OKRs (or Objective Key Results) is a goalsetting framework used by leading tech companies
(like Google, Intel, Amazon) to align their
efforts towards an Objective (big goal) by
achieving a predefined set of metrics called Key
Results.
KPIs (or Key Performance Indicators) are
performance indicators (metrics) that are
measured in a pre-defined way and reviewed over
a fixed period (frequency) to monitor (measure)
the success of an activity, project, employee,
team or an organization.
Short answer. OKRs and KPIs are different, but
they can play together. OKRs define a goal with
a set of metrics, while KPIs are metrics that
can be part of an OKR’s Key Results or be
standalone performance indicators.
Don’t worry if you don’t quite get it! In this
article, we’ll first explain to you what exactly
OKRs and KPIs are, then we’ll give you real-life
examples, and in the end, we’ll compare them so
you can have a better understanding and find
answers to your questions.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
1.

What is an OKR?

2.

How to write OKRs?

3.

OKRs Examples

4.

What is a KPI?

5.

How to set KPIs?


6.

KPI Examples

7.

OKRs vs. KPIs: Similarities & Differences

8.

How OKRs and KPIs can play together?

Our goal is this page to be the last page you’ll
ever have to read to fully-understand what OKRs
and KPIs are and to be able to answer the
question, "What are the differences between OKRs
and KPIs?" without even thinking.

So let’s begin!

1. What is an OKR?
OKR Definition
OKR (Objective & Key Results) is a goal-setting
framework helping companies and organizations to
align their teams toward achieving an Objective
(goal) defined by a set of metrics called Key
Results.
The history of OKRs can be traced back to around
1968 when Andry Groove ("the father of OKRS")
co-founded Intel and has upgraded
the MBO (Management by Objectives) model into
the OKRs we know today.
The OKR model gained a lot of popularity
after Larry Page (the co-founder of Google)
adopted OKRs to make Google’s bold mission of
"organizing the world’s information" achievable.
Since that, OKRs have been used at other popular
tech start-ups like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Uber.


The Objective & Key Results (OKR) framework
consists of two parts - Objective and Key
Results.
Objective
Objectives define where you want to go. They
should be ambitious, specific, and time-bound
goals that inspire employees to move the company
forward. Objectives are usually defined

quarterly or annually.
Objective (Goal) = What do you want to achieve?
Objective example: "Achieve record signups in
the 1st quarter of 2020 ."
Key Results
Key Results define how do you plan to go there.
They are the metrics required for achieving your
Objective (goal). The Key Results must be
specific, measurable (quantifiable), achievable,
progress you towards your objective, and be
difficult but not impossible.
Key Results (Metrics) = What metrics you have to
obtain to achieve the Objective?
Key Results example:
•

KR1: "Generate an extra 2,000 clicks per
month on Ora’s blog posts."

•

KR2: "Increase landing page conversion from
22% to 30%."


•

KR3: "Get an extra 500 organic website
clicks per month on the landing page for
‘project management’ keywords."


2. How to write OKRs?

Writing OKRs have helped dozens of billiondollar organizations like Google, Intel, Amazon
to align, motivate, and empower their teams
towards achieving their goals.
OKRs are also applicable in small teams and
startups, too. Considering that, Google and
Amazon both started in a garage with a team of
few people.
To write a good OKR, you should begin by setting
the Objective (goal/vision that you want to


achieve) first. For example, let’s take a
company that wants to "create a real-life Star
Wars lightsaber for everyone".

Writing an Objective
When setting OKRs, the Objective should always
be inspired by the company’s mission/vision and
be defined by the highest management. It also
should be bold, inspiring for everyone, and
time-bound.
What Objectives should NOT be:
•

Generic (objectives should be specific)

•


Easy (objectives should be ambitious)

•

Boring (objectives should be inspirational)

An OKR Objective should answer YES to the
following questions:


•

Is it inspiring?

•

Does it move the company forward?

•

Does it help to achieve the company’s
vision?

•

Is it time-bound?

•


Annual or quarterly?

Objectives are meant to drive companies and
individuals towards their goals while keeping
them motivated and focused even during hard
times. The right objective will serve as the
North Star that'll guide your venture to
success.
A good Objective for the Lightsaber OKR can be:
O: "Create the first real-life affordable Star
Wars lightsaber in 2020."
Examples of bad Objectives:
•

"Make more revenue this year."

•

"Grow the company."

•

"Release new product."

Once we have a good Objective, the next step is
defining the right metrics (Key Results) for
achieving it.
Defining Key Results
Key Results are a set of metrics that measure
the progress towards your Objective. They must

be thought carefully and planned in a way that


if all of them are met, your Objective (goal)
will get accomplished.
Note: Key results are not tasks.
Key Results should not be tasks. They are meant
to be measurable metrics (similar to KPIs) that
support the OKR objective, not a to do list
items.
An OKR Key Result should answer the following
questions positively:
•

Is it specific?

•

Important for achieving the Objective?

•

Is it measurable (defined by numbers)?

•

Is it hard but achievable?

The purpose of the key results is to serve as
milestones to the Objective. Set correctly, they

should define a rationale and measurable plan
(which progress can be tracked) towards
achieving the objective.
Good Key results for the Lightsaber OKR can be:
•

KR1: "Gather a team of the top 30 leading
physicists in the world."

•

KR2: "Create a 3,000° plasma blade prototype
that can cut through metal."

•

KR3: "Achieve a product cost of $79."

•

KR4: "Get 5,000 pre-orders from the landing
page."

•

KR5: "Legalize the product in 35 countries."


Tip: For each Objective, define a set of 2 to 5
Key Results. More than that and no one will

remember.
Writing OKRs
The last step to setting great OKRs that’ll
transform your company is to write them down. A
good way to do so is using the Doerr’s Formula.
(John Doerr is a venture capitalist who invested
in Google, and introduced them to the OKRs
model)
Doerr’s OKR Formula:
I will _______ as measured
by_____________________.
Or to bring more clarity:
I will (Objective) as measured by (Key Result
metrics).
Star Wars Lightsaber OKR using the Doerr’s
formula:
"I will create the first real-life affordable
Star Wars lightsaber in 2020 (O) as measured by
gathering a team of the top 30 leading
physicists in the world (KR1), creating a 3,000°
plasma blade prototype that can cut through
metal (KR2), achieving a product cost of $79
(KR3), and getting 5,000 pre-orders from the
landing page. (KR4)"
If done correctly, your OKRs should roll off the
tongue and excite your listeners!


To set OKRs in a multi-level organization, start
by setting an OKR on the C-level and then spread

the OKRs across the whole organization.
Star Wars Lightsaber OKR Objectives in a multilevel organization:
•

HR team: "Recruit the top 30 leading
physicists in the world." (O1)

•

Science team: "Create a 3,000° plasma blade
that can cut through metal." (O2)

•

Business team: "Achieve a product cost of
$79." (03)

•

Marketing team: "Get 5,000 pre-orders from
the landing page." (04)


3. OKR Examples
In this section, we'll give you 5 OKR examples
that you can use as inspiration for setting your
own ones. We've also included two public OKRs
set by real businesses in 2020.
OKR Example 1: Software Team
Objective: "Build the cleanest SOLID codebase in

the world by Q2."
•

KR1: "Refactor 135 classes using the latest
best practices in 2020."

•

KR2: "Fix 99% of the minor warnings
(including code formatting)."

•

KR3: "Cover 80% of the executable code with
unit and Integration tests."

OKR Example 2: Marketing & Sales Team
Objective: "Accomplish record revenue growth in
2020."
•

KR1: "Increase (quality) leads generated per
month by 25%."

•

KR2: "Achieve closing ratio on sales
opportunities of 45%."

•


KR3: "Generate an extra of 10,000 organic
website visitors per month."


OKR Example 3: Support Team
Objective: "Become the highest rated customer
support team in Capterra before Q3."
•

KR1: "Decrease avg. response time from
4min13s to 2min35s even on the weekends."

•

KR2: "Achieve customer support satisfaction
score of 4.9/5 stars."

OKR Example 4 (Real-life): Gitlab's Public OKRs
(2020)
CEO Objective: "Popular next-generation
product."
•

KR1: "SMAU is being measured and reported in
100% of Sales and Product Key Meetings."

•

KR2: "SPU increases by 0.5 stages from EOQ4

to EOQ1."

•

KR3: "MAU (Monthly Active Users) increases
5% from EOQ4 to EOQ1."

OKR Example 5 (Real-life): Ora's Public OKRs
CEO Objective: "Become the most intuitive allin-one project management solution for software
and marketing teams in Q4, 2020."
•

KR1: "Interview 50 of our top target
customers and collect their feedback."


•

KR2: "Run 1,000 usability tests after making
any major UX improvements."

•

KR3: "Develop 75% of the planned features
in Ora’s Public Roadmap."

•

KR4: "Increase CAS (Customer Activation
Score) to 89%."


4. What is a KPI?
KPI definition
By definition, KPI (Key Performance
Indicator) is a quantifiable measure used to
evaluate the success of an organization,
product, project, employee, activity, or
initiative over time.
KPI is an important number metric that measures
(strictly) and monitors the performance of
something (it can be anything; e.g., activity,
team, employee product, project, business) over
time.
Good example that everyone who's been in sales
is familiar with is the "Target", or more formal
"Closed-won deals target per employee per
month."
Explained simply: KPI monitors the health (the
performance) of something by being measured and
reviewed over fixed frequency (periods of time)
and being compared to a predefined target.


KPI Components
KPIs have four components - a measure, a target,
a data source, and a frequency.
•

Measure - defines what you want to measure


•

Target - the value of the Measure that you
want to achieve

•

Data Source - from where would you be
gathering the data for the KPI

•

Frequency - how often will you monitor the
KPI

KPIs serve as the core pillars of monitoring the
success of your business, initiatives, or


employees. Now we’ll go through each of the
components of a KPI and explain their meaning.
Measure
The Measure represents what you want to monitor
and defines how it would be measured. Remember
this for now, and we’ll get in more detail in

5. How to set great KPIs.
Target
The KPI Target is the desired value that you
want your Measure to be. For example, 10k

monthly traffic, 30% conversion rate, 5% revenue
increase, and so on.
Tip: Make sure your KPI Targets are both
challenging and realistic.
Data Source
The Data Source defines how you’re going to
obtain the data for the KPI. For example, common
data sources can be Google Analytics, CRM,
Database, Project Management Software, and so
on.
Tip: Writing a Data Source for your KPIs is
important because it makes sure that your
pulling data in the same format and from the
same source throughout the period of tracking
your KPI.


Frequency
KPI’s Frequency defines how often you're going
to pull the data and review your KPI. It can be
daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly
depending on the measured metric and business
specifics.
In the section, we’ll show you how to set great
KPIs by choosing the right Metric to monitor
from the right Data Sources with the right
Frequency towards achieving the right Target.
Now that you know what KPIs are, it’s time to
set ones for your business.
Start by choosing what you would like to know

about and monitor in your business. If you have
trouble coming up with ideas, imagine that Siri
or your Google Assistant got all the data about
your business. What would you ask?
For example, I’d like to know:
•

Siri, how much revenue would we make this
month?

•

Are our sales going up or down?

•

Is our website attracting more visitors
compared to the last 3 months?

•

What’s the average amount of money a client
is spending with us?

So knowing what metrics we’d like to track,
let’s set KPIs for them!


For the sake of simplicity, we’ll be setting an
e-Commerce Website KPIs as an example.


Setting the right Measure
The first step in setting a KPI is defining how
you would measure it. When choosing the right
metrics (measures), it’s important for them to
be quantitative or said simply - defined by
numbers.
For the e-Commerce website example, you might
want to measure:
•

# of monthly website visitors

•

% decrease of bounce rate (visitors who left
the website w/o looking)

•

% of visitors who buy an item (conversion)

•

$ monthly revenue

•

CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) or avg. of
money ($$$) earned from each acquired

customer


KPIs ≠ Goals
KPIs should always measure something recurring.
For example, you can’t pick "# of Facebook
page’s likes" for a measure. That’s because once
hitting the target number of likes, the KPI
wouldn’t exist anymore, and the idea of KPIs is
to be indefinite performance indicators. (e.g.
"# of new FB likes per week")
Tip: When measuring your KPIs, try to be as
specific as possible. (e.g. "website traffic" →
"monthly website traffic from social media")
Aiming for the right Target
The second step for setting great KPIs is to
choose both ambitious and reasonable Target to
aim for. To do so, first establish your baseline
(through previous data, industry averages, or
educated guesses) and decide what’s possible to
be achieved for your KPI Frequency.
KPI Targets for the e-Commerce website example
may sound like:
•

Increase the # of monthly website visitors
from 8,000 to 10,000.

•


Decrease bounce rate by 5%.

•

Achieve a 35% conversion of visitors to
buyers.

•

Increase monthly revenue from $25,000 to
$30,000.

•

Increase CLV from $8,50 to $12.


Tip: When choosing the right Target for your KPI
for the very first time, industry averages can
be a good starting point.
Pulling data from the right Data Sources
On this step, you might have to get more
creative. In an ideal world, you’ll be able to
pull all the data for your measures directly
from your analytics without doing extra work.
However, that doesn’t work like that in reality.
Get creative and find the most accurate and
cost-effective way to track your Measures with
your resources.
Good Data Sources for the e-Commerce store are:

•

Google Analytics (GA)

•

Payment Processor’s Statistics (Braintree,
Pay pal, Stripe, Shopify)

•

Google Search Console

Changing the Data Sources changes the KPI.
Stick with the same Data Source (and data
format) to the ones you’ve chosen initially;
otherwise, your KPI metric will become
inaccurate. Also, try to involve as little
different Data sources as possible.
Reviewing the KPI with the right Frequency
The last step to setting a great KPI is to
decide how often you should review it (or the
right frequency). To calculate it, you should
take the following facts into consideration:


•

How often can you pull the data from your
Data Source?


•

How often your Measure fluctuates?

•

How often it’s practical to monitor this
metric for your business? (KPI frequency can
be daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or even
longer)

For example, the frequency of the KPIs of the eCommerce website example would be daily, weekly,
or maximum monthly because it has high volume
and low margin. Simply said, things happen fast,
and it matters whether you have 132 or 248 sales
a day.
However, that’s not always the case. Take, for
example, a company that sells custom made yachts
- it takes years until a deal is signed and the
product is delivered.
As a rule of thumb:
•

High volume + Low margin (selling a lot of
cheap stuff) = High KPI Frequency (monitor
often)

•


Low volume + High margin (selling expensive
stuff slow) = Low Frequency (monitor between
longer periods of time so your KPI doesn’t
fluctuate)

Tip: When setting the frequency for your KPI,
take your product’s sales cycle into
consideration.


Now that we know how to define our KPIs
(Measure, Target, Data Source, and Frequency),
it’s time to write them down.
A good way to do so is to write them on a
whiteboard that everyone can see, in
your project management software, or using
specialized software for setting KPIs.
A good formula to for writing KPIs is:
____________ measured by _______ monitored every
____.
Meaning:
(Measure + Target) measured by (Data Source)
monitored every (Frequency).
Here’s how the eCommerce store KPIs would sound:
•

Increase the # of monthly website visitors
from 8,000 to 10,000 measured by Google
Analytics New Users monitored every month.


•

Decrease the website bounce rate by 5%
measured by GA’s Bounce rate monitored
every.

•

Increase monthly revenue from $25,000 to
$30,000 measured by Shopify’s Invoices
monitored every month.

Tip 1: Have between 2 and 7 KPIs to monitor.
(Having more will lead to monitoring none.)
Tip 2: Done correctly, each KPI should tell a
story.


6. KPI Examples
We'll give you 20+ KPI examples so you can get
better understanding and ideas on how to
implement them in your business.
KPIs for Marketing
•

FB Growth: Increase Facebook's new likes
from 345 to 500 measured by FB Page Admin
monitored every day.

•


Social Media Engagement: Increase social
media engagement from 28% to 32% (measured
by FB, Insta, LdIn) monitored every month.

•

Leads Quality: % of leads not showing up on
sales calls < 15% measured by CRM monitored
every day.

•

Organic traffic monthly growth > 12%
(Google Search Console)


KPIs for Sales
•

# of new closed deals per employee > 4 (data
from CRM) monitored every week.

•

% conversion from lead to deal > 30% (data
from CRM) monitored every month.

•


Good calls: Avg. minutes per call with a
cold lead > 3minutes (data from CRM)
monitored every day.

•

# of contacts (email, call, meeting) per day
> 100 monitored through CRM data daily

•

% increase of new sales per week > 5% (data
from accounting) measured weekly

KPIs for IT (software developers)
•

# of avg. shipped story points per developer
> 80 monitored in ora.pm every Sprint (2
weeks).

•

Issues opened vs. Tasks created (Ora Sprint
Review) < 0.1

•

Avg. time for developing a user story < 6h
(the time from "In Progress" to "Shipped")



Gitlab’s public KPIs
•

GitLab.com Availability > 99.95%

•

Sales efficiency > 1

•

Runway > 12

•

Hires vs. plan > 0.9

•

12 month team member retention > 84%
Issue

Ora’s public KPIs
•

# of new monthly signups (from database) >
2,000


•

% active users > 65% measured by GA (weekly)

•

NTS (Net Promoters Score) >
user surveys every month

•

Monthly organic traffic increase > 10% every
month
(GA)

9 measured by

7. OKRs vs. KPIs: Similarities &
Differences
OKR is a goal-setting framework consisting of
Objective (big goal) and Key Results
(milestones, metrics required for achieving the
big goal).
KPI is a key performance indicator (metric) used
for monitoring the success of a given activity,


employee, team, project, product, or the entire
company.
Similarities

•

Both OKRs and KPIs are used in big and small
companies (e.g., Google, Amazon, Intel) to
progress towards their goals and vision.

•

OKRs and KPIs have a positive effect on a
company’s productivity.

•

Both OKRs and KPIs must be specific and
quantifiable (be defined by numbers).

Differences
•

KPIs measure and monitor. OKRs motivate and
move.

•

KPI is a metric with a target; OKR is a
goal-setting framework that has multiple
metrics (key results).

•


OKRs > KPIs (OKRs can include KPIs as a
metrics for their Key Results)

•

KPIs pay more attention to measuring and
monitoring the results, while OKRs focus on
achieving the results.


OKRs vs KPIs Comparison
OKR

KPI

Goal-Setting
Framework

Yes

No

Performance
Metric

Can have metrics

Yes

Specific


Yes

Yes

Measurable

Yes

Yes

Achievable
(realistic)

Yes

Yes

Time-bound

Yes

Yes

Goal

Yes

No


Performance
Indicator

No

Yes

Data source
defined

No

Yes

Has deadline

Yes

No (it’s on-going,
indefinite)

Frequency to
monitor

No (has fixed
deadline)

Yes

Purpose


Setting business’ Measuring business’
direction
health