Example of Company OKRs, How Did They Do It?

If you’re new to the agile community, then you must know one thing: OKRs (objectives and key results) are quite a big deal within organizations that wish to align their goals with those of their teams , and what is the purpose you must be asking? To all work collectively and reach those goals. 

Many well known organisations have made OKRs their goal setting framework. If the principle is still fuzzy, our definition of the OKR method sets it out in a few minutes. Here we look at the output: examples of company OKRs, by team and by level, plus two cases that were actually made public.

Organizations using OKRs

Several well-known organizations use such methods as part of their goal-setting and performance management practices. Some examples of companies that have adopted OKRs include:

1. Google
2. Amazon
3. Netflix
4. Twitter
5. LinkedIn
6. Uber
7. Airbnb
8. Spotify
9. Dropbox
10. Slack

These companies have found OKRs to be a valuable tool for setting and achieving ambitious goals and aligning their teams towards common objectives.

Google

Google is well known for using OKRs as a goal setting framework across the whole organisation. The company does not publish its current OKRs: the three examples below are reconstructions, written at its scale and in its style, to show what a company level OKR looks like. Three OKRs of that kind:

Objective: Improve user experience on the search engine

Key Results:

• Increase the click-through rate (CTR) on the top search results by 5%.
• Reduce the average page load time by 10%.
• Implement user feedback on search result relevance in 90% of cases.

Objective: Expand market share in emerging markets

Key Results:

• Launch tailored marketing campaigns in three new countries and achieve a 20% increase in user acquisition.
• Partner with local providers to improve service coverage and increase user engagement by 15% in targeted regions.
• Localize the product in two new languages and see a 30% growth in active users within six months.

Objective: Enhance workplace diversity and inclusion

Key Results:

• Increase the percentage of underrepresented minority hires by 20% within the next year.
• Implement unconscious bias training for all hiring managers and track a 15% improvement in diverse candidate hires.
• Establish employee resource groups for marginalized communities and have 90% participation from eligible employees.

These examples of company OKRs illustrate how Google uses OKRs to set objectives that are challenging yet achievable and define key results that are measurable and quantifiable to drive progress and innovation within the organization.

Netflix

At Netflix this goal setting framework helps teams align and measure progress towards specific objectives. Here too, the OKRs quoted below are illustrations rather than internal documents.

Objectives

• Clear and Inspiring: Objectives at Netflix are designed to be ambitious, inspiring, and aligned with the company's broader mission. They focus on what the organization aims to achieve.
• Qualitative: Objectives are qualitative and reflect what the company wants to improve or change. They are not metric-driven but rather describe a desired end state.

Key Results

• Measurable and Quantitative: Key results are quantifiable and measurable. They are used to track progress towards the objectives and are often set with clear deadlines.
• Specific and Actionable: Key results are specific actions or outcomes that need to be achieved to meet the objective. They are clear and actionable steps.
• Aggressive but Achievable: Netflix sets ambitious key results that push the team but are still attainable. This encourages high performance and continuous improvement.

Implementation in Netflix

• Company-Wide Alignment: Netflix uses OKRs to ensure alignment across different teams and departments. Objectives set at the top level cascade down to departments and individual teams, ensuring everyone is working towards common goals.
• Transparency: OKRs at Netflix are transparent. This means everyone in the company can see the objectives and key results of others, fostering a culture of openness and shared accountability.
• Quarterly Cadence: Netflix typically operates on a quarterly OKR cycle. This allows for regular check-ins and adjustments, ensuring that goals remain relevant and achievable.
• Focus on Innovation and Creativity: Given Netflix's emphasis on creativity and innovation, OKRs often focus on pushing the boundaries in content creation, technology, and user experience.

Examples of OKRs at Netflix

Objective: Enhance User Experience

• Key Result 1: Increase user engagement on the platform by 15%.
• Key Result 2: Achieve a 20% reduction in the number of customer complaints regarding the user interface.
• Key Result 3: Implement 5 new features based on user feedback.

Objective: Expand Global Reach

• Key Result 1: Launch Netflix services in 5 new countries.
• Key Result 2: Achieve 10 million new international subscribers.
• Key Result 3: Increase content production in local languages by 25%.

Objective: Improve Content Recommendation System

• Key Result 1: Increase the accuracy of content recommendations by 10%.
• Key Result 2: Reduce the average time users spend searching for content by 30%.
• Key Result 3: Implement a new machine learning algorithm for content recommendations.

Benefits of OKRs at Netflix

• Focus and Clarity: OKRs help Netflix maintain focus on key priorities and provide clarity on what needs to be achieved.
• Alignment and Coordination: By cascading objectives and key results throughout the organization, Netflix ensures that all teams are working towards the same goals.
• Motivation and Engagement: The ambitious nature of OKRs motivates employees to strive for excellence and stay engaged with their work.
• Adaptability and Agility: The quarterly review cycle allows Netflix to remain agile and adapt to changes quickly, ensuring they stay ahead in a dynamic industry.

By integrating OKRs into its strategic planning and daily operations, Netflix maintains its competitive edge and continues to innovate in the entertainment industry.

Two company OKRs that were actually made public

Big company OKRs circulate widely and are rarely sourced. Here are two whose objective and key results were published by John Doerr, the investor who brought the method to Google, on the What Matters site.

Allbirds, an OKR about carbon

Objective: design shoes with the lowest carbon footprint in the industry.

• Key result 1: a supply chain and shipping infrastructure that are 100% zero waste.
• Key result 2: 100% of calculated carbon dioxide emissions offset.
• Key result 3: 25% of materials compostable.
• Key result 4: 75% of materials biodegradable.

What makes this OKR readable: the objective is a qualitative ambition, the key results are four percentages nobody can reinterpret. It is a useful starting point if you are aligning your OKRs with ESG goals.

Healthcare.gov, an OKR written in a crisis

In the autumn of 2013 the United States health insurance sign-up website collapsed at launch. The rescue team gave itself one objective and four key results.

Objective: fix the website for the vast majority of people.

• 70% of people get through.
• One second response time.
• 1% error rate.
• 99% uptime.

Four figures, and no more argument about what to repair first. That is the most underrated virtue of an OKR: it settles priorities rather than describing them.

Company OKR examples by team

Google and Netflix speak at the scale of a whole company. In practice an OKR almost always lives at team level. The five models below are starting points to rewrite with your own figures: an OKR copied from another context commits nobody and steers nothing.

Marketing

Objective: make content the leading source of qualified pipeline.

• Grow demo requests coming from the blog from 35 to 60 a month.
• Bring the cost per qualified lead below 80 euros.
• Publish 12 reference pieces, 8 of them ranking on page one.

Sales

Objective: win larger deals without lengthening the sales cycle.

• Raise the average deal size from 18k to 25k euros.
• Keep the sales cycle under 75 days.
• Reach a 30% win rate on qualified opportunities.

People and HR

Objective: turn onboarding into a reason to stay.

• 90% of new joiners operational on their scope within 30 days.
• Bring first year turnover down from 22% to 12%.
• An onboarding score of 4.5 out of 5 across three consecutive cohorts.

Product

Objective: make the most requested feature genuinely usable.

• Move adoption from 15% to 45% of active accounts.
• Halve the number of support tickets tied to that feature.
• Ship three improvements that came out of user interviews.

Customer support

Objective: answer faster without degrading the quality of answers.

• First response under 2 hours on 95% of requests.
• Post-resolution satisfaction at 4.6 out of 5.
• Deflect 40% of routine requests to a self-service knowledge base.

A team OKR is only worth writing if it hangs off a wider objective. The table below shows the same subject written at four levels: that is where alignment is decided, and it is also where an OKR workshop keeps every team from setting off on its own.

Are you ready to use OKRs within your organization?

Implementing OKRs within an organization, at times, can be complex and perhaps arduous. But if done right, it can be a great tool to align your company’s goals with those in your teams. 

Remember: using this framework allows you to come back and revisit your OKRs and check what needs to be done, changed and adjusted. 

If your OKRs also frame projects, the usual pitfalls are collected in our article on OKRs and project management, and the place of goals inside the operating system of the organisation is set out here.

At Talkspirit, we take pride in offering a well-rounded OKRs framework feature for organizations who are deep into the method or for those who wish to dab at first. 

If you wish to know more about this framework, opt for a demo with our team!

Take Your OKRs to the Next Level

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• Design sustainable OKRs that are actionable, adaptable, and impactful over time.
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• Run engaging OKR workshops that align your team around shared goals.
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• Track progress effectively using tools like Talkspirit.