Objectives and key results

Andrew S. Grove, later John Doerr · 1983

Also known as OKRs

A qualitative objective paired with a few numbers that would have to move for it to be true.

Its place in the frameworkGoal Core›Short term goals

What it does

The structure separates the thing you want, stated in plain language, from the evidence that it happened. Its real work is in the cadence around it — set for a quarter, reviewed openly, and deliberately set high enough that full attainment is not expected.

Reach for it when: When goals across a company need to line up without being dictated line by line from the top.
Where it stops: It is a system of attention, not of strategy. Tied to pay it stops being ambitious within a quarter, and it will make a company very good at whatever it happens to have written down.

Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management, Random House, 1983; John Doerr, Measure What Matters, Portfolio, 2018.

Why it sits at Short term goals

The near horizon: what has to be true within weeks or a quarter. Short term goals exist to produce movement and evidence early, while there is still time to act on what they reveal.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

Quarterly objectivesLocke & Latham’s goal-setting theory on specificity and difficulty; the quarterly cadence formalised in OKR practice by Grove and later Doerr.
MilestonesProject management practice, and the stage-gate model’s insistence that each gate is a real decision point rather than a formality.
Quick winsKotter’s change model, in which generating short-term wins is a distinct step rather than a by-product.
Leading indicatorsKaplan & Norton’s leading and lagging distinction, developed for the Balanced Scorecard.

All of Short term goals

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Short term goals lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Data CoreLeading indicators are defined here and collected there.
Time CoreQuarters, milestones and the year wheel are where these goals are sequenced.
Business CoreMost short term goals land on an operational object, and that is who has to deliver them.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at Short term goals too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

SMART criteriaFive tests a written objective has to pass before it counts as one.

Elsewhere in Goal Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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