“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” Winston Churchill was not talking about OKRs, but he might as well have been.
In some organisations we work with, the problem is not a lack of strategy or data. It is that the numbers quietly take over. Targets become the point, not the progress. Dashboards glow green while customers churn, teams burn out and the strategy gathers dust.
That is Goodhart’s Law in action:
When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.
In an OKR world, that is the fastest way to turn a powerful framework into yet another performance management system that people learn to game. This blog post is about how to avoid that trap and use OKRs to do exactly what Churchill suggests: look honestly at the results and adjust your strategy, instead of falling in love with the plan.
Goodhart’s Law Meets OKRs
OKRs are designed to translate your strategy into a small set of measurable outcomes, then create a regular rhythm to learn, adapt and course correct. OKR stands for ‘Objectives and Key Results,’ a goal-setting framework that helps organisations set, track, and achieve ambitious goals. They are not the strategy, they are the bridge between strategic intent and day to day work.
The OKR methodology was introduced by Andy Grove at Intel, who developed the framework as an evolution from traditional management by objectives (MBO) to a more outcome-focused approach. John Doerr later introduced OKRs to Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, during Google’s early days. This introduction to Google’s founders played a pivotal role in the widespread adoption of OKRs across the tech industry and beyond.
To understand how OKRs work, it’s important to note that they align objectives with measurable key results, enabling organisations and teams to track progress, maintain accountability, and focus strategically at every level. OKRs work by connecting ambitious goals to specific, quantifiable outcomes, making it easier to see if your strategic bets are paying off.
Handled well, OKRs are a diagnostic tool. As a goal management framework, OKRs are designed to align teams and drive company strategy by connecting objectives to measurable outcomes. They tell you whether your strategic bets are paying off and where you need to change path.
Handled badly, they become:
- A quarterly box-ticking exercise
- A long list of activity-based “key results” that measure effort, not impact
- A way to rank teams and individuals, so everyone quietly negotiates safe, low-risk numbers
- A distraction from the real work of strategy execution
- And finally, a target used to measure people – that is Goodhart’s Law in practice. The more you raise the stakes on the number, the less you can trust what the number is telling you.
Most organizations struggle with aligning OKRs and maintaining a consistent OKR process, making it crucial to align teams around shared goals and strategy.
So how do you keep OKRs honest?
Here are three practical ways we help clients avoid the Goodhart trap.
1. Start with a living strategy, not a spreadsheet
Goodhart’s Law bites hardest when OKRs are written in a vacuum.
If teams start with “what can we measure?” instead of “what are we trying to win at?”, you end up with beautifully quantified irrelevance.
OKRs are part of a wider vision-strategy-goals-execution system. Strategy is the hypothesis, OKRs are the translation into measurable outcomes, and execution is where you test and refine that hypothesis in the real world through delivery. It is essential to align OKRs with the company’s vision and company strategy to ensure that both long-term and short-term objectives are consistent with the organization’s overarching purpose, mission, and values.
OKRs should lead the way, then you choose the initiatives and projects that best move those OKRs. Not the other way round.
Before you write OKRs, make sure your leadership team is aligned on:
- North Star – the single metric or small set of metrics that define winning for you
- Strategic bets – the few choices that will most move that North Star over the next 12–24 months
- Where you will and will not play – markets, customers, capabilities
- Creating OKRs – ensure that annual and quarterly OKRs are connected to the company’s vision and company strategy
When aligning leadership, focus on aligning OKRs and setting OKRs so that team’s goals and team OKRs are directly supporting the overall strategy and are aligned with organizational objectives through the OKR process.
Then, for every Objective and Key Result, ask:
- If we hit this KR, which strategic bet gets stronger?
- If we hit all our KRs and the strategy is not moving, what does that tell us about our assumptions?
This keeps OKRs tied to the real game you are playing, not to a quarterly wishlist.
A useful test:
If you changed your strategy tomorrow, how many of your OKRs would you immediately drop?
If the answer is “not many”, your OKRs probably are not strategic enough.
When reviewing objectives and key results, ensure that individual OKRs cascade from top down to support measurable key results and the desired outcome at every level.
When considering metrics, use key performance indicators alongside measurable key results to track progress and ensure alignment with strategic objectives.
2. Design value-based Objectives and Key Results, not vanity metrics
Goodhart’s Law lives in your key results.
If you measure “number of workshops delivered”, you will get a lot of workshops. If you measure “stories completed”, you will get a lot of stories.
Neither tells you whether you are any closer to the outcome you care about. What is the shift in behaviour, performance, or value that you want to make visible progress on in the next 90 days? This will help you to define your value based key results.
The value-based version makes Goodhart’s trap harder to fall into, because you have to look at the effect, not just whether the task is done. When setting ambitious targets, consider incorporating stretch goals and aspirational goals to inspire teams to reach beyond their current capabilities.
Simple pattern to use
For most KRs, use:
Increase / Reduce from X to Y by
Where:
- X is your baseline
- Y is the ambitious but realistic target
If you cannot fill in X, that is a signal that you need to build some basic measurement before you pretend to optimise anything.
When writing key results, focus on writing great OKRs by ensuring each key result is a measurable key result that clearly defines the desired outcome.
3. Make OKRs a conversation, not a quarterly judgement
Goodhart’s Law gets supercharged when OKRs are treated as an annual or quarterly exam.
If teams only look at their OKRs at the end of the cycle, all you can really do is explain away what happened. Learning arrives late, heavily edited and mostly unusable.
High performing OKR implementations treat OKRs as part of the operating rhythm of the business, the heartbeat of execution and not a side process. Regular check-ins, confidence scores and retrospectives are at the core of execution. These regular check-ins are a key part of the OKR cycle and the OKR process, critical for setting, tracking, and reviewing goals to ensure strategic alignment and continuous improvement.
A healthy OKR rhythm has three ingredients:
- Regular check-ins
- Measures: What changed?
- Confidence: How confident are we now?
- Impediments: What is blocking us?
- Activities: What will we do next?
These check-ins involve team members in reviewing progress and gathering feedback, which helps refine OKRs and maintain alignment.
- Confidence, not just traffic lights
Rather than simply colouring RAG statuses, ask each KR owner for a confidence score (for example 1–10) on reaching the target by the end of the cycle. This shifts the conversation from “are we on track?” to “given what we know now, how likely is it that our approach will work?”.
- Champions and community, not lonely owners
OKR Leads and Champions are there to facilitate these conversations and keep OKRs connected to the strategy, not to police the numbers. The champions guidance is clear that their role is to coach, model good practice, and create a feedback loop between teams and leadership. Implementing OKRs effectively means assigning ownership, integrating OKRs into daily workflows, and ensuring accountability among team members for achieving the desired outcomes.
When you do this consistently:
- People become more honest about what is really happening
- Issues surface early, when you can still do something about them
- Leadership sees trends and patterns rather than end-of-quarter surprises
In other words, you are genuinely “looking at the results” as Churchill suggests, and adjusting as you go, rather than waiting for the quarterly post-mortem.
Bringing it all together for the entire organization
Goodhart’s Law is not a reason to distrust metrics. It is a warning label: if you forget what the measure is for, the measure will quietly take over.
OKRs are at their best when they:
- Start from a clear, shared strategy
- Use a small number of value-based signals to test that strategy in the real world
- Sit inside a healthy rhythm of check-ins, learning and course correction
The OKR methodology and goal management framework provide the foundation for aligning OKRs with organizational strategy and supporting the OKR process. This structured approach ensures that objectives and key results are continuously reviewed, revised, and kept relevant to the company’s mission and vision.
Done well, your OKR system becomes exactly what several of the strategy and transformation frameworks call for: a way to “think big and develop small”, align portfolio choices with strategy, and continuously close the gap between intent and execution. Ongoing OKR work enables organizations to maintain alignment between strategy and execution through regular review and adaptation.
Where to start for 2026 to track progress
If you recognise some Goodhart patterns in your own OKRs, pick one of these to act on next:
- Rewrite one Objective so it clearly connects to a strategic bet, not a department outcome, and focus on writing objectives that are inspiring and aligned with your team’s priorities.
- Convert two activity-based KRs into value-based ones using the “from X to Y” pattern, paying special attention to writing key results that effectively measure progress and motivate your team.
- Introduce a simple OKR check-in to one existing team meeting this week and add confidence scores to the discussion.
Remember, creating OKRs and setting OKRs are ongoing practices that help ensure alignment and engagement across your organisation.
None of these require a big transformation. They simply tilt your OKR practice back towards what it was designed for: a disciplined way to look at the results, learn fast and keep your beautiful strategy grounded in reality.
For further guidance, get in touch today to discuss your approach and get some support with your OKR journey.
