One of the most difficult aspects of getting started with OKRs is just learning how to write them. Don’t overcomplicate it. Once you know your goals (objectives), just write them out simply and clearly.

Remember that OKRs should be aligned—an individual would have OKRs aligned to department OKRs, which are aligned to company OKRs.

Company OKRs can align to department and even individual OKRs

• Company OKR: Increase User Engagement

  • Product  OKR: Make it easier for users to activate

    Department

  • Customer Success  OKR: Conduct outreach campaign to top 300 under-engaged accounts

    Department

  • Product Marketing  OKR: Revamp onboarding email sequence

    Department

    • Individual customer success manager OKR: Re-train top 10 least engaged accounts

The following examples are to give you an idea of how different companies have written their OKRs and to show the alignment of cascading OKRs across the company, departments, and individuals. Make OKRs your own—as long as the objective is a goal and the key results are measurable outcomes, you are doing it right!

Example Company OKR: Increase User Engagement:

• Objective: Increase user engagement
  • Increase daily active users (DAU) by 10% (from 10,000 per day to 11,000 per day)
  • Improve time to first value (TTFV) from 3 days to 2.4 days
  • Achieve 90% gross retention on all Q3 renewals

Example Department OKR (for Customer Success)

• Objective: Increase business customer adoption of our product
  • Key result: Renew 90%+ of Q3 renewals
  • Key result: Achieve 84% of seats used per account
  • Key result: Increase usage of feature X by 15% per account (from 7.46 to 8.57)

Note this department objective to “Increase business customer adoption of our product” can align to the company OKR to “Increase user engagement”.

Example Personal OKR (for a Customer Success Rep)

• Objective: Increase team adoption of my customers
  • Key result: Achieve 92% of seats filled on my accounts
  • Key result: Increase usage of feature X in my accounts by 15% (from 7.93 to 9.11)

Note this personal objective can align to the department OKR which aligns to the company objective.

Example Company OKR: Achieve $30M ARR

• Objective: Achieve $30m in ARR
  • Key result: Maintain 90% B2B gross retention
  • Key result: Achieve 125% B2B net retention
  • Key result: Increase free trial to paid conversion by 5%

Example Department OKR (for Sales)

• Objective: Win all the business
  • Key result: Close $2m in new logo ARR
  • Key result: Close $500K in expansion ARR
  • Key result: Decrease average sales cycle by 10% (from 30 days to 27 days)

Note this department objective to “Win all the business” is aligned to the company OKR to “Achieve $30m in ARR”.