Leadership OKRs · 10 min read
Leadership OKRs: set direction without writing every team's goals
I've set OKRs at the top of the org for about a decade, and I've made most of the mistakes you can make from that chair. The biggest one is thinking your job is to write everyone's goals. It isn't. Your job is to point at the destination, name the constraints, and let your teams figure out the route. Below are the exec OKRs I'd actually put on a board, with real baselines and targets, plus the check-in I run and a template you can take as-is.
By Max Bondarenko · Last updated June 2026
Your job is the score, not the playbook
The trap I see every exec team fall into is writing the whole company's OKRs from the top floor. You set four company objectives, then you keep going. You write the marketing KRs, the product KRs, the sales KRs, all from a room those teams weren't in. By the time it cascades down, every team is executing your guess instead of their plan. I've done it. It produces a beautiful deck and a demoralized org.
So here's the rule I hold leadership OKRs to. You own the destination and the constraints, not the route. Set 3 or 4 objectives that say where the company is going and what staying alive looks like. Then shut up and let each function write how they get there. If a leadership KR could just as easily be a department's KR, you've reached too far down. Every one of your KRs has a baseline and a target, because a direction without a number is just a vibe you'll relitigate in week six.
Company direction and strategy
This is where you place the bet the rest of the company organizes around. One bet. Not five.
Prove the new mid-market motion is a real second engine, not a side project we keep apologizing for
KR1Grow ARR from the new segment from $1.8M to $4.5M by quarter end
KR2Land reference-able mid-market logos, from 2 today to 9
KR3Cut average sales cycle for the segment from 71 days to 45 days
The cardinal sin here is the strategic bet with no measurable result. 'Explore mid-market' is not an objective, it's a hope. Pin it to a logo count and a dollar figure so you can actually call it at the end of the quarter: bet paid off, or kill it. I'd rather be wrong fast than vaguely directional for a year.
Financial health
The CEO and CFO own these jointly. They're the numbers that decide whether you get to have a next quarter.
Buy ourselves enough runway and retention strength that we're raising from a position of choice, not panic
KR1Extend runway from 14 months to 20 months without a headcount cut
KR2Lift net revenue retention from 108% to 120%
KR3Bring gross margin from 71% to 78% by renegotiating the two biggest infrastructure contracts
NRR is the one I'd protect with my life. 108 to 120 is the difference between a company that grows by outrunning churn and one that compounds. Teams get this wrong by treating runway as a cost-cutting KR. It's really a 'do we control our own fundraising timeline' KR, and that's a leadership job nobody below you can own.
Org and people
If you don't put a people objective on the leadership board, you're telling the org it doesn't count. They'll notice.
Make this a place senior people fight to stay at, especially through a hard scaling stretch
KR1Raise eNPS from 20 to 40
KR2Cut regretted attrition among senior ICs and managers from 14% to 6% annualized
KR3Fill leadership roles internally, from 35% to 80%, by building real succession benches
eNPS at 20 means people are tolerating you. 40 means they'd refer a friend. The internal-fill KR is the one most exec teams skip, and it's the tell for whether you're actually developing people or just hiring around your own gaps. A team I ran went from backfilling every director externally to promoting most of them, and the culture shift was bigger than any perk we ever bought.
Customer
Put the customer on the leadership board or watch every team optimize their own metric while the actual experience rots between the seams.
Become the vendor our customers would be genuinely upset to lose
KR1Move relationship NPS from 31 to 50
KR2Grow the share of customers using 3 or more core modules from 41% to 65%
KR3Reduce time-to-first-value for new accounts from 38 days to 18 days
Time-to-first-value is the most honest customer number you'll find, and it sits at the leadership level because no single team owns the whole onboarding arc. Sales sells it, product builds it, success delivers it. If you don't own the seam, nobody does, and 38 days quietly becomes 50.
The logic: why these work
Run every KR through one test. Does it have a baseline, a target, and does hitting it actually change the business? 108% to 120% NRR passes. 'Improve retention' fails, because in week ten you and your VP will argue about what 'improved' means and you'll both be right. The baseline is the part people skip and it's the most important part. Without 'from 14 months' the 'to 20 months' is meaningless, because nobody knows if that's a stretch or a layup. And the outcome test kills the busywork KRs. 'Launch the new pricing page' is an output. 'Lift gross margin from 71% to 78%' is the outcome that page was supposed to produce.
On ambition: set targets where landing around 70% is a genuinely good quarter. If you're hitting 100% you sandbagged, and the board can smell it. Here's my scar. One quarter I let our exec team carry six objectives because everything felt urgent and I didn't want to cut anyone's priority. We landed about 55% on each one and finished nothing cleanly. Six half-built things. The next quarter we ran three, hit roughly 75% on all of them, and shipped two of them fully. Three objectives you can actually feel. More than four and you're not leading, you're list-making.
The leadership check-in: 30 minutes, no theater
The exec OKR review fails one of two ways. It becomes a status meeting where everyone reports green, or it becomes a four-hour strategy offsite every single week. Keep it to 30 minutes. The point isn't to admire the numbers, it's to surface the one bet that's drifting while there's still time to move money or people. I want confidence levels, not percentages, and I want the bad news first.
Five questions I ask in the leadership check-in
- 01Which single objective am I least confident we'll land, and what's the real reason?
- 02Did NRR or runway move in the wrong direction this week, and do we know why yet?
- 03What's the strategic bet's leading indicator doing, before the lagging ARR number catches up?
- 04Where are two of our teams optimizing against each other without realizing it?
- 05If I had to cut one of our objectives today to save the other three, which goes?
And revise targets early or not at all. If by week three the runway math has shifted because a deal slipped, reset the target then, in the open, and write down why. Quietly moving the goalpost in week eleven so you can report green is how exec teams lose the org's trust in the whole system. Change it loud and early, or hold the line and miss honestly.
A leadership OKR template you can steal
Fill in your own baselines first. That's the work. The targets should make you slightly uncomfortable. If they don't, raise them.
| Objective | Prove [strategic bet] is a real second engine this quarter (qualitative, no number) |
|---|---|
| KR1 | Grow [segment] ARR from $[1.8M] to $[4.5M] |
| KR2 | Lift net revenue retention from [108%] to [120%] |
| KR3 | Extend runway from [14] to [20] months with no headcount cut |
| Cadence | 30-min weekly check-in; confidence levels not percentages; bad news first |
| Owner | CEO owns the objective; each KR has one named exec (CEO/CFO/CRO), never a committee |
Questions people actually ask
What's the difference between leadership OKRs and company OKRs?
Honestly, at most companies they're the same set, and that's fine. The leadership board is the company's top 3 or 4 objectives, owned by the exec team. The mistake is writing the departmental OKRs too. Your board sets direction and constraints; each function writes their own route underneath it.
How many OKRs should an executive team have?
Three objectives, four at the absolute most, with three KRs each. I ran six one quarter and we landed about 55% on every one of them, finishing nothing. Three real priorities beat six theoretical ones every time, because focus is the only thing leadership can actually give the rest of the org.
Should the CEO own all the leadership OKRs?
The CEO owns the objectives. Each individual KR gets one named exec, never a committee. Financial KRs go to the CEO and CFO jointly; the strategic bet usually sits with the CEO directly. If a KR has three owners it has zero owners, and you'll find that out in week nine.
What metrics belong on a CEO's OKRs?
The ones that decide whether you survive and where you're headed: net revenue retention, runway, ARR from your one strategic bet, eNPS, and a real customer outcome like time-to-first-value. Every one needs a baseline and a target. NRR at 108 to 120 tells you more about the business than any deck I've ever seen.
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