How to Write Effective Key Results: 10 Examples That Actually Work

The difference between OKRs that drive results and OKRs that gather dust almost always comes down to the quality of the key results. A vague key result like "improve customer satisfaction" tells you nothing about what success looks like. A specific one like "increase NPS score from 32 to 45" gives you a clear target to aim for.

If you're new to OKRs, start with our complete guide to OKRs before diving into key results.

Here are 10 examples of well-written key results across different functions:

1. Sales: Increase quarterly recurring revenue from $500K to $750K
2. Marketing: Grow organic search traffic from 20,000 to 40,000 monthly sessions
3. Product: Reduce average page load time from 3.2 seconds to under 1.5 seconds
4. Engineering: Decrease deployment frequency from weekly to daily releases
5. Customer Success: Reduce churn rate from 5% to 3% monthly
6. HR: Increase employee engagement score from 72 to 85
7. Finance: Reduce accounts receivable days from 45 to 30
8. Design: Increase task completion rate in user testing from 60% to 85%
9. Operations: Reduce average support ticket resolution time from 24 hours to 4 hours
10. Leadership: Complete quarterly business reviews with 100% of department heads

For more examples tailored to specific industries, see our posts on OKR examples for engineering teams and startup OKR templates.

Each of these follows the same pattern: they start with a verb, include a metric, specify the starting point, and define the target. This "from X to Y" format is one of the most reliable ways to write key results.

A few tips for writing better key results:

Make them outcomes, not outputs. "Ship 5 features" is an output. "Increase user activation rate from 30% to 50%" is an outcome. Outcomes matter more because they measure impact, not just activity.

Keep them within your team's control. If your key result depends entirely on another team's work, it's not a good key result for your team. This is where team alignment becomes critical.

Aim for stretch but not fantasy. A good key result should feel achievable about 70% of the time. If you always hit 100%, you're not aiming high enough. If you always hit 30%, you're demoralizing your team. Learn more about OKR scoring.

Limit to 2-5 key results per objective. More than that and you lose focus. Fewer than 2 and you probably aren't measuring enough dimensions of success.

Want to track your key results effortlessly? See how Bleak OKRs handles goal tracking.