Types of KRs: Inputs, Outputs & Outcomes

Types of KRs: Inputs, Outputs & Outcomes

As you think about potential Key Results, it can help to sort them into three categories. They can be inputs, outputs, or outcomes. If you’re intentional about which type of Key Result you’re using, your teams will have a clearer sense of which actions to take.

Input Key Results

First, inputs. Most simply, inputs are the things under your direct control.

For example, you can control the number of stores that will open in the coming year. You can control a website’s features and launch date. You can control the changes that reduce the weight of a part you manufacture.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, famously focuses on inputs. Under his leadership, Amazon prioritized a range of basic inputs, from expanding product selection, or cutting the time it took to pick and pack a shipment. These were the things they felt they could control. Jeff believed if Amazon focused on inputs, the critical outputs – like revenue – would follow.

Output Key Results

So, let’s talk about outputs. These are what you produce – the results of your inputs.

Andy Grove, the father of OKRs, often used outputs as Key Results at Intel. For Andy, outputs were the key to increasing productivity because measuring success was so clear. You either achieved the result or you didn’t. Under his leadership, Intel tended to focus on things like increasing the speed of a microprocessor, or the number of units sold in a quarter.

Sales targets are output Key Results. So are performance benchmarks. So are the number of people enrolled for a conference.

Outcome Key Results

Outcomes, the third type of Key Result, describe what has changed as a result of your work. They describe impact. For example, if you launch that new website, or increase production by 1,000 units, what will change for your customers?

Here are more examples of outcomes:

• 100% of our users can find what they’re looking for on our website.
• Our net promoter score is over 60.
• 98% of people are able to walk one week after a critical surgery.
• Our customer renewal rate is 65%.

Those are all outcomes from taking action.

Of the three kinds of Key Results, outcomes are often the most useful. Even though they are also the hardest to come up with and measure, we encourage you to use them as often as you can. When a team focuses on impact rather than inputs or outputs, it gives people more space to find new and better solutions.

A good Key Result may require you to measure something new. Don’t limit your tracking to data you already have – that’s like looking for your car keys under a light, because that’s where the light is. Intead, ask yourself what measure truly proves you’re making progress. The right Key Result may challenge you to build a process to collect and surface that data.

Can you mix input, output and outcome Key Results? Yes you can!

Many teams mix input, output and outcome Key Results. How should you choose the mix? Pick the set of Key Results that will best help the team succeed in achieving its Objective.

Let’s imagine you’re a community organizer and your Objective is to get a candidate elected to the City Council. Here are some Key Results:

KR1: Knock on 20,000 doors. This is an input – something we control.
KR2: Get 5,000 people to commit to vote for our candidate. That’s an output. People who will commit to vote is the result of our door-knocking.
KR3: Our candidate gets more than 50% of the vote. That’s the ultimate outcome we’re hoping for.

So, here we have a combination of input, output, and outcome KRs that add up to the Objective we want: to get our candidate elected.

Any one of these KRs alone might not get us to where we want to go. But together they inspire a solid plan of action. That’s why it’s a good idea to use all three kinds of Key Results. You’re the best judge of which combination will inspire your team’s actions.