The OKR system is broken up into 2 components: Company KPIs and Team OKRs.

Company KPIs are set at the macro level of business by the leadership team semi-annually to align and focus the business across all of its teams. Its leadership’s way of stating what metrics we need to prioritize to positively impact the business. They are the top priority for the company; it’s expected and okay if other initiatives fall off. Strategy is all about saying no so that the few objectives that we say yes to have an outsized impact.

Team OKRs are then created quarterly by each team leader after the Company KPIs are set. Team leads will work with their counterparts cross-functionally to build out OKRs that bubble up into achieving the Company KPIs. The connection between a Company KPI and a Team OKR will be facilitated through one of the key result’s.

graph TD
  A["TEAM OKR"]:::teamOKR --> B1[KEY RESULT]:::keyResult
	A --> B2[KEY RESULT]:::keyResult
	B2 --> C[COMPANY KPI]:::companyKPI
	classDef companyKPI fill:#D38848, color:#FFFFFF, stroke:transparent
	classDef teamOKR fill:#956ACD, color:#FFFFFF, stroke:transparent
	classDef keyResult fill:#6F952B, color:#FFFFFF, stroke:transparent

Direct & Influencing OKRs

Not every Team OKR needs to be directly connected with a Company KPI, but it should have the goal of influencing it. Examples of a direction connection and influencing connection with a Company KPI of reaching an $XX Self-Serve ARR target:

• Direct Connection This OKR is directly tied the Company KPI because it has a key result whose output is the same metric (self-serve ARR).
  • Team OKR: Increase upsells to paid plans
    • Team: Product Growth
    • Key Results:
      • Increase conversion rate to XX%
      • Increase Self-Serve ARR to $XX (connected to Company KPI)
• Influencing Connection This OKR has an influencing connection as it generates the top of funnel pipeline of users that feeds the Product Growth team’s OKR of converting those users to a paid tier.
  • Team OKR: Increase our top of funnel generation
    • Team: Marketing
    • Key Results:
      • Generate X,XXX blog post views a day
      • Generate X,XXX monthly sign ups
• Influencing Connection This OKR has an influencing connection as it’s building the feature that attracts users to convert to a paid plan.
  • Team OKR: Launch XYZ feature set
    • Team: Product Core
    • Key Results:
      • Announce product feature set to X,XXX users
      • Get X,XXX users to use the new feature set in first 30 days after launch

Project Roadmaps

Most Team OKR’s will have an accompanying project roadmap and a list of cross-functional contributors. This helps concentrate our resources on a few high-impact projects.

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