Big-picture goals lose power when they aren’t connected to real work, and this is where many enterprise teams stumble. It’s not because of a lack of ambition but rather because translating strategic priorities into daily execution can be challenging.
Objectives and key results (OKRs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential frameworks that help bridge that gap. One sets direction, while the other measures progress. When used together, they create a powerful feedback loop that brings clarity, accountability, and momentum across the organization.
This guide breaks down how OKRs and KPIs complement each other and how to align both inside a scalable work system like monday work management.
What are OKRs and KPIs and why use both?
OKRs and KPIs are goal-setting and measurement frameworks that serve very different purposes. Whereas OKRs set direction and focus teams on ambitious goals, KPIs measure performance and track progress over time. With their powers combined, they help organizations stay aligned, accountable, and adaptive.
KPIs tell you what’s happening now, and OKRs express where you want to go and how you’ll know when you get there.
Let’s look deeper at how businesses use OKRs and KPIs and why it’s important to use both.
KPI definition
Key performance indicators are measurable benchmarks that track how business functions are performing. They help teams evaluate trends, identify risks, and optimize ongoing performance. Examples of KPIs include:
- Revenue growth (sales performance)
- Churn or retention (customer loyalty)
- Operational efficiency (workflow speed, resource use)
- Cost per acquisition (marketing effectiveness)
- Customer satisfaction (experience quality)
KPIs help answer the question, “How are we performing right now?” by offering real-time insights so teams can identify when things are off track.
OKR definition
Objectives and key results are a goal-setting framework that connects what you want to achieve with how you’ll measure success.
- Objectives define the goal or priority
- Key results measure the outcome
OKRs help teams align, stay focused, and pursue priorities that create impact. They answer the question, “Where are we going, and how we’ll measure progress along the way.?”
Want to get a head start with your OKRs? Check out our OKR template.
Why to use both OKRs and KPIs
Each framework is valuable on its own, but it’s the combination of OKRs and KPIs that creates real alignment. OKRs help teams focus on what matters most, while KPIs ensure that progress is measurable and grounded in reality. Together they connect ambition with execution, making it easier to stay on track, adapt quickly, and drive meaningful results at scale.
That said, applying these frameworks across large enterprises adds complexity. Mid-market companies may use these frameworks within a few departments, but enterprise teams often manage cross-regional teams, multiple business units, and a wider range of KPIs.
To make OKRs and KPIs work at scale, these organizations need systems that support layered visibility, cross-functional goal-setting, and flexible reporting structures — without adding more manual effort. We’ll explore how modern work management platforms can help solve these challenges later in the article.
What’s the difference between KPIs and OKRs?
OKRs and KPIs are often used together, but they play distinct roles. Think of KPIs as health metrics, telling you how a process or function is performing right now. OKRs, on the other hand, define where you want to go and what meaningful progress looks like along the way.
In short, KPIs track ongoing performance and OKRs drive change and strategic alignment. Used side by side, they give teams a clear destination and the tools to stay on course.
OKRs vs KPIs at a glance
| Aspect | OKR | KPI |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A goal-setting framework that connects an objective to measurable outcomes | A metric with a specific target that reflects current performance |
| Purpose | Set direction and drive meaningful progress on strategic goals | Measure performance and trends |
| Timeframe | Time-bound (typically quarterly or tied to strategic cycles) | Quantitative metric with a defined target |
| Flexibility | Dynamic; designed to adapt as priorities evolve | Ongoing |
| Origin | Typically led by executives or cross-functional groups | Realistic and attainable |
When to use OKRs vs KPIs
OKRs and KPIs work best when used together, but knowing when to apply each framework helps teams stay focused and scale strategy effectively.
Use KPIs when you need to monitor ongoing performance. These metrics track the health of specific functions or processes, like customer satisfaction, conversion rates, or system uptime. KPIs are especially valuable for individual contributors and frontline managers who need to stay on top of real-time trends and spot issues early.
Use OKRs when you’re setting goals that require change, coordination, or long-term focus. Launching a new product, expanding into a new market, or reducing churn are all initiatives that benefit from OKRs. These goals typically start at the leadership or departmental level, then cascade into supporting objectives across teams.
Different roles tend to engage with these frameworks in different ways. For example:
- Executives define company-wide OKRs and review high-level progress across the business.
- Team leads and department heads use OKRs to drive strategic initiatives and KPIs to monitor day-to-day performance.
- Individual contributors often work more directly with KPIs but contribute to broader OKRs through their project goals and outputs.
By aligning OKRs with KPIs and tailoring visibility by role, organizations can connect long-term strategy with short-term execution.
How to implement OKRs without disrupting existing workflows
Now that you understand how OKRs and KPIs work together, the next step is implementing them in a way that doesn’t require an overhaul and that’s easy to scale. If you’re already tracking KPIs, you’re partway there. The key is starting with a focused, flexible approach that helps teams build confidence before scaling across the organization.
Here are 4 simple steps to kick off a simple, scalable OKR rollout:
- Define 1 objective and 2-4 measurable key results.
- Use existing KPIs as baselines where it makes sense.
- Assign clear ownership and review cadence.
- Track everything in a shared dashboard.
This structure gives your team direction, visibility, and room to adapt. Don’t forget to involve teams early to build buy-in. Let them help shape key results and define how success will be measured so ownership starts from day one.
Successful adoption takes consistency. Treat OKRs as an ongoing practice, not a one-time rollout. Reinforcing habits like weekly check-ins, shared visibility, and accountability rituals help teams build muscle memory and turn OKRs into a natural part of how they work.
Leadership’s role in sustaining goal alignment
Consistency isn’t just a team habit, however. It starts at the top. Leaders play a critical role in long-term goal alignment and how OKRs and KPIs function daily. Beyond setting direction, they ensure goals stay relevant, visible, and consistently applied.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading by example with regular goal reviews
- Helping teams clarify vague or misaligned OKRs
- Making visibility and accountability part of the culture
- Connecting goals to feedback, recognition, and performance conversations
Sustained adoption starts with leadership that’s active, consistent, and transparent.
When to adjust OKRs
OKRs are often set quarterly, but business conditions evolve. Be sure to review OKRs in team syncs every few weeks and adjust when needed. Best practices include:
- Documenting the reason behind any change
- Avoiding last-minute pivots unless business priorities change
- Ensuring updates always map back to larger company goals
Adjustments should bring clarity and momentum rather than confusion.
Want to keep your goals aligned and transparent? Check out our goal tracker template.
OKR and KPI examples across teams
Knowing the theory is one thing. Seeing how these frameworks show up in everyday work is where it clicks. Here’s how enterprise teams use KPIs and OKRs together to focus their efforts and measure what matters:
Marketing
Let’s say a marketing team has a benchmark email conversion rate of 3.2% that needs improvement. This KPI shows how well email campaigns are converting interest into action and is reviewed daily or weekly to assess the health of top-of-funnel performance. Whereas the KPI is our baseline, the OKR should define what improvement looks like and what needs to happen to achieve it.
Objective: Increase inbound pipeline
Key results:
- Raise the email conversion rate to 5%
- Drive 20% growth in sales-qualified leads (SQLs)
Customer success
The team’s net promoter score (NPS) currently sits at 45 and represents a solid indicator of how satisfied customers are and whether they’d recommend the product or service. Although this KPI shows present sentiment, it doesn’t by itself spark improvement. The team sets the following focused OKR to elevate the customer experience and reduce response times:
Objective: Deliver a best-in-class support experience
Key results:
- Raise NPS to 60
- Reduce average response time to under 2 hours
Operations
The current average fulfillment time is 4 hours, and this KPI reflects how efficiently orders or requests are completed. This metric shows how things are running now, but leadership wants to improve speed and accuracy in the process. Here’s what that might look like:
Objective: Improve fulfillment speed and accuracy
Key results:
- Cut fulfillment time to 2 hours
- Lower error rate to under 1%
Software teams
The deployment success rate — now at 92% — shows how reliably new code reaches production without issue. It’s a solid KPI, but the team wants to improve both reliability and velocity as part of broader delivery goals.
Objective: Improve release reliability and speed
Key results:
- Reach 99% deployment success
- Reduce rollback events to fewer than 2 per quarter
- Shorten CI/CD pipeline time by 20%
Executive/Finance
The customer acquisition cost (CAC), which is a KPI that shows how much it costs to acquire each new customer, is currently $240. To strengthen profitability, leadership focuses on improving this figure while optimizing related unit economics. Here’s what the OKR setup could look like:
Objective: Improve unit economics in Q2
Key results:
- Lower CAC to $200
- Increase LTV:CAC ratio to 3:1
- Shorten payback period to 6 months
These examples show how KPIs and OKRs can work together to connect day-to-day performance with long-term strategy. But even with the right frameworks in place, many teams still struggle to gain traction. Misaligned goals, inconsistent follow-through, or bloated metrics can all get in the way. Here are some of the most common pitfalls to watch out for and how to avoid them.
Common pitfalls to avoid with KPIs and OKRs
Even with the right frameworks, teams can stall without focused goals and systems that reinforce accountability. Here are the most common mistakes enterprises make with OKRs and KPIs and how to sidestep them.
Measuring too much, learning too little
The problem: Teams monitor dozens of metrics, but few drive action. The result is quickly filled up dashboards and buried insights. For example, a team tracks 30+ KPIs across campaigns, but no one knows which 3 actually tie back to revenue.
How to overcome: Focus on 5-7 meaningful metrics per team, with each answering a business-critical question or supporting a key decision.
Ambitious goals, misaligned timelines
The problem: Strategic goals are often too aggressive or out of sync with planning cycles, leading to burnout or missed expectations. Think of a team asked to boost revenue by 50% in a single month without additional resources or changes in approach.
How to overcome: Set bold but achievable quarterly goals. Use SMART goal principles to balance ambition with feasibility, and use KPIs to monitor pace and flag risks early.
Busy doesn’t equal impactful
The problem: Teams often measure activity rather than outcomes. It’s common to see reports on how many customer calls were made or how many emails were sent, without tying that activity to actual results like closed deals or reduced churn.
How to overcome: Define success based on business impact. Measurable, outcome-focused goals keep teams aligned and reduce ambiguity. For example, instead of setting a vague OKR like “Improve customer engagement,” set a specific and measurable target like “Increase average weekly logins by 20%.” Instead of “Make more support calls,” aim for “Reduce churn by 10% through proactive outreach.”
Disconnected goals, fragmented execution
The problem: KPIs and OKRs often live in separate tools or docs, with no central source of truth. As a result, teams don’t see how their work ties into broader company goals, which leads to delays, misalignment, or duplicated effort.
How to overcome: Centralize goals and metrics in one shared workspace. Use dashboards, async updates, or live reviews to keep everyone aligned and informed.
Slow reactions, stalled results
The problem: Many teams set OKRs and KPIs at the start of the quarter, then forget about them until it’s too late. A key result might be visibly off track, but no one takes action until the QBR rolls around.
How to overcome: Build regular check-ins into your workflows. Use real-time dashboards to surface blockers early and keep momentum going throughout the quarter.
Avoiding these pitfalls sets the stage for better execution. But putting it into action requires the right tools.
Achieve OKR and KPI alignment with monday work management
Strategic plans are most powerful when they’re clearly connected to day-to-day work. When goals are visible, actionable, and tied to outcomes, teams can move faster, stay focused, and drive measurable impact.
That’s why aligning OKRs, KPIs, and actual execution in one place makes such a difference. Instead of jumping between tools or buried dashboards, enterprise teams can use monday work management to bring everything together in a single, connected workspace.
With built-in dashboards, automations, and AI-powered insights, including predictive alerts and anomaly detection, teams can stay ahead of blockers and adapt with confidence. And thanks to ready-made OKR and KPI templates, it’s easy to get started without having to build complex systems from scratch.
Here’s how enterprise teams use monday work management to bring strategy to life:
- Tie metrics to real work: Create boards that link each KPI or key result to the initiatives, owners, and workflows that support it. That way, performance isn’t abstract, it’s visible and actionable.
- Connect goals across functions: Use cross-board automation to cascade objectives between teams. For example, a company-wide growth goal can be linked to supporting marketing, sales, and product OKRs so that each department sees how their work contributes.
- Assign owners and update cycles: Set up an automation that pings owners for updates on a set cadence. Add status columns, due dates, and dependencies so everyone knows what’s next and who’s driving it.
- Visualize impact in real time: Build executive dashboards that surface live data from across boards. You can monitor company-wide OKRs, drill into team-level KPIs, and quickly flag blockers before they slow things down.
- Combine performance and planning: Use monday work management to house both ongoing KPIs and outcome-focused OKRs, side by side in one workspace, so everyone’s measuring and working from the same playbook.
- Differentiate OKRs and KPIs visually: Use color-coded status bars, tags, and dashboard widgets to distinguish performance tracking (KPIs) from objectives. Add goal progress meters and connected items to reflect impact in context.
How to track KPIs in monday work management
KPIs are most valuable when they’re easy to track, update, and connect to real work. With monday work management, teams get a live view of performance without jumping between tools.
| Feature | What it does | Example use case |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboards | Centralize and visualize performance | See weekly trends in CSAT, churn, or MRR across departments |
| Boards | Track KPI owners and progress | Assign team members to specific KPIs and capture supporting tasks |
| Formulas + Integrations | Automate KPI calculations and updates | Pull data from Salesforce or Zendesk to keep KPIs current |
| Status columns | Flag KPI health at a glance | Use red/yellow/green indicators to show on-track vs. at-risk metrics |
With custom dashboards, real-time reporting, and cross-tool integrations, monday work management helps teams make KPIs more actionable, not just a monthly report. You can set thresholds, create alerts, and keep data flowing from your existing systems into one shared workspace.
How to manage OKRs in monday work management
Creating a strong OKR system helps make your goals visible, connected, and part of daily work. With monday work management, you don’t need to start from scratch.
| Feature | What it does | Example use case |
|---|---|---|
| Boards | Houses OKRs by team or department | Track objectives and key results across marketing, product, and ops |
| Automations | Keeps updates consistent and on time | Remind owners to update progress every Friday or flag at-risk items |
| Dashboards | Rolls up progress across teams | Show company-wide OKR progress and drill into team-level metrics |
Teams can also use OKR templates to get started quickly or build a custom board structure to match their organization’s workflow. You can connect key results to supporting projects, assign owners, set dependencies, and tie metrics back to dashboards in one location.
Whether you’re evaluating team performance or steering toward long-term growth, monday work management gives you the structure and visibility to move faster, stay focused, and scale with confidence.
Strategy without execution is just wishful thinking
Setting goals is just the start. To drive results, teams need clear targets, fast feedback loops, and shared accountability.
KPIs measure what’s happening now. OKRs define where you’re going and how you’ll get there. For enterprises, success comes from combining both, supported by scaled tools.
With monday work management, you can operationalize goals across every level of the business. By connecting KPIs and OKRs inside a single system, you unlock faster execution, smarter decisions, and clearer accountability at every level.
Ready to bring your goals to life? Start your free trial or schedule a demo to see how monday work management turns plans into progress.
FAQs
What is the difference between an OKR and a KPI?
OKRs are strategic goal-setting frameworks, and KPIs are metrics for tracking performance. Use OKRs to focus on change and KPIs for consistency.
Do OKRs need exact metrics?
Yes, OKRs require measurable key results to track progress, though the objectives themselves may be qualitative and aspirational.
Can an OKR also be a KPI?
A KPI can serve as a key result within an OKR. For example, if your objective is to improve support, your NPS (a KPI) could be used as a key result to track progress.
Are OKRs or KPIs better for strategic planning?
Use OKRs to set strategic direction and drive change. Use KPIs to measure consistency and performance along the way. The best planning combines both.
Can one software solution track both OKRs and KPIs?
Yes, modern work management platforms allow teams to track both frameworks in unified dashboards.
What if KPIs are improving, but we’re still missing OKRs?
If KPIs are improving but you're still missing OKRs, it could mean your teams are improving performance, but not in the areas tied to strategic goals. This often happens when KPIs aren’t aligned with your OKRs. Revisit your OKRs to ensure your efforts are driving the right outcomes.
How do OKRs work in flat vs. hierarchical teams?
Flat teams often use shared OKRs and depend on visibility across roles. Hierarchical teams typically cascade OKRs by department, with clear ownership at each level.
When is it appropriate to revise an OKR?
Revising an OKR is ideal when goals become irrelevant or conditions change. Always document the reason for the change and communicate it clearly.
Can OKRs be used at the individual level?
Yes, OKRs can be used by individuals as long as they ladder up to team or company objectives. Keep them focused on impact, not activity.
How often should OKRs and KPIs be reviewed?
KPIs should be reviewed daily, weekly, or monthly depending on the metric. OKRs are usually reviewed during team check-ins throughout a quarterly cycle.
