Quick Q3 audit
Hi Everyone,
It’s July 3rd, so most Q3 OKRs have either been agreed or are about to be agreed.
This is a good moment to check whether they are clear enough to guide the work.
Quantive and OKRmentors found that 71% of organizations using OKRs say they have not mastered them. Nearly half rate their own OKR execution as below average.
Today, we’re looking at three questions you can ask before the quarter gets too busy.
Are your KRs measuring change?
An analysis of nearly 8,000 key results found that 52% were tasks or disguised KPIs rather than outcome metrics.
That is the problem with a KR like “publish 100 pages” for a company wiki launch. The team can complete the KR, but the business may not be any better for it.
Use this test for each KR: if the team hits it, what gets better?
If hitting the KR only proves the task was finished, rewrite it around customer and business impact, such as activation, retention, and revenue.
Are you checking progress often enough?
OKRs need a regular check-in.
Teams with weekly OKR check-ins complete about 43% more OKRs than teams that review them monthly or whenever someone remembers.
Teams without that weekly rhythm are about three times more likely to abandon OKRs altogether.
Start with one short weekly or bi-weekly check-in. Ask what changed, what is blocked, and what needs to happen before the next check-in.
Are teams playing it safe?
Jeff Gothelf suggests comparing each target with the team’s normal rate of improvement.
If the target mirrors last quarter’s trend and the team keeps scoring 100%, the OKR may be too safe.
This often happens when OKRs are tied too closely to pay or performance ratings. People learn to choose goals they can hit.
The point is to stop rewarding safe goals that leave the business in the same place.
Try this today
Use our OKR Audit AI Prompt to check your OKRs before the quarter gets too busy.
Paste your team’s objectives and key results into the prompt exactly as they are written. It will check whether each KR measures change, whether the target looks too safe, and whether progress can be checked before the quarter ends.
It will also rewrite the weak KRs and give you fixes to make first.
Go deeper
👉 OKRs Tool: Why OKRs Fail — Useful for the benchmark data on KR quality, ownership, and check-in cadence.
👉 Jeff Gothelf: Sandbagging — the OKR Anti-Pattern — How to spot and fix compensation-driven gaming.
👉 Workpath: HolidayCheck OKR Case Study — Good if you want to see what it looks like to cut an overloaded OKR system down to something people can use.
👉 Itamar Gilad: 5 Ways Your Company May Be Misusing OKRs — The output-vs-outcome trap and other common mistakes you should avoid when setting OKRs.
Coming up on Monday
In the next issue, we’ll look at how to stop the same decision from coming back again and again.
That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend!
P.S. What does your team actually do with OKRs between quarterly reviews?