature. That's our bet — our assumption. We don't list exactly how we get there, but this is where we want to land by end
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of quarter. You also see there is an owner — someone driving it, like a project manager for that particular key result. And there should be a status — are we on track or behind? And there should be some kind of progress measurement so you can see whether you're moving in the right direction. It's not so much about the final score at the end — it's not about reaching 100% or overachieving — because
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those key results are based on assumptions. We made a bet for the quarter. It's more about getting as close as possible, moving in the right direction, doing the right things. And that can already deliver a huge impact. Here's another example — a support team. The objective says "Eliminate our ticket backlog." One key result says "Answer tickets within 5 days," and another says "Improve documentation, FAQ, and train five agents." Take a moment to consider: does that look good or not so good?
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I'll show you another version of the same objective. Here, the key results say: "Improve time to solve for support tickets from 48 hours to 24 hours" and "Maintain a satisfaction index at 85%." What's the difference between the two? The first version is more of a to-do list. I would always ask the team: why should you answer tickets within five days? What's the purpose of doing this?
00:15:15
What impact do you want to create? Those are the questions you always need to ask to move yourself toward a better-formulated OKR. The left side is basically a task list. The right side is based on results. And these questions are always the same, for whatever OKR or key result you're formulating: What's the purpose? What's the desired impact? What does success look like? These questions will lead you to better key results. Remember: it's about
00:15:59
results, not initiatives. A lot of teams and people struggle with this. A few more examples. If the initiative is "launch an Instagram campaign," that's a task. Ask the team: what should be the impact of doing it? What's the desired goal? Maybe it's increasing followers, maybe increasing sales. But
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choose a key result that points toward a result. That makes a big difference. And the questions to get there are always the same. Now, key results can only consist of one of five dimensions — and this is the same whether you work in a tech company or a home services organization for elderly care. A key result can describe a time-related aspect, a quantitative change from point A to point B, something qualitative,
00:17:18
something related to revenue or cost, or — and this is something very easy for us to write — a milestone. "We have passed a security audit" is a binary key result: you can only answer it yes or no. It's very natural for us to write milestones because we love them. But
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it's not ideal. If you have key results that describe a milestone, it's okay — sometimes it's the best you can choose right now. But be aware that you can only answer it yes or no, which is a challenge during the quarter because it's very hard to track whether you're moving in the right direction. If you ask a team how they're doing on passing the security audit, they can only say "we're doing fine, we've done this and that." It's hard to judge. But when you have a metric-based key result,
00:19:26
it's very easy to track progress and understand whether you're moving in the right direction. That's the big difference between binary and metric key results. If your OKR set contains only binary key results, I would say take a thorough look — you can probably find some metrics. It's always
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better. How does it all come together? Defining a clear, easy-to-understand vision and mission is super important. Having strong values is super important. Defining your strategic themes or pillars for the next few years is super important — you want to give people direction. You want to describe which mountain you're going to climb in the coming years. You should also have health metrics and KPIs, and yearly strategic themes or baseline expectations. You can also describe those as yearly OKRs.
00:20:48
Whether you frame that as yearly OKRs or as a simple one-pager defining success for the year, I don't care — but you should have it. When teams have that clear direction and those guardrails, they can actually define their contributions bottom-up. Then they can set
00:21:31
their quarterly OKRs. And if someone on the team is working on something, they have a better understanding of how it contributes to the quarterly team OKRs, which in turn contribute to the yearly OKRs. People want to align by nature — they just need to know the direction. That makes a big difference and it absolutely works. Now you might be thinking: our team is
00:22:08
already packed with all kinds of projects. How does working on OKRs on top of that fit in? Think of it like this: every team's capacity is limited. The majority of that total capacity is taken up by business as usual — the things you have to do regardless. People in HR need to hire people. That's
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the purpose of that team. Business as usual always takes up the majority of your total capacity. But there's another area — strategically important things that should get done but tend to get lost. We should fix it, we should prepare for it, but we can't get to it. This is the area where OKRs come into play.
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OKRs are about change, improvement, and things that are strategy-relevant. OKRs should not be about covering your business as usual — that just leads to a long OKR list that adds no value and is very hard to manage. Now, a few very simple tips and tricks to get started with OKRs — either in your team, within your management layer, or at home. First, pick your team or group. Second:
00:24:11
agree on a time frame. It doesn't have to be a quarter — you can say "let's pick the next two months" or "the next four months." But what you formulate should point toward the end of that period. That's the goal you're setting. Third: agree on just one or two problems or topics with high impact that you want to
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fix. The things that would drive you strategically in the right direction. Then, for those two topics, formulate a maximum of two objectives with two key results each. That's still the easy part. Number five is probably the hardest: set yourself a bi-weekly routine during the execution phase and sit down for five to ten minutes to talk through where you are. Are you moving in the right direction? Do you have
00:25:31
everything in place? Do you have the right approach to move forward? That routine is super important. Here's a simple guideline to kick off your thinking process. Agree on two problems you want to solve. Then go through these questions one by one:
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What problem do you actually want to solve? Who is your customer? Why should you do this? It's okay to list a few activities just to picture what's involved — not a full project list, just enough to frame it. Then: imagine it's the end of the quarter. What should be different? What impact should have been created? Then:
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can you measure that impact — qualitatively, quantitatively, as a milestone? These are your possibilities for key results. From there, you can formulate your first key results — maybe two, maybe one, maybe three. Define an owner who is driving it, and then formulate a catchy, ambitious objective. At that point, you have enough content to organize your objectives and key results. It's a super simple, very structured approach
00:27:22
to kick things off. Try to avoid the most common pitfalls. You need a good enough strategy and people need to understand the direction. Another common pitfall is what I call "set and forget" — you do a workshop, formulate OKRs, and then suddenly they end up in a mental drawer and you forget about them for two or three months. That's why you need your routines. Bi-weekly is a good cadence.
00:28:08
Another problem is conflicting or parallel goal systems — people won't be able to follow. Avoid that. And keep it super simple. Don't overengineer OKRs. Allow a maximum of two or three objectives. That's a good way to avoid the common pitfalls. I'm ready for your questions — sorry for talking so much. Do we have any questions in the Q&A?
00:29:30
We have all the goodies. Hannes, first of all, thank you so much for the amazing workshop. We have so many incredible questions from everyone who joined. I'll quickly adjust the presentation so you can all see. We saved every question — not just in the webinar Q&A but in the slide deck as well, so we'll go through each and every one. Hans, there are so many great day-to-day questions — OKRs vs. KPIs, what if business as usual covers everything and there's no room for OKRs — I've noted them all. Stick around until the end
00:30:13
because Hannes will be here for the full Q&A. Before that, we're passing the floor to our very own Carlos Santana, who will show you a practical demonstration of how Teamflect's OKR software can help you implement this methodology right inside Microsoft Teams. This will take about 10 minutes, and then we'll be answering every single question. Hannes is in the chat as well, so if you feel like dropping in some quick responses, please do. After Carlos's demo, we'll open the floor for Q&A.
00:31:23
And we will go through all of them. If you have product-specific questions for Carlos as well, feel free to pass them along. Carlos, the floor is yours.
>> Thank you, Emre. Let me share my screen. Can you see it? >> Yes. >> Perfect. So this is essentially what you'll see when you access Teamflect for the first time. As you can see on the left-hand
00:31:54
side, Teamflect comes with a lot of different capabilities and modules that support performance management programs within organizations. For today, we're primarily focusing on the OKRs module. Of course, if there's interest in learning more about the other modules, we can set up time to talk later. For folks who may only want the OKR module and perhaps one other —
00:32:21
Teamflect is extremely flexible. If there are modules that don't provide value to your organization today, you can easily turn them off in the admin center and explore them later. Let's look at the OKRs module. Here you can
00:32:51
see all the objectives I'm currently working on in this demo account — listed out with progress percentages, status, and due dates. When it comes to creating an objective from scratch, it's pretty straightforward. Descriptions can be made optional or mandatory depending on your preference, and
00:33:22
they go a long way in outlining the purpose of the objective or the impact it would have on your organization. We also have AI capabilities that can help you draft those descriptions if you're pressed for time. Now when it comes to objective types,
00:33:44
we typically start folks off with four different types — two focused more on individual objectives tied to performance or self-development, and two focused organizationally, such as department-based or company-wide objectives. You can also see some unique variations,
00:34:18
which really demonstrates the flexibility of the tool. If you want to create different objective types or change their names to align with your internal terminology, you're welcome to customize that. When it comes to owners, the objective will add you by default, but
00:34:43
as a team leader, you can easily add your team. There are two ways to set it up: separate objectives for each individual, or a single shared objective for the whole team. When it comes to measurement types, you have a few options. The first is a classic "reach" objective — you have a starting point and a target. In terms of metrics, you have percentages, numbers, and currency. You also have other measurement types: for example, "stay above" —
00:35:42
where you set a threshold you don't want to go below. The inverse is also available: "stay below" a certain metric, with a threshold and a target. And then the last one is straightforward — completed or not completed. On the right-hand side,
00:36:14
time frames are pretty straightforward. You can set up different time frames for measuring or completing objectives, and you can also customize them so they match your organization's unique timelines and terminology. Objectives can also be tied to parent objectives —
00:36:40
situations where a company-wide top-line objective is supported by department-level objectives that contribute to and influence the overall progress. You can
00:37:08
choose from a list of existing objectives to tie them together easily. We also have labels for those who like to slice and dice the data and group objectives by theme. You can customize and change labels as you see fit. We also have the capability to
00:37:38
set up groups — if there are cross-functional teams working on objectives together, they can have a shared space to map and track those goals. From a visibility perspective, most OKRs would likely be public — you'll want transparency across the board. But if you have goals that need to remain private until accomplished,
00:38:11
that capability is also available. Now let me show you how objectives can be tied together. Here we have an example objective: "Build a great place to work." It has key results such as "Improve our eNPS score by 10 points," "Reduce voluntary team member turnover to 8%,"
00:38:42
"Build out a membership coaching program," and "Launch two employee experience initiatives based on employee feedback." The platform is powerful in that the progress of your key results can automatically impact the progress of the parent objective. Let me demonstrate — let's say our eNPS score started at 70, we're currently at 75, and we hit our target of 80. We update the progress to 100%. As you can see, the progress of the parent objective updates as well. That's
00:39:43
designed to save you time. As you update key results, those updates flow up to the parent objective, and you can see those impacts quickly and easily. In terms of visibility, team leaders can see their team's objectives across the board and get a real-time feed of updates
00:40:16
happening across different objectives and key results. There's also a user view where you can see each team member, what objectives they're working on, what key results they own, and where they stand in terms of progress. And then there's a tree or cascading view — honestly my favorite — which makes it very easy to identify
00:40:50
roadblocks across different objectives. You can easily spot who may be falling behind and who you need to have a conversation with in a one-on-one to understand where the blockers are. When it comes to getting progress updates
00:41:24
on objectives and key results, you can set up reminders within the platform — choosing the cadence of when notifications go out, whether weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Those notifications will appear in the Teamflect chat in Microsoft Teams, making it easy for people to come in and update their progress directly from the notification. Here's an example at the top. We call it a "goal check-in," which is one of our customizable terminology options. You can update values, status,
00:41:54
and comments all within this interface without even having to navigate to Teamflect itself if you don't want to. Just hit save. For managers looking for a more real-time update,
00:42:22
they can go into any objective or key result and request an update with a note — the employee will then provide their update when they're able to. That's pretty much the streamlined demonstration of the OKRs module. Feel free to put any questions in the chat and I'm happy to answer them.
00:42:59
>> Perfect. Carlos, thank you so much. The questions we have — it's going to be a joy to go through all of them. The interest and engagement everyone has shown from start to finish has been incredible. We've noted down every single question because we wanted everyone to see them. Carlos, we have some questions about how to connect initiatives in Teamflect to goals, and I'm sure you can walk people through how tasks and to-do items work with goals. But let's start with questions for
00:43:33
Hannes. Hannes, I know you've already been typing answers in the chat.
>> Yes, we really have a lot.
>> We do. Let's get
00:44:13
into it. Someone wants to know: can key results be a business KPI? I can't answer that with a simple yes or no — I need to explain a little. Usually, no — because a business KPI is something you monitor to check whether the machine is running well. If all is green, you're driving toward your mountain fine. But
00:45:06
if something is wrong — if the oil warning light is blinking — you might take that KPI and dedicate one particular quarter to repairing it, to getting it smooth again. Once it's resolved, it goes back to being a KPI. But you can focus on specific KPIs in specific quarters if you see a problem you want to fix.
00:45:47
Otherwise, KPIs are KPIs and OKRs are OKRs. >> Perfect. Thank you. Carlos, there are some product-specific questions in the chat — if you can hop in and answer them, that would be great. Hannes, if an objective is not measurable, how do we know if we've reached it?
>> The objective has more of a communicative aspect. You want to connect people with it, increase transparency around what's important and strategy-relevant. An objective should be something that engages people. That's why we don't need numbers in the objective itself. Underneath the objective, the key results are measurable, and the key
00:47:11
results show whether we are reaching the objective or not. If an objective has three key results and they're all reached at 70 to 80%, the tool calculates a total accomplishment rate for that objective. The key results add up to define whether the objective was achieved.
>> Great — greater than the sum of their parts. Across an organization, different departments work on different timelines. What's the best practice for the cadence of new objectives — is everyone on a quarterly cadence, or does it sometimes make sense to do annual only?
>> Please stick to one cadence across the entire company. Cadence is such a strong organizing feature. It adds no value and only complicates things if team A is running four-month cycles and team B is running three-month cycles. Agree on one cadence company-wide.
00:48:36
The one exception might be that company-level OKRs are set annually, while team OKRs are set quarterly and contribute to those annual company OKRs. So you might have two cadences — yearly for the top level, quarterly for all teams. But everyone operates within the same rhythm.
>> Perfect. I love a good practical question. In one of your examples on how to get started, you said management picks one or two topics — but that seems very top-down. Is it meant to be?
>> You got me. It is super top-down at first. But that's a valid way to start. The first one or two quarters of OKRs are always more top-down than they ideally should be. The tricky part is gradually bringing in more bottom-up contribution.
00:50:40
The first quarter, or maybe the first two, will likely be fairly top-down. And then you should start turning that toward more bottom-up input from teams. But it's completely okay to start top-down in the beginning.
>> All right. What are your thoughts on managing up when your current organization doesn't currently utilize OKRs?
00:51:19
>> Make sure you are aligned on what problem you want to solve with OKRs. Then assess whether OKRs can actually help with that problem. For example, if the goal is mainly to drive more collaboration and break down silos, that's a strong purpose for starting with OKRs — because OKRs definitely drive collaboration.
>> Is a formal strategy formulation process related to OKRs in any way? This question was a bit unclear — whoever asked it, feel free to clarify in the chat and we'll get Hannes on it right away. The next one is clear though: can OKRs be the same for all members of a team, or is it better to have individual OKRs?
00:52:42
>> OKRs, for me, are always team-based. I'm personally not in favor of starting with individual OKRs. A team with eight people should not have eight sets of OKRs — you write OKRs based on the problems you want to solve as a team. If you want to solve two problems in a quarter, you have two OKRs with a few key results.
00:53:25
Those key results may not cover all eight people — and that's completely okay. Maybe only 50% of the team owns key results in a given quarter. The others might be focused on business as usual or supporting collaboratively. In the next quarter, you rotate and other people own key results.
>> What is your OKR formula for helping staff understand how to write OKRs and related key results?
00:54:02
We will actually be sending everyone who participated in this webinar the template that Hannes showed today. Tomorrow you'll receive a short survey about the webinar — we'd love it if you could fill it out, it helps us improve. But alongside that, we'll send you the actual template, which is editable and really well-designed. Shout out to our graphic designer.
00:54:32
>> It's a very structured, simple thinking process. It keeps you in line from top to bottom. If you go through it, I'm confident you'll come out with qualitatively solid OKRs to start with. And you can't really go wrong if you follow it.
00:55:03
>> All right, keeping it rolling. As someone who tracks department OKRs to report to senior leadership, what's the most effective cadence for reviewing OKRs without overwhelming your teams?
>> If your team is running quarterly OKRs, I'd go for every two weeks — but no extra OKR meeting. Use existing meeting formats within the team and dedicate maybe 10 minutes every other week to check in on OKRs, find out where you are, and identify areas to dive deeper into via a follow-up or one-on-one. For
00:56:16
yearly OKRs at management level, I'd say monthly or at minimum quarterly.
>> Before we move on, Carlos, I can see you're answering questions in the chat — if you head over to the Q&A section as well, there are some product-specific questions there. One of them is about something very near and dear to my heart — Viva Goals. Viva Goals was a Microsoft 365 native solution that sadly shut down and left a lot of people without a platform. If you're coming from Viva Goals, fear not — we have you covered. Moving on: are OKRs formulated individually, at a department level, or as small team-focused sets? If team-focused, how many people should be in such a team and which departments must they come from?
00:57:23
>> OKRs are a team thing. A team manager should not write OKRs in isolation and then present them to the team saying "by the way, you own key result 1." Include the team. OKRs should be created with the team, and the team should agree and align on a few OKRs they want to tackle in that particular quarter. Do it together.
00:57:57
And stay pragmatic. You can also call it a pilot — say "let's give it a try and learn from the first quarter, then do a proper retrospective at the end." I'm a big fan of the retrospective after the first cycle. It delivers a lot of learnings and actions to fine-tune the process further.
>> With Teamflect, you can cascade objectives at company, department, and individual levels — including individual development goals — and connect each of them together. There are also custom objective types you can create and arrange in your own hierarchy. We also have a tree or hierarchy view for this. Whatever form your OKR methodology takes,
01:10:46
we've got you covered. For any pricing-related questions, you can reach Carlos at [email protected] or visit teamflect.com/pricing. Wrapping things up — for those who asked: yes, you can also get the OKR template, and we will be sending it to you tomorrow alongside a short survey and information on how to contact Hannes afterward. I'm at a loss for words — and for the first time in my life as someone who talks for a living, this has been incredible. The attention, engagement, and energy everyone has brought today has been brilliant. And that is due in no small part to the OKR Oracle himself —
01:12:05
Hannes Albrecht. You can reach Hannes at [email protected] — just go to howtookr.com and learn more about their consultancy and practices. He's doing incredible things. Before we wrap up, Hannes, anything else you'd like to say?
>> I'm blown away — the questions were superb. Thank you for your time and for being here. And I just want to say: if you need someone to challenge the way you've been approaching OKRs, or if you need support setting things up,
01:12:47
you know where to find me.
>> Hannes, you're always welcome. If you can't get enough of Hannes Albrecht, we recently had him on our podcast, The Team Check-in — available on Spotify and wherever you find great podcasts. And if you'd like to learn more about the highest-rated OKR software in the Microsoft Teams ecosystem, Teamflect, you can reach Carlos at [email protected] or visit teamflect.com. This entire webinar will be uploaded to YouTube in full, as well as in shorter clips. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us and for being a part of this. We look forward to the next webinar — we have plenty of amazing events coming up throughout the year. Stay tuned, and have a great rest of your day.
