Set ambitious goals and measurable outcomes that cascade through your organisation, creating alignment and accountability for strategic priorities.
.webp)
Objectives and Key Results usually shortened to OKRs form a two-layer goal-setting method popularised by John Doerr in Measure What Matters. First you write an Objective: a short, inspiring statement of what you want to achieve. Then you list the Key Results that will prove you have achieved it. When every key result is met, the objective is considered done.
An objective answers “Where do we want to be?” It must be qualitative and motivational something a team can rally round. “Dominate the UK mid-market accounting niche” or “Become the most trusted data-privacy advisor for SaaS founders” work far better than “Increase revenue” because they paint a picture of success.
Key results translate that picture into numbers. They are specific, time-boxed, and binary: you either hit them or you do not. To support “Dominate the UK mid-market accounting niche”, a bookkeeping agency might track:
If any key result fails, the objective remains unfinished even if every other metric looks healthy.
OKRs matter because they translate vague strategic aspirations into concrete, measurable targets that distributed teams can execute against independently. Without OKRs or equivalent frameworks, organisations suffer from misalignment: marketing optimises campaigns that don't support sales priorities, product builds features nobody wanted, and executives wonder why effort doesn't translate to results. OKRs create vertical alignment (individual work connects clearly to company goals) and horizontal alignment (teams see each other's priorities and coordinate accordingly). The measurable key results eliminate the ambiguity that lets underperformance hide: you can't claim victory on "improve customer satisfaction" when your NPS increased 0.3 points. The quarterly cadence balances agility with stability long enough to make meaningful progress, short enough to adapt to market feedback. For scaling organisations especially, OKRs solve the coordination problem: as headcount grows beyond 30-50 people, informal alignment breaks down and you need systematic frameworks to keep everyone rowing in the same direction. The stretch-goal philosophy encourages ambitious thinking rather than sandbagging (setting easy targets to ensure bonuses), though this requires cultural acceptance that 70% achievement represents success. Research on OKR implementations shows mixed results success depends heavily on leadership commitment, regular review cadence, and willingness to adjust mid-quarter rather than rigidly pursuing outdated goals. Organisations that implement OKRs effectively report improved focus, faster decision-making, and better cross-functional collaboration, whilst poorly implemented OKRs become bureaucratic exercises that teams ignore in favour of "real work."
Pick a horizon of one quarter for operational teams or one year for strategic leadership. The objective must be qualitative and memorable no metrics yet.
B2B examples
Test the wording with the team; if people struggle to recall it, shorten or sharpen.
Key results should:
Agency illustration
Small B2B firms (under 30 staff) often thrive with a single company-level OKR. Larger organisations cascade: leadership sets one objective, and each department writes supporting OKRs. Example cascade for the law firm:
Company objective – “Fastest GDPR partner.”
Marketing key result – “Rank #1 in Google for ‘GDPR compliance service’ by December.”
Delivery key result – “Cut average first-draft turnaround from 12 days to 6.”
Sales key result – “Close 90 % of tenders within 45 days.”
Link each departmental key result to the overarching objective to avoid silo drift.
Create a simple 0–1 scoring: where 0 = no progress and 1 = fully hit. If halfway through the quarter the bookkeeping agency’s “40 new clients” metric sits at 0.45 (18 wins), they know they must average seven per fortnight rather than five to catch up. Use colour codes on dashboards green (0.7-1), amber (0.4-0.7), red (below 0.4) to convey status at a glance.
At quarter-end run a retrospective:
If the law firm achieves 88 % of tenders won but retention lags, next quarter’s OKR may pivot to client-experience improvements rather than pure speed. Carry forward unfinished objectives only if they remain the highest-impact levers; otherwise archive and reset focus.
OKRs turn lofty ambition into measurable execution. By framing a single, inspiring objective and tying it to a handful of binary key results, agencies, consultancies, law firms, and bookkeeping firms gain laser focus, faster decisions, and transparent accountability exactly the working-smarter discipline that unlocks sustainable growth.
The cockpit that sits above your four growth engines. Individual teams can excel at their own metrics, but without orchestration they're musicians playing different songs. This is where everything comes together and where improvements in one engine amplify gains in another.
The wrong tools create friction. The right ones multiply your output without adding complexity. These are the tools I recommend for growth teams that move fast.
Small improvements multiply. A 10% gain across twelve metrics doesn't add up to 120% - it compounds to 3x growth. This is the mathematical engine behind systematic growth.
%2520(1).webp)
Four decisions that shape everything else. When growth feels harder than it should, the problem is usually here. Get these right and execution becomes much easier.
Without rhythm, effort becomes scattered and progress invisible. A consistent operating cadence keeps your team aligned and your growth system continuously improving.
John Doerr
Rating
Rating
Rating
Rating
Rating
A clear guide to OKRs for growth teams. Write good objectives, choose key results and run cadences that stick.
Verne Harnish
Rating
Rating
Rating
Rating
Rating
Practical tools for scaling a company. Use rhythms, scorecards and priorities to keep a growing team aligned.
Quarterly targets hit or missed are just the starting point. Learn how to assess whether your assumptions about the business were right, extract learnings that compound, and set up the next quarter with a model grounded in reality. Close one quarter and open the next in a single session.
Clear mental clutter by transferring all thoughts, tasks, and ideas onto paper or screen, creating space for focused work.
Win customers through direct sales conversations where reps guide prospects from discovery to close with personalised solutions and relationship building.
Determine whether experiment results reflect real differences or random chance to avoid making expensive decisions based on noise instead of signal.
Choose one metric that best predicts long-term success to align your entire team on what matters and avoid conflicting priorities that dilute focus.
Attract prospects through valuable content that solves real problems, building trust and generating qualified leads who approach you.
Document your repeatable processes in clear, step-by-step instructions that ensure consistency, enable delegation, and capture institutional knowledge.
Track campaign performance precisely by appending parameters to URLs that identify traffic sources, mediums, and campaigns in your analytics.
Measure which marketing activities drive desired outcomes to allocate budget toward channels that actually generate revenue instead of vanity metrics.
Measure the percentage of customers who stop paying to identify retention problems and calculate the true cost of growth in subscription businesses.
Credit the channel that introduced prospects to your brand to measure awareness efforts and understand which top-of-funnel activities start customer journeys.
Turn satisfied customers into active promoters who systematically bring qualified prospects into your pipeline at near-zero acquisition cost.
Design experiments that answer specific questions with minimum time and resources to maximise learning velocity without over-investing in unproven ideas.
Block extended time for cognitively demanding tasks requiring sustained focus, maximising valuable output whilst minimising shallow distractions.
Articulate the specific outcome customers get from your solution to communicate why they should choose you over doing nothing or using alternatives.
Plan how you'll reach customers and generate revenue by choosing channels, pricing, and sales models that match your product and market reality.
Organise the tools that capture leads, nurture prospects, and measure performance to automate repetitive work and connect customer data across systems.
Deploy fast, low-cost experiments to discover scalable acquisition and retention tactics, learning through iteration rather than big bets.
Diagnose and break through stagnation by identifying which business mechanisms have reached capacity and require new approaches.
Maintain an unchanged version in experiments to isolate the impact of your changes and prove causation rather than correlation with external factors.
Measure the month-over-month growth in qualified leads to predict future revenue and catch pipeline problems before they impact revenue three months later.