OKR Templates

Using OKR templates can help with strategic alignment, focus, and accountability within an organisation.

OKR templates provide a structured framework that simplifies goal setting by helping teams articulate measurable objectives and key results aligned with broader organisational goals.

They are handy for workshops at different stages of the OKR cycle. Once finalised they can then be transferred to OKR software or added to Google Docs.

Empower employees to prioritise effectively and promote cross-functional coordination by allowing all members to see how their work contributes to larger business outcomes.

Additionally, templates enable a streamlined process for tracking progress. They are also helpful for reviews.

OKR Guide Menu

What is an OKR template?

An OKR (Objectives and Key Results) template is a structured tool designed to facilitate the setting, tracking, and evaluation of goals within an organisation. An OKR template standardises this process, guiding users to clearly articulate objectives and establish quantifiable key results that align with broader organisational goals.

An OKR template ensures consistency and transparency across departments by setting uniform criteria for success. This alignment fosters accountability and coordination, as each team’s objectives are connected to the company’s overall mission. OKR templates help teams remain agile and focused, adapting quickly to changing priorities and market conditions by making it easy to set, review, and adjust goals.

How to use the OKR Templates

To maximise the effectiveness of OKR templates, follow these key steps:

Download the OKR Templates: Start by downloading the appropriate OKR templates for your team. Ensure everyone has access and can use the same format to maintain consistency in how objectives and key results are defined and tracked.
Familiarize Your Team with the OKR Templates: Take time to walk your team through the template structure, clarifying how to set objectives and measurable key results. Emphasise the importance of alignment with company goals and encourage questions to ensure understanding.
Getting Started: Work with each team member to draft initial OKRs. Encourage them to set ambitious yet achievable goals and define key results that are specific, measurable, and time-bound. Use this step to identify potential challenges or areas needing support.
Refine, Iterate, and Communicate: Review the initial OKRs together, refining objectives and key results to align with team and organisational priorities. Remember, OKRs may need adjustment over time. Schedule regular check-ins to review progress and communicate any updates clearly to ensure everyone remains aligned.
Check-ins: Establish a rhythm for periodic check-ins, such as bi-weekly or monthly, to assess progress on key results. Use these sessions to discuss challenges, adjust timelines, and provide support where needed, keeping momentum strong and objectives clear.
Set The OKR Cycle: Determine your OKR cycle, typically quarterly, to keep goals aligned with the business’s dynamic needs. A set cycle provides regular checkpoints to evaluate performance, reset objectives, and realign priorities as needed.
Checklist: Have You Thought of Everything?: Before finalising, review a checklist of key considerations, such as clarity of objectives, measurability of key results, alignment with organisational goals, and team understanding of the OKR process. This ensures a comprehensive approach and prepares the team for success.

OKR Templates vs OKR Software

OKR templates and OKR software serve distinct purposes within the OKR framework, with each offering unique benefits and limitations. OKR templates, often spreadsheet-based, are straightforward tools ideal for getting started with OKRs, particularly in workshops or team meetings where flexibility is needed. In contrast, OKR software provides a dynamic, centralised platform for ongoing tracking, analysis, and cross-functional visibility, enhancing efficiency as organisations scale their OKR initiatives. Choosing between the two depends on the complexity of OKR management needs, frequency of check-ins, and available resources.

Pros

Simple and cost-effective, with no software investment required.
Flexible and customisable, making them ideal for initial OKR setting, brainstorming, and workshops.
Easy to use, with minimal setup and training needed for teams.
Cons:

Cons

Limited scalability; can become cumbersome as the number of OKRs grows.
Manual updating required, which may lead to version control issues.
Limited in features for advanced tracking, reporting, or integration with other tools.
Best Application: Useful for smaller teams, initial OKR setup, or running workshops where simplicity and flexibility are needed.

OKR Software

Centralises OKR tracking, facilitating real-time updates and cross-departmental alignment.
Offers automated reminders and analytics, enabling frequent check-ins and performance insights.
Scalable and integrates with other productivity tools, supporting larger teams and complex OKR frameworks.

Cons

Requires investment in software costs and user training.
Less flexible for custom formats or spontaneous adjustments in a workshop setting.
Complexity may create a steeper learning curve for new users.
Best Application: Ideal for larger organisations with ongoing OKR tracking needs, frequent progress assessments, and complex, cross-functional OKRs.

How To Use The OKR Pdf Template

The OKR canvas is designed to help you through the basic steps of creating your team OKR’s.

There are three OKR canvas models:

Executive team exploration
Team brainstorming
Team Board

1. OKR Canvas – Exploration

2. OKR Canvas – Brainstorming

3. OKR Canvas – Team Board

Step 1. Set the stage

Introduce your team to the terminology and scoring system highlighter earlier. Remind them that OKRs are meant to be “uncomfortable”. They won’t be fired for setting an ambitious goal and missing it.

Does the whole concept make your team nervous? That’s not bad – but they must also still be motivated.

Listen to concerns but be firm. Reinforce the benefits and that this system is set across the company, everyone has the same challenges and opportunities.

Remind people that often they achieve their best results when they work outside their comfort zone. This is where real growth happens!

Step 2. Choose Your Objectives

When writing your OKR, keep these two questions in mind:

What I have to accomplish? The answer provides the objective.
How am I going to get this done? The answers are the key results.

Pose the question “What are the most important impact(s) we need to make in the coming quarter?”

Spend a few minutes brainstorming ideas on sticky notes and posting them on the OKR canvas. Group similar ideas together. From there, distil your ideas down into 3 to 5 aspirational objectives.

Objectives should be high-level, qualitative statements that are aspirational – not tasks or granular outcomes.

Step 3. Identify Your OKRs

How do you measure progress toward a qualitative goal that is inherently un-measurable? You identify measurable outcomes that indicate you’ve achieved your objective.

For each objective, think about the results you would see (and can measure) if you reached it. Again, these are not tasks. These are result.

Wrong: “Ship feature X by the end of the quarter.”
Right: “Shipping feature X increases new user sign-ups by 10% this quarter.”

Assign each KR an owner on the team. If a KR will require collaboration with another team, great! Follow up with them afterwards and make sure they’re on board.

Step 4. Set The Who

Many people struggle to set key results for a qualitative goal. Often they think that qualitative objectives are unmeasurable. However, by focusing on outcomes it becomes easier.

For each objective, think about the results you would see (and can measure) if you reached it. Again, these are not tasks. These are results.

Wrong: “Improve customer experience by the end of the quarter.”
Right: “Lower customer service calls by X by end of quarter.”

Assign each key result an owner on the team. If a key result will require collaboration with another team, great! Follow up with them afterwards and make sure they’re on board.

Step 4. Ramp Up Your Ambition

Review the objectives and key results you’ve built out and ask whether they’re ambitious enough. If you feel totally confident you can hit a key result, increase the target by approximately 30% and then create a plan mapping out how you will achieve it. If you’re not at all sure you’ll hit a key result target, it’s probably set just right.

Make sure the key results are articulated well and detailed. You want to be able to score them later on a sliding scale. Hard numbers and percentages work great here.

Also, consider whether you have too many or too few objectives and key results. I’ve found that for a single team of 7-9 people, three objectives with 3-4 ambitious key results each is about right.

Step 5. Agree on next steps

Engage with your team throughout the process and at the end.

Ask your team if there are any loose ends to tie up before you go into execution mode. Any numbers to firm up? Objectives you should share with other teams? Or people from other teams to recruit as co-owners of a key results?

IT’s OK to have some open questions.

Schedule a follow-up session and task each Key Results owner with the task to update their key results prior to the session, so you that session with your OKRs baked and blessed.

Step 6. Scoring OKRs: monthly checkpoints

At the end of each month, check-in on how you’re tracking on your OKRs and give each key result a predicted end-of-quarter score. I.e., if you predict you’ll end the quarter with a score of .7 on a KR, then that’s your score for this month.

For example, let’s say your stretch key result is “a 10% increase in new user sign-ups this quarter”. Here’s how you’d score it based on how you’re tracking:

if you’re tracking toward a 7% increase, you’d predict a score of 0.7
if you’re tracking toward a 10% increase, you’d predict a score of 1.0

Include a bit of commentary as to how you came to that prediction and/or why it’s changed since last month.

Take the average score for all KRs to get your score for the corresponding objective.

Remember the idea behind scoring at regular intervals is to catch warning signs early and course-correct. This is not an exercise in arse-covering or justification. Most importantly, low-scoring OKRs are not punishable. Learn from them, and feed that wisdom into the coming month or next quarter’s OKRs.

Step 7. Reviewing OKRs

End the quarter give each key result a final score, and reflecting on your OKRs as a whole. Using a retrospective approach, pose some (or all) of these questions to your team:

Were our objectives ambitious enough?
Were our key results measurable? Did we know what our baseline was at the start of the quarter?
Did we “set ’em and forget ’em”? If so, why?
Were our OKRs aligned with the company’s broader strategies?
Did they keep us focused on delivering value to customers?
Did we feel connected to our OKRs?
What have we learnt from this quarter? How do we lift the bar moving into the coming quarter?

4. What To Consider When Using OKR Templates

LEADERSHIP TEAMS

OKRs work superbly for leadership teams, particularly when building out strategic plans. Adjust the time horizon from quarterly to yearly, and remember to not skimp on ambition.

MULTI-SESSION OKR SETTING

Hold a 30-minute session to choose objectives, as described above, and assign an owner to each one. Objective owners then engage their team and stakeholders to build out the key results. This works well if you need do some research before nailing down your KRs, or if your leadership team sets departmental objectives and supports individual teams to figure out the KRs they’ll contribute.

OFFSITE TO GET IT RIGHT

Extend this play to be a major component of your team’s next planning offsite.

CHANGE THE TIME HORIZON

Running a quarterly cadence might not hit the right notes for your team, perhaps a more frequent cadence is necessary. Or perhaps you’ve changed strategic direction mid-quarter, no worries. Tweak the time horizon as you need and don’t fall into default.

Follow-ups

Get the calendars organised early – Put time on the calendar for monthly scoring sessions, or set reminders for each owner to score their KRs. And schedule next quarter’s OKR setting session well in advance.

Do it all again – At the end of the quarter re-set the clock and do it all again, taking on-board lessons from the current quarter.

OKR Canvas

Next Section

Go To The Next Section of OKR Guide

OKR Templates – Free Templates To Start Now