Forum Discussion
OKRs vs KPIs
Many organisations have set up existing KPIs that help them to track the state of key measures across their organisation, with these either being transparent to all or shared at regular townhalls. Th...
Thanks for raising this Kevin because it is a real challenge for customers. The core issue we have found is the challenge that capacity is fixed and priorities can relate to existing work and improvement work so they need to be considered together and then prioritized. By saying KPIs are your health metrics and OKRs are your change/improvement metrics it creates unneeded complexity. We have worked with customers to solve the problems by including OKR measures within scorecards that include both KPIs and OKRs.
- You make a really good point here, Joe.
Just saying OKRs are for transformation activity and KPIs are for operations doesn't make sense when continuous improvement is brought into the equation. This is why our clients find distinguishing between "transformational" OKRs and those they use to focus on CI activity helpful. However, what these two "types" of OKRs have in common is that they focus on change and so therefore are unlikely to remain as a static measure like a KPI does.
