Do you set goals for your company or teams? The topic of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has probably come up. While OKRs have been widely adopted across industries, from tech giants to small startups, teams might struggle to implement them effectively.
This guide will show you how to use Notion's collaborative features for seamless OKR management so your teams can turn company objectives into achievable results. And stick around if you want to get your hands on our all-in-one Notion OKR template, too.
Understanding OKRs for teams
What are OKRs?
Are you already familiar with OKRs? Consider this a quick refresh. If you’re new to this, here’s what you need to know: OKRs connect ambitious company goals with measurable outcomes. It’s just one of the available frameworks for organizations looking to structure their goals.
Some people jokingly suggest OKRs are a Google psyop to slow down competitors. You might even relate when sitting in another planning meeting, hearing new objectives that seem to come from nowhere while your team works in a completely different direction.
(Hint: Your teams might not be aligned — but more on that later.)
But Google can't take the credit — OKRs were created by Andrew Grove at Intel in the 1970s and brought to Google by Intel's John Doerr. The rest is history, so to speak. What set OKRs apart was their simplicity and bottom-up approach. Teams get a clear destination and choose their path to get there. So, farewell micromanagement. Sounds great, right?
OKRs break down into two parts:
Objectives: The inspirational (where we want to go)
Key Results: The measurable (how we’ll know we’re getting there)
Here’s how objectives and three key results might look across different companies:
AI startup: “Establish our AI model as the industry standard”
Achieve 95% accuracy rate in production environments
Secure partnerships with 3 Fortune 500 companies
Reduce model training time by 40%
Fintech company: “Become the go-to platform for small business lending”
Process loan applications in under 2 hours
Grow monthly active merchants by 150%
Maintain default rate under 2%
Product design agency: “Turn client products into category leaders”
Increase average client user engagement by 60%
Achieve 90% first-time usability test success rate
Reduce client development cycles by 30%
The thing to keep in mind when setting OKRs is mapping them to increased business value, not just the activity each team completed. Alex Macaulay, a Scrum Master, highlights this common pitfall in using OKRs. Tech companies often default to delivery-focused objectives like "Release new search feature" with key results that simply track completion. While these are easier and more comfortable to measure, they miss the bigger picture.
Instead, he suggests focusing on customer impact — like helping customers find products faster, measured by reduced support calls and faster purchase times. This shifts thinking from "Did we ship it?" to "Did it actually help our customers?"
These goals then filter down through your organization. A company-level goal splits into specific targets for each team — from product features to support response times. This way, everyone sees how their work drives company success.
Why are OKRs important for teams?
Let’s set the scene: The company is growing fast, but teams are disjointed. Marketing pushes features engineering hasn't planned, while sales makes promises that don't match your roadmap. Everyone's busy but moving in different directions, leaving leadership none the wiser.
This is where OKRs shine — they bring alignment, transparency, clear metrics, and accountability. When everyone shares a clear destination and understands their contribution, they move from completing tasks to creating real value.
Olga Zhilitskaya, Head of Product at ReSource, emphasizes: "I ensure that product objectives are directly tied to the company's broader business goals. Once the high-level business goals are set for the year, I define product objectives that support these goals. Each objective is then broken down into key results with success metrics that help guide our product roadmap."
Aside from helping the organization reach its goals, OKRs show why every individual's work is meaningful. Adapptio (2024) research shows that today's workers value purpose over just putting in hours. You'll easily spot this if you work with Millennials and Gen Z. For most workers from the two generations (89% and 86%, respectively), having a sense of purpose is key to job satisfaction.
They want to see their impact on company success and connect their work to outcomes they're passionate about. OKRs replace micromanagement and arbitrary goals with shared decision-making, letting teams see how their daily efforts drive real results.
The broader results of this framework speak for themselves. A 2021 McKinsey survey shows organizations using agile approaches like OKRs see roughly 30% gains in key areas, such as efficiency, customer satisfaction, and ops performance. And 83% of decision-makers report positive business impact, with transparency leading the benefits for 98% of companies surveyed.
The best part? It puts your organization on an agile path. Markets change constantly, so stagnation isn't an option for growth. OKRs let teams review and adjust their direction regularly to stay competitive (with the emphasis on “regularly”).
Are OKRs right for my business/team?
OKRs can transform how teams work, but they're not a one-size-fits-all solution. Before jumping in, let's be realistic about when they work best and when they might cause more harm than good.
Here are the key advantages of OKRs when implemented well:
Strategic focus: Instead of chasing everything, OKRs force you to prioritize 3-5 key objectives
Clear alignment: Everyone sees how their work connects to company goals
Better decisions: Teams can independently make choices that serve bigger objectives
True progress tracking: You measure what matters, not just what’s easy to measure
For creative agencies, OKRs serve another crucial purpose. As Agris Locs-Dārznieks, owner and business developer at NOTRE explains, "Creative agencies are good at working with and for clients, but there isn't always enough time and attention to our own agency. That's why I believe OKRs are simple yet helpful — they're there before you, reminding you that while client work is a priority, we also have our own goals to focus on."
Where do OKRs fall short? It’s possible your company values shipping features more than contributing to specific business value outcomes. In that case, your teams might not be ready to adopt OKRs yet.
The same applies if you lack any metrics to track progress (because you’ll need to commit to tracking your OKRs). Or if there are too many cooks in the kitchen, meaning if your organization has multiple layers of hierarchy where every manager wants to weigh in. When OKRs get filtered through too many layers, they become a jumbled mess of conflicting priorities, confusing teams about which objectives matter.
For some smaller teams or early-stage startups, full OKR implementation might be overkill. As Alex suggests, you might be better off starting with a clear shared vision and basic metrics in those situations.
Ask yourself: "What are we trying to achieve?" and "How will we know we're progressing?" Sometimes, these fundamental questions, consistently asked and answered, provide enough direction without the full OKR framework.
Notion as an OKR tool
Notion provides the ideal environment for tracking OKRs, combining flexibility with structure. Instead of adding another tool to your stack, you can manage goals where your team already works. (And if you’re still on the fence about migrating to Notion, we can help!)
Consider Lempire, a fast-growing software company in Paris. Working with our team at Optemization, they turned their Notion workspace into a central hub for OKR management, where everyone, from leadership to individual contributors, could track progress and see their impact.
What makes Notion the right choice for this framework? Four key features:
Connected workspace: OKRs live alongside your projects, docs, and tasks — no more context switching
Real-time collaboration: Teams update progress as work happens, keeping everyone in sync
Flexible views: Show the same data differently (from tables to charts) for leadership reviews, team updates, or individual spaces
Automation: Set up reminders and repeat templates and workflows to set expectations and avoid wasting time on manual processes
As a result of moving to Notion, Lempire has a more organized, efficient system where everyone stays focused on their goals while building world-class products. As their People & Operations Manager puts it, this transformation enhanced their workflows "without needing new tools."
Whether you're a small team tracking basic metrics or a larger organization managing complex OKR hierarchies, Notion's flexibility lets you start simple and scale up as needed.
Implementing OKRs in Notion for teams
Now that it’s clearer whether OKRs are right for your team, let's dive into the practical setup. We'll walk through each step of implementing OKRs in Notion, from defining objectives to running effective check-ins.
Step 1: Define team objectives
Important: Company objectives should be set before team-level OKR planning begins. If your company hasn't defined its objectives yet, start there first.
Our Notion OKR template provides everything you need (goal alignment features, departmental overviews, and progress tracking through key meetings — from quarterly planning and reviews to weekly check-ins and retrospectives). But whether you use our template or build your own, here's how to set up your team's first OKR planning session:
Pre-workshop setup:
Create a meeting prep page with the following:
Company objectives for reference
Brainstorming prompts (e.g., "What isn't working right now?", "Where do we want to go?")
Preparation checklist for participants
Workshop agenda (4-5 hours: intro, objectives review, brainstorming, drafting)
Share with the team at least two weeks before
During workshop:
Use a collaborative Notion page for real-time:
Objective drafting
Team discussion notes
Initial alignment checks with company goals
After workshop:
Set up your objectives database
Link to company goals
Prepare space for defining key results
Future repeat planning sessions — typically held quarterly— can be shorter. Notion’s database templates, buttons, and automation make it easy to set up a recurring template with the session agenda, structure, and tagged team members. We’ll touch on this in Step 4.
Step 2: Establish key results
With your objectives set, it's time to make them measurable. Remember: if you can't measure it, you can't improve it.
Strong key results follow a simple formula: "Increase/decrease [metric] from [X] to [Y] by [date]."
For example:
Sales: "Increase monthly recurring revenue from $100K to $150K by Q4"
Product: "Reduce average page load time from 3s to 1s by September"
Support: "Improve customer satisfaction score from 7.5 to 8.5 by the end of the year"
Olga offers valuable insight on choosing the right metrics: "The metrics we use depend on factors like the stage in the product lifecycle and business model. Being a startup at the Introduction stage, we focus on product-market fit metrics: customer acquisition rates, feature adoption, and customer satisfaction. For mature products, retention and revenue metrics take precedence."
Ideally, start tracking these metrics before finalizing your key results to ensure they're actually measurable. As Olga notes, "OKRs should be clear and measurable, focusing on impact rather than vanity metrics."
To implement this In Notion, create a key results database using the Table view:
Use the Name property for the key result (e.g., “Grow website traffic by 30% through SEO and content optimization”)
Add the Person property to tag each key result owner
Add the Relations property to link each key result to the relevant objective
Use Number properties to track baseline (starting or historical number), current, and target metric
Add Formula property and title it Progress:
You can use this formula to calculate the progress:
(prop("Current") - prop("Baseline")) / (prop("Target") - prop("Baseline"))
If your metric properties are named differently, add them to the formula accordingly
Select to show the formula as Bar
Change Numer format to Percent
This setup will hit the ground running, but you can optimize it further. Add buttons for quick actions (such as following a specific key result not owned by the user) and use filters to track key results in progress and those assigned to the user. You can even add a Slack integration to notify relevant channels of status changes.
Step 3: Right-size your OKR system
Success with OKRs depends heavily on team engagement. As Maria Ledentsova, Digital Marketing Manager at Magic Design learned, "Without adoption, namely the team using them, even fancy dashboards would be useless."
If your team is not ready for a more complex database, you can still set up a collaborative OKR system your team will actually use. Start with a clear, straightforward Notion table (not a database) containing the following:
Objectives and key results
Current and goal targets
Responsible person
Status (simple color indicator)
Comments section
"The benefit of a simple table is that it's super clear to everyone how to interpret it and use it — without needing an extra meeting about how to use the setup," Maria explains. She also recommends:
Assigning only one owner to each key result to avoid confusion
Adding a backlog database for new ideas that arise during the quarter
For growing teams, you can gradually add features like:
Department-specific views
Progress visualization using Notion Charts
Task relationships using relations property linked to your OKR database
Remember: Start with the basics and scale up as your team gets comfortable. As Maria puts it, "I decided to keep the fun templates to the marketing team where I know they will be used actively, while keeping it super simple on company-level."
Step 4: Run effective OKR meetings in Notion
OKrs need to be agile. What made sense last quarter might not apply today. Without regular check-ins and adjustments, you risk working months towards outdated objectives.
That’s why your Notion workspace should support four key meetings:
OKR planning: What OKRs have we set for the next quarter? Do they align with company objectives?
Weekly (or bi-weekly) check-ins: What’s the current OKR progress? Are there any obstacles or challenges, and how can we take action for the upcoming week?
Reviews: Did we hit our objectives? Why or why not?
Retrospectives: Is the framework working for our team? How can we improve its implementation?
For weekly check-ins, create a meeting template in Notion — either as a database entry or a page template to automate the process and maintain consistency. Include sections for progress updates, blockers, and action items. You can even set up automated reminders using Notion's @ mentions.
At Magic Design, Maria's team has mastered this format:
Start with a quick ice-breaker
Review progress, focusing on slow-moving targets
Flag items that haven't moved in 2-3 weeks
End with an "Ideas" section for new initiatives
Maria adds, "If a KR hasn't moved in 2-3 weeks, we talk in-depth about what needs to change and what kind of support the person needs to progress." You can use Notion AI to summarize these discussions and extract action items, or simply document them manually in your meeting page and @mention team members for needed support.
Troubleshoot common OKR challenges in Notion
Even with the best setup, teams can encounter some bumps along the way. Here are some challenges you might come across and how to address them:
Too many OKRs
Problem: Teams try to track everything, leading to overwhelm.
Solution: Use Notion's filter feature to focus on 3-5 priority objectives. Archive or backlog the rest.
Misaligned updates
Problem: Key results aren't being updated regularly.
Solution: Set up automated @mention reminders and add a "Last Updated" date property to your database.
Lost in the details
Problem: Team members struggle to find relevant information.
Solution: Create personalized dashboard views for different roles using Notion's filter and sort features.
Metrics without data
Problem: Teams set key results they can't actually measure
Solution: Add a Select property to your key results database to track the measurement method. For each key result, specify precisely where you'll get the data. For example:
Key result: "Increase website conversion rate from 2% to 3%"
Measurement method: Google Analytics
Key result: "Grow monthly recurring revenue to $100K"
Measurement method: Financial software
“Focus, align, track, and stretch”
Stop hunting through endless Slack threads, trying to figure out what other teams are working on. Whether you’re ready for a simple OKR table or a comprehensive system linking every department’s dashboard, Notion scales to your needs.
But remember, the tool is just a tool — success comes from your team's commitment to focus and alignment. As John Doerr aptly puts it, "If we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing."
Want to transform how your team tracks OKRs? Get started quickly with our comprehensive OKR template.
Need help implementing OKRs and aligning your teams? Book a call with us, and let’s talk about making OKRs work for you.
FAQs
What are OKRs in business?
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are a goal-setting framework that connects an organization's long-term vision with measurable outcomes. They help teams focus on what matters most and track progress effectively using clear metrics. OKRs are just one of the frameworks for setting business goals.
How to write OKRs?
Start with an inspirational objective (where you want to go), then add 3-5 measurable key results (how you'll know you're getting there). For example:
Objective: "Create industry-leading website experiences for our clients"
Key results:
"Improve average client website load time from 3s to 1s"
"Achieve 95% first-time usability test success rate"
"Increase post-launch client satisfaction scores from 8.5 to 9.5"
Should OKRs be annual or quarterly?
Some companies set high-level OKRs annually, followed by quarterly (or even monthly) broken-down OKRs. There isn’t a specific cadence for setting OKRs. Regularly review and adjust your OKRs based on market changes and other factors.
Are OKRs the same as KPIs?
No, OKRs and KPIs aren’t the same. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are ongoing metrics (numbers) like revenue or customer satisfaction. They show how well the business is doing. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are ambitious, strategic goals focused on meaningful change and innovation.
Can OKRs and KPIs work together?
Yes, you can use KPIs to inform your OKRs. If your KPIs show low customer satisfaction, you might set an OKR focused on improving it.
Should OKRs be used for performance reviews?
No. OKRs work best when teams can set ambitious goals without fear of failure. Using OKRs for performance reviews indicates the organization still holds onto top-down management and hasn’t fully transitioned to using OKRs effectively.
Are OKRs useful?
Yes, OKRs are useful if and when implemented correctly. According to McKinsey, organizations using frameworks like OKRs see 30% gains in efficiency and customer satisfaction. However, you must commit to regular tracking and updates for OKRs to be effective.
