Foundations for the Tability Method
Why OKRs?
You need a simple system that keeps strategy, execution, and learning in sync — without turning leadership into status reporters or teams into ticket machines. Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) do that by giving everyone the same answers to four crucial questions:
Five benefits for your team
- Focus over frenzy: 3 objectives and 2–4 KRs each force trade‑offs and surface hidden work.
- Alignment without micro‑management: everyone sees the same R/Y/G board and leaders can coach instead of chasing.
- Early risk detection: weekly check‑ins turn "months‑late surprises" into "two‑week pivots."
- Data‑backed autonomy: owners have the numbers, so they propose bets instead of waiting for permission.
- Continuous learning loop: you wrap & learn every quarter, carrying hard‑won insight into the next cycle.
Adopt the Flowing OKRs mindset
You’re here because quarterly post-mortems and dusty slide decks don’t move the needle. Stop admiring the problem and start flowing your strategy forward:
- Get fast feedback loops — schedule weekly check-ins and never let 14 days pass without fresh data.
- Measure outcomes and outputs — pair every key result with the initiatives you believe will shift it. Refine things as needed.
- Seek alignment, not punishment — report risks early and colour KRs yellow at the first sign of drift. Discuss causes, not culprits.
- Start conversations, not reports — bring OKRs into team rituals (stand-ups, demos, retros).
Do it now
- Block 30 min in everyone's calendar each Monday titled "OKR Review Meeting"
- Copy today's top three initiatives under their related KRs.
- Post one risk you're willing to flag early—bonus points for turning it into a question the team can solve together.
Master the anatomy of an OKR
Approach your OKRs step-by-step:
1. State the objective as a headline
🚫Don't: "Improve onboarding flow."
✅ Do: "Customers rave about our onboarding."
As much as possible, your objective should reflect how you want your users/customers/employees to feel rather than being a flat statement.
Be inspiring.
2. Add 2-4 key results that prove success
Pick leading indicators that you can update weeky. Avoid slow moving metrics that only move once a month or once a quarter.
🚫Don't: tracking revenue if you're only closing 1 or 2 clients per quarter
✅ Do: tracking number of successful demos / week if you're only closing 1 or 2 clients per quarter.
3. List the first 2 initiatives for each KR
Treat the initiatives as bets. They may or may not produce the expected results, and you might drop some of them through the quarter.
Quick quality test
- Can two different teams see themselves in this objective? If not, widen the lens.
- Could a new hire understand the success metric in <30 s? If not, simplify.
- Does each KR have one owner? If not, assign now—shared ownership is no ownership.
Flowing OKRs rules that you can't skip
We've published a set of 15 rules as part of our Flowing OKRs methodology. Here are 7 below that you must tick before leaving the room.
Your first OKR test
- Draft one objective → 3 KRs for that objective→ and 2 bets per KR using the formula above.
- Ask: "Could we update this every Monday in under 5 minutes?"
- Iterate until the answer is yes.
Done? Jump to the next section.