How many OKRs should your startup set to avoid overwhelming the team?
Managing a startup means facing a variety of challenges: growing your team, securing funding, launching new products, and hitting key milestones.
With so many moving parts, the last thing you want is to set too many goals, which can lead to burnout and a loss of focus.
So, how do you determine the right number of OKRs to ensure progress without overburdening your team?
In this article, we’ll discuss how to determine a reasonable number of OKRs for your startup, how many objectives to focus on, and what the ideal number of key results should be to drive your business forward without spreading your resources too thin.
The Pitfalls of Too Many OKRs
It can be tempting to set a long list of OKRs in an effort to cover all the bases and track every possible area of your startup. But this approach often leads to problems like:
- Lack of focus: If you try to achieve too much, it's easy for goals to become diluted, and teams can lose sight of what really matters.
- Team burnout: Too many objectives mean too much work, which can quickly overwhelm your team, leading to frustration and reduced productivity.
- Slow progress: When your team is spread too thin across multiple objectives, it becomes harder to make meaningful progress on any single one.
The key is to focus on the few critical goals that will drive real impact, without overloading your team.
How Many OKRs Should You Set per Cycle?
To avoid the pitfalls above, most startups should set:
- 2-3 company-wide objectives per cycle
- 1-3 key results per objective
- No more than 8-12 OKRs in total across the company
This ensures that your team can stay focused on the most impactful goals without being overwhelmed. Let’s break this down further.
Company-Level OKRs: Keep It Simple and Focused
For your startup, it’s best to focus on 2-3 high-priority objectives at the company level.
These should be the key areas that will drive growth for your business in the upcoming quarter or year. For example:
- Revenue Growth (e.g., “Increase MRR by 25%”)
- Customer Acquisition (e.g., “Generate 500 new signups”)
- Product Development (e.g., “Launch feature X by Q3”)
These OKRs should be aligned with your long-term vision but also specific enough to be achievable within the timeframe of the OKR cycle. Setting too many company-wide OKRs can lead to misalignment and confusion.
Recommending reading How to Write Effective OKRs
Team-Level OKRs: Prioritize What Matters
Each team (sales, marketing, product, etc.) should focus on 1-3 objectives that align with the company’s top priorities.
Each team’s OKRs should complement the company’s larger goals while being achievable within their capacity. For example:
- Sales Team: “Increase conversion rate from 10% to 15%”
- Marketing Team: “Grow inbound leads by 30%”
- Product Team: “Improve user retention by 10%”
These OKRs will ensure that teams stay focused on what truly matters to the company’s success, without trying to take on too many tasks.
It also allows teams to collaborate effectively and contribute to the larger company vision.
Individual OKRs: Optional, But Useful
In the early stages of your startup, individual OKRs might not be necessary.
However, as you scale, they can help align employees with team and company goals.
If you do set individual OKRs, ensure they are aligned with the team’s objectives and focused on 1-2 key areas.
These can be personal development goals or specific contributions that support broader team goals. For example:
- Employee OKR: “Complete 3 customer interviews to help improve onboarding flow”
Individual OKRs should not become a distraction or make employees feel overloaded. Keep them focused on growth areas where individual contributions can make the most impact.
How Many Key Results Per Objective?
For each objective, you should aim for 2-4 key results.
This ensures that the objectives remain specific, measurable, and focused while still allowing some flexibility for progress. Here's why:
- Too many key results (5 or more) can make it difficult to track progress and prioritize tasks. You end up with too much to measure, which can reduce focus and impact.
- Too few key results (1 or less) can make the objective feel vague or unclear. It’s hard to know what success looks like if you’re not measuring a variety of outcomes.
For example:
Objective: Increase customer retention
- KR1: Reduce churn rate from 5% to 3%
- KR2: Achieve an NPS score of 70
- KR3: Improve onboarding completion rate to 80%
This keeps the objective clear and measurable, while still allowing flexibility for your team to reach it.
Conclusion
For a startup, the right number of OKRs is all about focus.
Start with 3-5 company-wide objectives, limit your team’s OKRs to 1-3 objectives, and keep 2-4 key results per objective.
By narrowing your focus, your startup will have the clarity it needs to make meaningful progress without overwhelming your team.
If your startup is setting too many OKRs or your team is juggling 5+ objectives per cycle, it’s time to revisit your goals and make sure everyone is aligned on the most important tasks.
By following these guidelines, you can create a clear path for growth while keeping your team motivated and focused on the right goals.
Need help managing your OKRs? Try OKRs Tool today, designed for startups that want to simplify goal setting, track progress, and align their teams with ease.
