Aligning OKRs

Aligning OKRs is one of the more challenging and rewarding aspects of the framework.

This is where larger, more complex organisations unlock tremendous focus and create breakthrough value. It requires careful negotiation, open dialogue and, above all, a keen understanding of how the organisation works—how it delivers its unique vision.

Do you even need multi-team OKRs, yet?

Many organisations who see the potential of OKRs are keen to jump straight into multi-team, multi-level OKR-setting.

Unfortunately, most do it too soon, before they fully understand how the organisation works and before enough individual teams have found success with OKRs.

When this happens, people often end up feeling confused, overwhelmed, and frustrated by unnecessary complexity, nascent understanding, and immature processes.

Start small

Think about which teams will benefit the most from OKRs. Look for true teams, not workgroups who receive regular feedback—ideally direct feedback from customers—about their daily decisions.

Product & service teams are often good candidates. Enabling teams are tougher as they usually get feedback via the teams they enable. In many cases, enabling teams members can simply share the OKRs of the teams they’re helping rather than setting their own.

Help this team to set OKRs and begin doing regular check-ins. After this team has used OKRs successfully for a few cycles, consider inviting additional teams to use them and consider OKR alignment.

Remember that not everyone needs OKRs.

Understanding your operating model

Before you can use OKRs in multiple areas of your organisation, you first need to understand your organisation’s operating model.

The operating model helps you define things like:

1. How are we structured?
2. How do we create value?
3. Where are key decisions made?
4. Who owns each process, product, function, service, or component?
5. Which teams are overwhelmed with business as usual (BAU)?
6. Most importantly, how do the pieces fit together?

It’s useful to work with leaders across your organisation to produce some shared decisions and documentation. Value stream mapping and team charters are great ways to start.

Once the operating model is well understood, it should be clear which teams can benefit from OKRs.

One common structure is to set annual OKRs for the entire organisation, quarterly OKRs for select teams, and quarterly or annual OKRs for groups or divisions in the middle.

Cascading and market-based alignment

Once teams have drafted OKRs, they’ll need simple, reliable, inclusive methods to negotiate, align, and refine them.

One technique is to rigidly “cascade” OKRs from top to bottom in your organisation. In this model, the highest level key results become objectives for the next level. They come up with key results which become objectives for the next level, and so on.

John Doerr talks about this in Measure What Matters and quickly advises against it as being brittle, inflexible, demotivating, and one-dimensional.

Unfortunately, most people who read the book—myself included—are so attracted to the idea of rigidly connecting every goal in the organisation that they miss John’s warning.

He quickly pivots to advising a more bottom-up approach and quotes Laszlo Bock’s book “Work Rules” where Bock says:

This approach requires a bit more creative freedom, transparency, and time but it works beautifully and the results are much better.

It also makes it easier to share confidence and ask for help during the delivery phase of the cycle.

Note that after aligning OKRs there may still be some unaligned outliers but because they’ll have gone through the alignment process with everyone else, we’ll all understand and be able to articulate the good reasons why these teams are moving differently from the rest of the organisation.

Sometimes these are R&D teams working far ahead of the rest of the organisation or specialised teams dealing with very specific problems which don’t directly relate to the core mission.

How to do it

For small and medium sized organisations of up to about 20 teams, the first step I recommend is simply putting draft OKRs into an accessible space, ideally a single scrollable document which anyone can comment upon while tagging relevant OKR owners. This enables (actually forces) everyone to scroll past and look at everyone else’s draft OKRs in order to see and modify their own.

Here’s an OKR sharing template that I use to do this.

Once teams have started reading each other’s OKRs, it’s time to move towards open conversation and dialogue possibly using structured, formally facilitated sessions like the OKR gallery walk or the OKR festival.

In every case, teams are listening to feedback, negotiating with their peers, and creating OKRs which are measurable, achievable, and laser-focused on the outcomes that matter most.

Here’s a quick overview of various techniques.

Informal chats

Never underestimate the power of simply approaching your peers and asking about their OKRs. Casual conversations often reveal things that would never surface in a formal meeting.

A quick, candid one-on-one conversation can uncover hidden concerns, build psychological safety, and create richer dialogue and alignment in less time and with less scheduling effort than a formal session.

Keep the conversations centred around what’s actually written in the draft OKRs. This will force you to come up with clear, resonant language and specific, measurable targets.

Do a gallery walk

The OKR gallery walk is a simple, fun, and elegant technique for rapidly sharing feedback. It recreates the relaxed atmosphere of visiting an art opening with friends while unleashing your inner critic.

It creates a safe, informal space for dialogue and keeps the focus on the actual text of the OKRs.

Learn more

Hold an OKR festival

While not quite Burning Man, the larger multi-team, multi-level OKR festival is a variation on the Gallery Walk enabling rapid feedback via many simultaneous conversations. It can easily be run in person or online.

Learn More

Take the time

It’s tempting to rush the alignment process or even use AI tools to jump straight to “finished” OKRs. Generative AI tools can help you make your language more compelling and make your metrics clearer but don’t deny yourself the privilege of having real conversations with your peers.

Remember, you’re not just tweaking the language and targets of the OKRs, themselves, you’re building shared understanding of your skills, your context, and your opportunities, you’re winning over hearts and minds, and you’re agreeing as an organisation what you will and will NOT be doing in this cycle.

That last point can be a huge shift for leaders and stakeholders. OKRs aren’t simply a layer on top of the portfolio. They are the portfolio. Outcomes that aren’t expressed in the OKRs aren’t likely to happen. Pet projects need to find a reason for being expressed as measurable outcomes. Once people grasp the significance of this, it’s easier to justify spending the time required to get agreement.

OKRs aren’t simply a layer on top of the portfolio. They are the portfolio.

I recommend spending 3-4 weeks drafting and aligning quarterly OKRs between teams starting about 2 weeks before the end of the quarter and continuing until about 2 weeks into the new quarter. It may sound like a long time but this is the “secret sauce” that prevents teams from working in silos and allows them to uncover dramatic improvements in performance and outcomes.

Alignment can still take place while teams are finishing up their previous quarters’ OKRs and while beginning to deliver on the new draft set. Think about them as clay that is slowly setting. You can continue to make adjustments as the quarter starts but they should get more and more firm.

Alignment doesn’t happen by accident—it happens through deliberate, repeated conversations in different formats. Whether it’s a spontaneous chat, a structured gallery walk, or a lively festival, each method provides a way to surface different perspectives and ensure everyone is working toward the same outcomes.

The best approach is usually a mix: keep the energy and honesty of informal chats, then reinforce them with structured sessions to lock in decisions. Done well, OKR alignment creates not only clarity, but also enthusiasm and momentum—helping your teams move together with focus and purpose.

If you’re looking for a place to start, check out the OKR gallery walk and let me know what you think!