OKR — objectives and key results — is a goal-setting system pairing a qualitative, ambitious objective with three to five quantitative key results that define what achieving it measurably means. Invented at Intel by Andy Grove and exported to Google by John Doerr in 1999, the method runs on short cycles (usually quarterly), radical transparency (everyone’s OKRs are visible), and deliberate stretch — scoring around 0.7 on an ambitious key result is treated as success, which only works if OKR scores are decoupled from bonuses.
The system’s real function is alignment and focus: a small number of company OKRs cascade into team OKRs, forcing prioritisation and making trade-offs explicit. The standard failure modes are equally well known — OKRs as a renamed task list, sandbagged targets once compensation creeps in, too many objectives, and metric worship that hits the number while missing the point (Goodhart’s law). Healthy implementations keep OKRs few, stretchy and divorced from pay.
The employment-law seam
OKRs intersect law where aspiration meets evaluation. If stretch targets quietly become performance-management evidence — grounds for termination, PIP triggers, bonus denial — their deliberate unattainability becomes a fairness problem: in Türkiye, performance-based termination requires objective, achievable and communicated criteria under Court of Cassation case law, and a system designed for 70% attainment fits that badly unless documented thoughtfully. The clean design separates instruments: OKRs for direction-setting, distinct realistic KPIs for contractual bonuses and performance processes, and clear written communication of which is which.
Implementation note from the failure literature: cap the system at three to five objectives per level and score in public. Companies that let OKRs balloon past that count get planning theatre — and those that tie scores to compensation get sandbagged targets within two cycles.
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