OKRs vs KPIs: What’s the Difference?

When comparing OKRs and KPIs, many forget a critical aspect — the relationships between them.

When comparing OKRs and KPIs, many forget a critical aspect — the relationships between them.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

In short, the Key Results in the OKR always refer to quantitative metrics, some of which might be KPIs. Comparing KPIs to OKRs in the form of a table without explaining their relationship doesn’t make much sense.

Let’s dive into more details.

What are OKRs?

OKR stands for “Objectives and Key Results.” The two components:

• Objective (Why, What, When): A qualitative, inspirational, time-bound goal for a team to focus on. Typically set quarterly. It should be SMART.
• Key Results (How much): Quantitative metrics (typically 3) and their expected values to monitor the progress toward the objective.

An OKR Example:

Objective: Delight new users with the onboarding flow

Key results:

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) >= 75%.
• 66%+ onboardings completed within two days.
• An average Time to Value (TTV) <= 20 minutes.

OKRs are fundamentally about:

• Setting a single, inspiring goal.
• Empowering a team to determine the optimal approach to achieve it.
• Continuously monitoring the progress, learning from failures, and improving.

For more information, see (freemium): Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) 101

KPIs vs. Metrics: What’s the difference?

What’s the difference between KPIs and Metrics?

a) What are metrics?

Metrics are all the things you can measure. In particular:

• Qualitative metrics are unstructured and anecdotal.
• Quantitative metrics are the numbers.