What is a Key Result?

What is a Key Result?

Now that we understand more about Objectives, how about Key Results? Just what are they?

With OKRs, Objectives must have a set of Key Results, and Key Results must be tied to an Objective. Key Results benchmark and monitor our progress toward our Objective – and they validate that we’ve achieved it.

As John says, if Objectives are the what, Key Results are the how. As in “how we know” we’ve succeeded.

Measuring Key Results

Let’s say our Objective is to safely summit the mountain. How will we know when we’ve achieved it? Did we succeed if we trained, booked our guide, and bought all our supplies?

The answer is no. Those are all important action steps, but they don’t measure progress towards the goal – to safely summit the mountain.

Actually, let’s push ourselves.

What would it take to reach the mountain’s summit in record time? How would we define that?

We know we’ve done it if we:

• Completed the climb in six days or fewer.
• Made it to base camp before sundown each day.
• Reached the summit with 50% of our food and water remaining.
• No one on the team experienced a major injury.

Key Results must be measurable. They leave no room for argument about how much was accomplished.

Hear from Andy Grove, the father of OKRs

Let’s watch a video from Andy Grove, the creator of OKRs:

“The two key phrases of the management by objective systems are the Objectives and Key Results, and they match the two purposes.

The Objective is the direction. I want to dominate… we want to dominate the mid-range microcomputer component system. That’s an Objective – that’s where we want to go.

Key Results for this quarter: Win 10 new designs for the (Intel) 8085 – one Key Result. It’s a milestone. The two are not the same, but that’s the first milestone that in the next time period we can pass, then we can measure.

The Key Result has to be measurable. At the end, you can look and without any argument, say, “Did I do that or did I not do it? Yes/no.”

That’s right, without argument.

Once all of the Key Results are completed, the Objective is achieved.

Crafting Key Results

However, if you’ve completed all the Key Results and the Objective was not met, then the KRs were missing something. That’s because Key Results work as a set. In our mountaineering example, if any one of the Key Result fails, our Objective is at risk.

So where do we start with crafting Key Results?

Look at your Objective and ask: What are the three to five critical outcomes that need to be met to achieve this Objective? A great Objective is significant, concrete, action-oriented, and inspirational. A great set of Key Results is specific, time-bound, aggressive yet realistic, and measurable and verifiable.

Key Results example: Healthcare.gov

Let’s rewind to my very first experience with OKRs, when I was part of the fixer team for Healthcare.gov. When the website was launched, it just did not work.

Everyone on the team had different ideas about how to fix it. To make the site work, we needed a common way to decide which problems to prioritize. After a long group discussion, Mikey Dickerson, an ex-Googler, summarized the challenge as an OKR. He walked to the whiteboard and wrote:

“We have to fix the website for the vast majority of the people, and that’s measured by: 70% of people being able to get through; a one-second response time; a 1% error rate; and 99% uptime.”

Those four items were how we’d know – at least in that moment – that we had “fixed the website for the vast majority.”

Over the next few weeks, those KRs helped us prioritize our actions and initiatives. They told us what we should say “no” to. We would only undertake an effort only if it enrolled more people, significantly improved reliability, or improved response time. That clarity helped us to be more judicious with our time and resources. In the end, we ultimately enrolled millions of people into affordable health care.

Avoid using tasks as Key Results

One common mistake teams make is to jam their “to-dos” and “deliverables” into their Key Results. They’ll take their project plan and pick three to five milestones or deliverables that they want to track. After all, to-do lists can sound specific, time-bound, and measurable – and they’re familiar lingo in meetings.

But action items don’t capture the impact you are trying to make. They are actions, not results. They don’t tell us: If we do all these things, what will get better? Your Key Results need to capture what will change or improve because of your actions.

Finally, Key Results don’t include everything that will change. They are those few outcomes that need special emphasis from the team. So no matter what gets delivered at the cycle’s end, we’ll be clear-eyed about what we defined as success and how close we came to achieving it.

It can feel uncomfortable to hold yourself accountable to results instead of activities – and to write those results down where everyone can see them. OKRs spark a different kind of conversation than many teams are used to.
But eventually those conversations transform those teams. They learn how to look at a challenge, align around what’s most important, and measure their impact.

As teams strengthen their goal-setting muscle by setting precise Key Results, their performance can dramatically improve.