Committed and Aspirational OKRs

Committed and Aspirational OKRs

How do OKRs define success?

In two different ways: Committed and Aspirational OKRs.

When Andy Grove introduced OKRs at Intel, all OKRs were aspirational. But when Google adopted the system, they distinguished Committed OKRs from Aspirational OKRs. While both types involve stretching, they have different definitions of the finish line. Knowing which kind of OKR you’re setting will guide your team’s actions.

Here’s how to tell the difference between them, according to Google’s OKR playbook:

“Commitments are OKRs that we agree will be achieved, and we will be willing to adjust schedules and resources to ensure that they are delivered.

By contrast, aspirational OKRs express how we’d like the world to look, even though we have no clear idea how to get there and/or the resources necessary to deliver the OKR.”

The differences between Committed and Aspirational OKRs

Both types of OKRs guide teams in a clear direction and finish line. The difference?

When have a Committed OKR, everyone on the team knows, “We have to deliver it, no matter what.”

When you set an Aspirational OKR, the team knows, “That goal line is really far away and it’s gonna make us stretch and push to get there.”

Committed and Aspirational OKRs are also evaluated differently. At the end of every cycle, the expected score for a Committed OKR is 100%. Is the OKR fully complete? The answer is either yes or no – there is no partial credit.

During an OKR cycle, if it appears that a Committed OKR is falling short, you should escalate your team’s challenges and ask for help. After all, if you end up missing a Committed OKR, it’s a big deal. At the end of the cycle, you’ll want to reflect on where, why, and how you missed the mark on both planning and execution.

By design, Aspirational OKRs will exceed a team’s ability to execute in a single quarter. You plan to carry them over from cycle to cycle until they’re accomplished. Don’t drop one just because you’re not making progress. Aspirational OKRs are where many breakthroughs lie.

If your team falls short in one cycle, you’ve got options! You can:

• Try another approach.
• Negotiate for more resources.
• Or come to a new understanding of the problem that opens the door to a different solution.

It’s important to declare whether an OKR is Committed or Aspirational at the start of the cycle. Tag Committed OKRs with a “C.”

OKR example: Allbirds

Allbirds has used OKRs since their launch in 2016. From the start, their North Star OKR focused on lowering their carbon footprint. In less than two years, they sold over a million pairs of shoes made from natural materials like Merino wool. By 2019, they’d achieved a billion-dollar-plus valuation.

Early on, the company set an ambitious goal: Each pair of Allbirds shoes would be carbon-neutral. They turned this into a North Star OKR:

Objective: Create the lowest carbon footprint in their industry.

When they first set the OKR, Allbirds didn’t have the ability to track carbon emissions at every step of their supply chain, including transportation to every component of their finished products. So initially, this goal was highly aspirational. It had metrics in their Key Results, but it wasn’t measurable or verifiable yet. But once those measures were in place, it gave Allbirds the ability to purchase enough carbon offsets to meet their Objectives.

Now they were making progress, but they still weren’t meeting all four Key Results. So they kept going. In 2018, they launched a new line of flip-flops made with a new foam that was carbon-negative. Two years later, they used the same foam in a partnership with Adidas on a pretty cool sneaker design. Partnering with a larger company helped them lower costs to produce the foam. The result? The new sneaker lowered carbon emissions from 13 kilograms per pair down to almost 2.94 kilograms – the lowest in the industry at that time.

Allbirds kept going – turning that aspirational OKR into reality. As they got within sight of the goal, they committed to OKRs to reduce the number of components needed for each shoe. They started using parts made with sequestered carbon. They sourced wool from regenerative farms that capture more carbon than they produce. In 2023, Allbirds announced their first line of carbon-neutral sneakers – a model that relied no longer on the purchase of offsets.

That’s how they went from aspiration to reality. And the shoe’s name? It’s straight from the OKR lexicon: The Moonshot.

Bold targets shape how your team executes. Bold measures hold everyone accountable for the same definition of success. The combination of the two makes OKRs unique.