Good OKRs are specific, measurable, and focused on outcomes. Bad OKRs are vague, task-based, and impossible to measure. The difference between the two determines whether your goal-setting drives real progress or becomes wasted effort.
This guide shows you exactly what separates effective OKRs from weak ones. You will see side-by-side examples, learn the most common mistakes, and get a practical checklist to evaluate your own OKRs.
Why OKR Quality Matters
Bad OKRs do more harm than no OKRs at all. They waste time in planning sessions, create confusion about priorities, and build cynicism when teams see the framework as pointless paperwork.
Good OKRs do the opposite. They align teams around clear priorities, create accountability through measurable targets, and accelerate progress by focusing effort on what matters most.
The framework itself is simple. The challenge is writing OKRs that actually work. Most teams struggle not because OKRs are flawed, but because their OKRs are poorly written.
Characteristics of Good OKRs
Strong OKRs share a few common traits. The objective itself should be inspiring and clear, something that points to a destination worth reaching without getting into the weeds of how you’ll get there. The key results need to be measurable with specific numbers, a starting point, and a target so there’s no ambiguity about whether you hit them. They should focus on outcomes rather than activities, measuring the impact of work instead of the work itself.
Good OKRs also strike the right balance between ambitious and achievable. If you’re hitting 100% of your OKRs every quarter, you’re not stretching enough; aim for about 70% success rate. They need a clear timeframe (usually quarterly), and they should align vertically so team OKRs support company goals and individual OKRs support team goals. Most importantly, a good OKR set creates focus by forcing you to say no to distractions so you can say yes to what matters most.
Characteristics of Bad OKRs
Bad OKRs tend to share predictable problems. The objective is often vague or uninspiring, something generic like “improve performance” that doesn’t give anyone a clear picture of where you’re headed. The key results read like a to-do list instead of outcomes, describing activities like “send more emails” or “hold weekly meetings” rather than measuring the results of those activities.
Weak OKRs also struggle with scope and ambition. Some are so easy you could hit them by accident, while others are so impossible that the team checks out before the quarter even starts. They often lack real numbers, making it impossible to know whether you succeeded. And in many organizations, OKRs exist in silos with no connection to what other teams or the company as a whole are trying to accomplish. The result is a lot of busy work that doesn’t actually move the business forward.
Good vs. Bad Objectives: Side-by-Side
The objective is the “what” of your OKR. Here is how weak objectives transform into strong ones:
| Bad Objective | Problem | Good Objective |
|---|---|---|
| Improve customer satisfaction | Too vague, no clear destination | Become the highest-rated service in our category |
| Do better marketing | No direction, unmeasurable | Establish our brand as the thought leader in B2B operations |
| Grow the business | Generic, could mean anything | Achieve product-market fit in the enterprise segment |
| Work on sales process | Describes activity, not achievement | Build a repeatable sales engine that scales |
| Be more efficient | Vague, no inspiring vision | Deliver exceptional results with a lean, focused team |
Notice the pattern. Bad objectives describe activities or use words so vague they provide no direction. Good objectives paint a clear picture of success that motivates the team.
What Makes a Good Objective
A good objective is qualitative and inspirational and describes where you want to go, not how you’ll get there. It should be memorable enough that your team can recall it without looking it up, ambitious enough to push people beyond business as usual, and achievable within the quarter. Most importantly, it needs to be something the team actually controls.
Good vs. Bad Key Results: Side-by-Side
Key results measure whether you achieved your objective. This is where most OKRs fail. Here is how to fix common problems:
| Bad Key Result | Problem | Good Key Result |
|---|---|---|
| Send more emails | Activity, not outcome | Increase email open rate from 18% to 28% |
| Improve NPS | No baseline or target | Raise NPS score from 32 to 50 |
| Launch new feature | Task, not result | Achieve 40% adoption of new feature within 30 days of launch |
| Have more team meetings | Activity with no purpose | Reduce average decision time from 5 days to 2 days |
| Hire salespeople | Task, missing outcome | Hire and ramp 4 account executives to quota attainment |
| Reduce churn | No numbers | Decrease monthly customer churn from 5% to 2% |
| Increase revenue | Missing specifics | Grow monthly recurring revenue from $100K to $150K |
The pattern is clear. Bad key results describe what you will do. Good key results describe what will be different when you succeed.
The Key Result Formula
Use this structure for every key result:
[Metric] from [current baseline] to [target] by [timeframe]
Examples:
- Increase conversion rate from 2.1% to 3.5% by end of Q2
- Reduce average response time from 24 hours to 4 hours
- Grow active users from 5,000 to 15,000
When you follow this formula, your key results become clear and measurable.
Complete OKR Makeovers
Let’s transform entire OKR sets from bad to good. These examples show how to apply everything you have learned.
Executive Team Makeover
Executive OKRs set the tone for the entire organization. When leadership writes vague objectives like “grow the company,” it signals that fuzzy thinking is acceptable at every level. Strong executive OKRs should paint a clear picture of what success looks like for the quarter and give every team a north star to align against.
| Before (Bad OKR) | After (Good OKR) |
|---|---|
| Objective: Grow the company | Objective: Build a scalable foundation for Series A fundraising |
| – Hire more people – Get more customers – Improve operations |
– Grow ARR from $500K to $1.2M – Reduce customer acquisition cost from $800 to $400 – Achieve 120% net revenue retention |
| What changed: The objective now describes a specific achievement. Each key result has clear numbers with baselines and targets. | |
Sales Team Makeover
Sales teams often default to activity-based goals because activities feel controllable. But tracking calls and proposals doesn’t tell you whether your sales engine is actually working. The best sales OKRs measure the health of your pipeline and the efficiency of your process, not just how busy your reps are.
| Before (Bad OKR) | After (Good OKR) |
|---|---|
| Objective: Sell more | Objective: Build a predictable revenue engine that exceeds targets |
| – Make more calls – Send more proposals – Close more deals |
– Increase win rate from 18% to 28% – Shorten average sales cycle from 45 days to 30 days – Grow pipeline coverage from 2x to 4x quota – Achieve 95% quota attainment across the team |
| What changed: The bad version lists activities. The good version measures outcomes that indicate a healthy sales engine. | |
Product Team Makeover
Product teams can easily fall into the trap of measuring output instead of outcomes. Shipping features feels productive, but it means nothing if customers don’t benefit. Good product OKRs connect development work to the user experience and measure whether your product is actually getting better in ways that matter.
| Before (Bad OKR) | After (Good OKR) |
|---|---|
| Objective: Make the product better | Objective: Deliver a product experience that customers love and recommend |
| – Fix bugs – Launch new features – Get user feedback |
– Increase NPS from 28 to 45 – Reduce support tickets per user from 1.2 to 0.5 monthly – Achieve 4.5-star app store rating (currently 3.6) |
| What changed: Instead of describing development activities, the good OKR measures the customer impact of product improvements. | |
Marketing Team Makeover
Marketing is easy to measure by activity because there’s always more content to create, more posts to publish, more campaigns to run. But activity without results is just noise. Strong marketing OKRs tie the work back to business outcomes like traffic, leads, and brand authority, so you know your efforts are actually moving the needle.
| Before (Bad OKR) | After (Good OKR) |
|---|---|
| Objective: Improve marketing | Objective: Establish our brand as the trusted voice in operational excellence |
| – Post on social media daily – Write blog posts – Update the website |
– Grow organic traffic from 8,000 to 25,000 monthly visitors – Increase marketing-qualified leads from 50 to 200 per month – Achieve 15 guest post placements on industry publications |
| What changed: The good version focuses on the business outcomes of marketing work, not the activities themselves. | |
Individual Contributor Makeover
Individual contributor OKRs are often the weakest in an organization because people default to describing their job duties. But even ICs can own meaningful outcomes. The key is identifying where you have real influence and setting targets that reflect the impact of your work, not just your presence.
| Before (Bad OKR) | After (Good OKR) |
|---|---|
| Objective: Do my job well | Objective: Become the go-to expert for customer onboarding |
| – Attend all meetings – Complete assigned tasks – Be a team player |
– Reduce average onboarding time from 14 days to 7 days – Achieve 95% customer satisfaction score for onboarding (currently 78%) – Create documentation that reduces training questions by 50% |
| What changed: The individual now owns specific outcomes rather than vague behaviors. Success is measurable. | |
The 7 Most Common OKR Mistakes
Even experienced teams fall into the same traps when writing OKRs. These mistakes can derail your entire goal-setting process, leaving teams confused about priorities or chasing metrics that don’t actually matter. Sometimes the problem is structural: too many objectives, no clear ownership, or key results that can’t actually be measured.
Other times it’s a mindset issue, like treating OKRs as a task list rather than a framework for outcomes. The good news is that most of these issues are easy to spot once you know what to look for, and they’re even easier to fix before you commit to a quarter of misguided effort.
Here are the seven problems we see most often and what to do about them.
| Mistake | The Fix |
|---|---|
| Writing tasks instead of outcomes | Focus on the result you want, not the work to get there |
| Making objectives too vague | Add specifics: who, what, by when |
| Setting too many OKRs | Stick to 3-5 objectives max with 3-5 key results each |
| Getting the difficulty wrong | Aim for 70% achievable, uncomfortable but not impossible |
| Missing alignment | Connect every OKR to company or team priorities |
| Forgetting the baseline | You can’t measure progress without knowing where you started |
| Not reviewing regularly | Check in weekly or biweekly, not just at quarter end |
The OKR Quality Checklist
Use this checklist to evaluate every OKR before you commit:
For Objectives:
- Is it inspiring and memorable?
- Does it describe a clear destination?
- Is it qualitative (no numbers)?
- Can the team rally around it?
For Key Results:
- Does it include a specific number?
- Is there a baseline (where we are now)?
- Is there a target (where we want to be)?
- Is it an outcome, not an activity?
- Can we objectively measure it?
For the Overall OKR:
- Is it ambitious but achievable (70% confidence)?
- Does it align with higher-level priorities?
- If we hit all KRs, will we achieve the objective?
- Does it force us to say “no” to other things?
If you answer “no” to any question, revise before finalizing.
Red Flags: How to Spot a Bad OKR Instantly
Watch for these warning signs: OKRs that start with verbs like “launch” or “implement” (those are tasks, not outcomes), anything without numbers to measure, vague words like “improve” or “optimize” without specifics, activities you’re already doing anyway, goals you might hit by accident, or anything that doesn’t require actual behavior change. If you can’t explain why it matters to the business in one sentence, reconsider it.
Build Your OKR Quality Muscle
Recognizing the difference between good and bad OKRs is a skill. Like any skill, it improves with practice. Start by reviewing your current OKRs against the checklist in this guide. Identify the weakest ones and rewrite them using the patterns you learned here.
A few great OKRs will always outperform a long list of mediocre ones. Focus on quality, and your OKRs will finally deliver the results they promise.
Scaling is complex, but you don’t have to solve it alone. ScaleUpExec brings fractional COOs who’ve been through it before—implementing OKRs and guiding companies through their most demanding growth phases. When you’re ready to move forward with clarity, we’re ready to help.
