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Right, let's talk about goals. Not the vague, new year’s resolution kind that fade by February, but the kind that actually get your team pulling in the same direction and, you know, get stuff done. If you’re running a small business, you’ve probably heard the acronym OKR thrown around. Objectives and Key Results. It’s the shiny framework a lot of the big tech companies use, and it’s meant to be this magic bullet for growth and focus.
The problem is, for every team it works for, there seem to be three others where it becomes a soul-crushing admin exercise. A list of things that either never get looked at or, worse, make everyone feel like they’re failing. I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count. Teams spend a week writing these beautiful, elaborate OKRs, and by week three of the quarter, they’re gathering digital dust in a forgotten spreadsheet.
So, what’s the crack?
To be honest, it’s usually because people are taught the what but not the why or the how. They get the definition but miss the spirit of it entirely. This isn’t going to be another textbook definition post. This is a practical, demystified guide to writing OKRs that don’t suck. We’ll look at where it goes wrong, how to build a good one from the ground up, and I’ll give you a step-by-step process you can actually use with your team. Let’s turn this from a dreaded chore into your company’s secret weapon.
Before we build, we need to understand why the foundations so often crumble. The biggest reason OKRs fail is a misunderstanding of their purpose. They are not a to-do list. They are not a performance review tool for individuals. They are a framework for alignment and for measuring what matters.
Most failed OKRs fall into a few common traps. See if any of these sound familiar.
First, there’s the Vagueness Trap. The objective is something fluffy and inspirational like “Improve Our Brand Presence.” It sounds great in a meeting, but what does it actually mean? How do you know when you’ve done it? Your marketing person thinks it means more social media posts, your sales guy thinks it means getting into a trade magazine, and you were thinking about a new logo. Everyone is busy, but nobody is aligned. It’s a recipe for frustration.
Then you have the Overload Trap. This is a classic for ambitious business owners. You have so many great ideas, so you set ten different objectives for the quarter. You want to launch a new product, enter a new market, overhaul customer service, redesign the website, and improve team culture. The result? Your team’s focus is spread so thin it’s transparent. They’re jumping between a dozen different priorities, making an inch of progress in a dozen directions instead of a mile of progress in one. It leads to burnout, not breakthroughs.
Finally, there’s the Task Trap. This is where your Key Results are just a list of things you were going to do anyway. The Objective is “Launch the New Website,” and the Key Results are “Write the copy,” “Design the homepage,” and “Test the contact form.” You’ve just created a glorified project plan. The problem is, you can tick all those boxes and still have a website that doesn’t achieve a single business goal. You did the work, but you didn’t get the outcome.
Want a quick diagnostic for your current goals? Ask yourself and your team these two simple questions:
When OKRs are vague, overwhelming, or just a list of tasks, they become demotivating. Your team starts to see them as just another piece of corporate theatre. And that’s when you lose the most valuable thing they’re supposed to create: genuine, shared focus.
So, what does a good one look like? It’s actually beautifully simple. It has two parts:
Think of it like planning a big family trip from London to the Scottish Highlands.
Your Objective might be: Have an unforgettable, adventure-filled family holiday. It’s inspirational, clear, and sets the tone.
Your Key Results would not be “Book the hotels,” “Pack the car,” or “Buy snacks.” Those are tasks. Your Key Results would be the proof that the holiday was a success:
See the difference? The KRs are the evidence of success. They are measurable, specific, and directly tied to the outcome you want. You could do all the tasks (book hotels, pack the car) and still have a miserable trip where everyone argued. Focusing on the outcomes forces you to think about what truly defines success.
The principles behind a great OKR are:
So, how do you fix this? The answer isn’t another meeting. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s a dedicated, focused workshop designed to make all your other meetings exponentially more productive. It’s a "Vision-To-Action Session."
Think of it as a strategic reset button. It’s a structured, facilitated session where you pull key team members away from the daily grind for a few hours to bridge the gap between the high-level company vision and the nitty-gritty of operational execution. It’s about taking that beautiful strategy document off the digital shelf, dusting it off, and making it real, tangible, and actionable for everyone in the room.
The purpose is threefold:
A Vision-To-Action Session fundamentally shifts your meeting culture. Your regular management meetings stop being reactive forums for discussing problems and become proactive check-ins on a pre-agreed strategic plan. The conversation changes from “What should we do?” to “How are we progressing on the plan we all created and committed to?” It transforms the dynamic from a meandering debate into a focused engine of progress.
Sometimes the best way to understand this is to see it in action. Here are a few common scenarios for a small business, showing the difference between a weak, task-based OKR and a strong, outcome-focused one.
The "Bad" OKR is just a project plan. You can do all those things and have the launch be a complete flop. The "Good" OKR focuses on why you're launching a new website in the first place. You want it to generate business. The key results are undeniable proof of whether it's working. That’s the shift in thinking you need to make.
Ready to try it yourself? Don't just call a meeting and expect magic to happen. Follow a process.
Step 1: Start with “Why” and Involve Your Team
Before writing an objective, get the right people in a room. This shouldn’t be a top-down directive. Start the session with a big question: “What is the single most important thing we need to achieve this quarter?” Let people discuss. Your job is to guide the conversation from broad ideas towards a specific area of focus.
Step 2: Craft Clear, Inspiring Objectives
Turn your focus into an Objective. Use action-oriented language. Instead of "Better Marketing," try "Establish Our Brand as the Go-To Expert in Our Niche." It should be a short, memorable sentence that sets a clear direction.
Step 3: Write Measurable, Outcome-Focused Key Results
For your Objective, ask: “If we achieved this, what would be different? What numbers would have changed?” Push past the easy answers, which are usually tasks. KRs must have a number. They measure outcomes, not output.
Step 4: Limit the Number for Focus
A company your size should have no more than 3 to 5 objectives per quarter. Each objective should have 2 to 4 key results. It will feel painful, but focus is the whole point.
Step 5: Review Together and Refine
Read your drafted OKRs out loud. Do they make sense? Are they ambitious but not impossible? Refine the language until everyone is nodding. Everyone should leave knowing exactly what the priorities are for the next three months.
Here’s a simple template you can use. Before the meeting, send it out and ask everyone to come with one or two ideas for a potential company objective.
Our OKR Planning Template
Date: [Date of meeting]
Quarter: [e.g., Q2 2024]
Objective 1: [What is the ambitious, qualitative goal? Make it inspiring!]
Why does this matter? [A brief sentence on the strategic importance.]
Objective 2: [What is the next ambitious, qualitative goal?]
Why does this matter? [A brief sentence on the strategic importance.]
(Continue for up to 3-5 objectives total)
Use this structure on a whiteboard or in a shared document during your meeting. It forces you to think in the right way, separating the inspiring goal from the hard evidence of the key results.
Even with the best intentions, you can drift off course. Here’s a quick checklist of warning signs to look out for during your weekly check-ins.
Warning Sign: A Key Result is stuck at 0% or 100% for weeks.
Warning Sign: The team isn’t sure how to measure a Key Result.
Warning Sign: The Objective sounds like a department name, like "Marketing" or "Sales."
Warning Sign: People refer to the OKRs as "your" goals, not "our" goals.
Don't be afraid to adjust a Key Result mid-quarter if you realise it was poorly written or is measuring the wrong thing. The map is not the territory. The goal is the outcome, not sticking religiously to a flawed plan.
Running a business is hard. It’s easy to get caught in the whirlwind of daily demands and end the quarter feeling busy but unsure if you moved the business forward. That’s the problem good OKRs solve.
They bridge your big vision with the daily actions of your team. By focusing on a few critical outcomes, making them measurable, and aligning everyone, you create clarity and momentum. You replace the chaos of "everything is important" with the power of "this is what matters right now." It’s not about more work. It’s about more impactful work.
It takes practice, and your first few attempts might be a bit clumsy. That's fine. The process of discussing, debating, and defining what success looks like is valuable in itself. Stick with it, and OKRs can transform how your team operates, moving you from a group of people completing tasks to a unified force driving real, measurable change.
Our Vision-To-Action Programme is designed to embed this exact approach, transforming strategy into concrete, motivating OKRs and KPIs that teams buy into and deliver on. If you want your goals to move from PowerPoint to real-world results, discover how the programme can accelerate your vision today.
Additional Resources:
For further material on related topics, consider exploring the following:
Ready to Break Free From the Fog of Daily Chaos?
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