Goals — objectives, key results, and who owns them

Goals is the OKR side of the workspace: what you are trying to achieve this quarter, how you will know whether you did, and who is on the hook.

The tree

The first tab shows the whole thing as a tree: goals, the objectives under them, and the key results under those. Collapsed, it is the overview a Monday meeting needs. Expand a goal to see the detail.

• Goal — the direction. Grow the business.
• Objective — what that means this quarter. Win three new mid-size customers.
• Key result — the number that decides it. Three signed contracts by 31 March.
• Initiative — the work you believe will move it.

A key result without a number is a wish. The form asks for one for that reason.

The org chart

The second tab is the organisational chart: teams, their members, and who reports where. Goals hang on it, which is what makes "who owns this?" answerable without asking around.

For a small company this is five minutes of setup and worth it the first time someone leaves.

Working with it

• "Add a key result to 'Win three new customers': signed contracts, target 3, by the end of March"
• "Which key results are behind with less than a month to go?"
• "Move the Q2 objective to the sales team"

Reviewing them is a good use of a background job: "/parallel go through every key result, compare it with the projects and time entries of the last month, and tell me which ones nobody has touched" — see work that runs in the background.