You've seen it before: teams work hard all quarter, ship features, close tickets, attend meetings. But when leadership asks "Are we on track to hit our goals?" no one has a clear answer. Different teams pursue conflicting priorities, and individuals can't see how their work connects to the company's mission.

OKRs create alignment and purpose by connecting three things that often drift apart: what you want to achieve (Objectives), how you'll know you succeeded (Key Results), and what work you're doing to get there (Initiatives). This framework establishes a clear line of sight from leadership strategy to daily work. When sales, marketing, and product teams can see how their Objectives ladder up to company goals, collaboration improves and duplicate efforts disappear. More importantly, people understand the "why" behind their work, making it meaningful rather than just checking boxes.

What makes OKRs different from other goal-setting approaches? OKRs separate the outcome (Objective) from the measurement (Key Results) from the work (Initiatives). This separation forces clarity: you can't claim success just because you completed projects. You have to show measurable results. This keeps teams focused on impact, not just activity.

Rhythms makes this easier. Instead of manually configuring every element, Rhythms' AI analyzes your strategy documents and organizational context to suggest well-structured OKRs. You stay in control, refining and approving what works. The platform enables best practices by default while remaining flexible to meet your organization's specific needs.

OKRs have three building blocks. Think of them as answers to three questions: What do we want to achieve? How will we know we succeeded? What work will we do to get there?

How they connect: Objectives define what you want to achieve. Key Results measure whether you're succeeding. Initiatives describe the work you'll do to drive those results.

Here's a complete OKR to show how the pieces work together:

Objective: "Turbo charge sales growth in North America"

Key Results (how you'll measure success):

Initiatives (work you'll do):

Why this structure matters: Imagine you complete all three Initiatives by mid-quarter, but revenue is only at $1.1M and you've added just 50 customers. Your Initiatives are done, but your Key Results show you're only 20% toward your Objective. This tells you to adjust your approach, not just check boxes. The separation between work and results keeps you honest about whether you're achieving impact.

Rhythms allows OKRs to be arranged in parent-child relationships to reflect how work cascades through your organization.

Example:

Reminder: Even when an Objective has child Objectives beneath it, the parent should still have its own Key Results that directly measure success. Don't rely solely on child Objective completion. This ensures you're tracking actual outcomes, not just whether teams finished assigned work.

Effective Objectives share four characteristics:

Significant Achievement should materially move your strategic priorities forward.

Concrete Achievable within a quarter or year with clear success criteria.

Action-Oriented Requires action beyond business as usual.

Inspirational Motivates creative thinking about what's possible.

When creating Objectives, Rhythms analyzes your organizational context and suggests Objectives that are significant, concrete, action-oriented, and inspirational.

In most cases, an Objective will have 3-5 Key Results. They should be:

Specific Refer to precisely what is being measured.

Measurable Quantifiable so you can track progress.

Verifiable Unambiguous way to confirm the measure.

Ambitious Yet Achievable Challenging but achievable. For aspirational Key Results, 70% accomplishment is typically considered successful.

Reach a Target: Move from starting point to desired target.

Stay Above a Limit: Maintain above minimum threshold (often quality metrics).

Stay Below a Limit: Keep below maximum limit (often risk metrics).

Stay Within a Range: Remain within tolerance.

All structures allow tracking progress over time. Avoid yes-or-no goals like "Launch a feature by Q3" because they don't show whether you're on track until it's too late.

For detailed guidance on setting up each metric type, see Understanding Metric Types in Rhythms.
​
​How Rhythms helps: Rhythms recommends Key Results that are properly measurable and applies the Necessary and Sufficient test to ensure they truly capture success.

Initiatives are the work you'll do to achieve your objectives. They're different from day-to-day activities that keep the lights on. Think of initiatives as the projects that will move the needle on your core objectives.

Effective initiatives share four characteristics:

Resourced Set realistic and ambitious deadlines that reflect your team's ability to reach objectives. Ensure you have the right resources, stakeholder investment, time, and budget allocated.

Focused Pick a handful of initiatives per quarter and execute well, rather than spreading too thin. Question whether you're taking on too much.

Trackable Ensure you can monitor whether you're on track toward your objective. Initiatives should be easy to contextualize alongside your Key Results.

Clear Make it a core priority that anyone in the organization can quickly understand. It should be obvious why this Initiative matters to the business.

When an Initiative becomes too large: If it requires multiple phases, needs its own outcomes to measure, or coordinates across teams, consider making it an Objective instead. "Improve our support system" should be an Objective like "Upgrade support operations" with its own Key Results and supporting Initiatives.

Now that you understand what makes each component effective, you might be wondering how to prioritize when you have multiple options. If you're facing more than 5 potential Objectives, use these filters:

Start with 3 Objectives. You can always add a 4th or 5th if early progress shows capacity.

Now that you've seen examples of both, here's how to keep them distinct:

Objectives are outcomes. They describe the result you want to achieve. They answer "what do we want to accomplish?"

Initiatives are activities. They describe the work you'll do. They answer "how will we get there?"

Why this matters: If you frame an activity as an Objective, you focus on completing the work rather than achieving the outcome. You might hire those 10 sales reps but still not achieve sales growth if they're ineffective or market conditions change.

Understanding best practices is essential, but knowing how progress actually works prevents common misconceptions about what counts toward success.

Critical principle: An Objective's progress should come only from its Key Results, not from Initiatives or child Objectives.

Let's return to our sales growth OKR and see what happens over a full quarter:

Objective: "Turbo charge sales growth in North America"

Key Results:

Initiatives:

Mid-quarter checkpoint: You've completed all three Initiatives (hired the reps, launched the campaign, attended conferences). But revenue is only at $1.1M and you've only added 50 new customers.

What should your Objective progress show?

Why this keeps you honest: The Initiatives were completed, but they didn't drive the intended results. Maybe you hired the wrong reps, or the campaign targeted the wrong audience, or conferences didn't convert to sales. By measuring only Key Results, you know you need to adjust your approach mid-quarter, not just check boxes and wait until the end.

What you do next: With this insight, you can pivot. Maybe you need different sales training, or a different marketing message, or a different conference strategy. You still have half the quarter to course-correct because your Key Results told you early that your Initiatives weren't working.

Even if you break down "Turbo charge sales growth" into regional child Objectives (East Region, West Region, Central Region), and all three regional teams complete their work, the parent Objective should still measure actual revenue and customer growth through its own Key Results, not whether the regional teams finished.

Your Key Results must pass the Necessary and Sufficient test:

Necessary: Must you achieve each Key Result for the Objective to be accomplished? If not, the Key Result may not be relevant enough.

Sufficient: If you only achieved these Key Results, would the Objective be accomplished? If not, you're missing important measures.

Example:

The first two drive growth. The third is a guardrail ensuring you don't sacrifice quality for speed. All three are necessary (if satisfaction drops below 85%, the growth isn't sustainable). Together they're sufficient (if you hit all three, you've turbocharged growth).

Configuration note: You can control whether individual Key Results contribute to progress calculations. Guardrail Key Results (like satisfaction thresholds) often don't contribute to progress percentages, but they're still necessary to pass for the Objective to be considered successful.

For tracking progress through check-ins, see Effective Check-Ins to Track OKR Progress in Rhythms.

How Rhythms helps: By default, Rhythms automatically calculates progress using only Key Results, preventing the common mistake of counting completed Initiatives as progress.

Alignment connects work across your organization. Rhythms enables these patterns by default:

Key patterns:

Best practice: Avoid linking one Objective to multiple parent Objectives. This creates confusion about accountability.

Projects are Initiatives (activities), not Objectives (outcomes). "Migrate to new database" is an Initiative. "Achieve 99.9% system reliability" is the Objective it supports.

"Launch mobile app" isn't a Key Result because it's yes-or-no and measures completion, not outcome. "Achieve 50,000 mobile app downloads" measures the outcome.

"Increase revenue to $2M" is unclear without knowing where you're starting. "Increase revenue from $1.5M to $2M" shows the improvement you're targeting.

This splits accountability. If the Objective fails, which parent goal is impacted? Keep alignment simple with single parents.

When an Objective has child Objectives beneath it, the parent still needs its own Key Results to measure actual outcomes, not just whether teams completed their work.

If you could achieve all your Key Results but still not accomplish the Objective, you're missing important measures. If a Key Result isn't truly necessary for success, it doesn't belong.

An Objective is the outcome you're trying to accomplish ("Turbo charge sales growth"). Key Results are the specific measures that prove you achieved it ("Increase revenue from $1M to $1.5M").

Think of it this way: Objectives answer "what do we want?" Key Results answer "how will we know we got it?" This separation prevents vague goals like "improve things" and forces you to define what success actually looks like.

Objectives are outcomes (what you want to achieve). Initiatives are activities (how you'll get there). If you achieve the Initiative but don't see the intended outcome, the Initiative didn't drive results.

When breaking down a large organizational goal across multiple teams where each needs their own distinct focus with measurable outcomes. Each child should have its own Key Results. The parent should also have its own Key Results, not just rely on child completion.

No. Only Key Results should count toward progress. This keeps focus on outcomes, not just completing work or sub-goals. You might finish all your Initiatives and all teams might complete their child Objectives, but if you haven't hit your Key Results, you haven't achieved the outcome.

Apply the Necessary and Sufficient test: Must you achieve each Key Result for the Objective to be accomplished? If you only achieved these Key Results, would the Objective be accomplished? If the answer to either is no, revise.

Ready to create OKRs? See Creating OKRs and Initiatives in Rhythms to learn how to build OKRs using Rhythms' conversational AI, form-based creation, or document generation.

Need to make changes? See Managing and Updating OKRs in Rhythms for guidance on editing owners, teams, time periods, and alignment.

Want detailed metric guidance? See Understanding Metric Types in Rhythms.