Examples of OKRs for Leadership

Why use OKRs for leadership 

In the last few decades, plenty has changed in the business world. With innovation in organizational structures, leadership has evolved. Strong business leaders in today’s age  know the importance of aligning employees to drive engagement and improve focus. From team leads to the C-suite, leaders are adapting to a new way of doing business and need new tools to do so.

Introducing OKRs — Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a goal-setting method that helps leaders set clear goals using a flexible and transparent framework. With OKRs, leaders can ensure teams and individuals are working toward a common goal. With a bottom-up approach, teams have the independence to self-manage without losing track of the primary focus.

How to write OKRs for leadership development

Step 1. OKRs 101

Having no idea what OKRs are makes writing them difficult. Lucky for you, the foundations of OKRs are simple. It’s a three-step process to help you define your quarterly goals: Objectives (O), Key Results (KRs) and projects. 

• Objectives: This is your guiding star for the quarter. It’s a short statement defining your goal.
• Key Results: These sit under your Objectives and are essentially milestones to help define success.
• Projects: This is your to-do list. It’s a concise list of tasks that will make hitting your Key Results possible.

Step 2. Understand your role

While OKRs work best under a collaborative system, it’s a good idea for leaders to champion the project the first time. Think of yourself as a head chef — you know the recipes well and how to keep the kitchen on track.

As a leader, it’s your responsibility to help troubleshoot hiccups and encourage the team to update their OKRs regularly. Do this well, and you’ll have a much easier time getting your team to stick to it in the long run.

Start with three Objectives and three KRs per objective, and make tracking a part of your WIPs or other weekly meetings while everyone gets acquainted.

Step 3. Set Objectives

Leaders often juggle many responsibilities at once, making it hard to narrow down targets for the quarter. To help define an area of focus, leadership teams may take inspiration from the AARRR model. This model outlines the metrics all business leaders should track at some point. The five stages are acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue. 

• Acquisition: How do you find customers?
• Activation: What’s the customer’s first impression?
• Retention: Do customers return?
• Referral: Do customers tell others about you?
• Revenue: How can you improve revenue?

Identify the two areas that need the most attention and shape your Objectives around them. For more help with Objectives, check out our guide to writing good Objectives.

Step 4. Write Key Results

For each Objective there should be three Key Results. KRs are aspirational statements that let you know you’re on track to meeting your Objectives. Good Key Results are SMART — specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound and usually quantifiable. Here’s a template to help you get started:

• Improve <metric> from X to Y

Step 5. List projects

You know your destination — but how will you get there? Here’s the part where you list the tasks that will help you achieve your Key Results. Don’t be heavy-handed and let your team define their own projects — as long as their initiatives work toward meeting KRs, you should be OK.

Still confused? We have a wealth of resources on writing OKRs, but first-timers might want to start here:

• A complete guide to OKRs
• OKRs templates

Leadership OKRs examples

To help you understand how OKRs are written, we've compiled some examples. From team leads to managers and executives, we’ve got the whole suite of OKRs examples for leadership below!

Examples of OKRs for team leaders

Looking for inspiration? Team leads can use the examples below as a starting point when writing OKRs for the first time.

OKRs examples for managers

Clearly written OKRs will help your team understand and adopt OKRs. We’ve put together some OKRs examples for managers to help you get started.

OKRs examples for executives

Who said old dogs can’t learn new tricks? First-time OKRs writers can use the examples below as a guide.

Tracking leadership OKRs with Tability

Once you’ve gotten the gist of leadership OKRs, it’s time to put them into practice — but that’s easier said than done. You don’t get to a leadership position without recognising that setting tasks is just the prelude to a successful quarter — it's the implementation that counts. But how do you bridge the gap between your plans and desired outcomes? With tracking and accountability. 

OKRs set up teams for success because they emphasize follow-through. OKRs don’t work without full commitment, but as leaders know, getting your team to implement a new system is not always easy.

Software like Tability can help — it features an intuitive online interface and a handy dashboard and sends automated email reminders to keep teams on track.

What other leadership metrics can you use?

If the examples above aren’t relevant to you, we've provided some alternative leadership metrics below.