5 signs your OKR system was born dead
Why OKR systems die silently in the first 30 days, and how to spot it before it’s too late.
Introduction
Most teams don’t fail with OKRs in Q4. They fail in the first 30 days, silently. No alarms, no dramatic collapse. The system just stops being alive.
Over the last 20 years working with founders, CEOs, and growth teams, I’ve learned to recognize five signals that almost certainly predict failure. This is not mystical science. These are patterns I see over and over again when I audit an OKR implementation.
What is interesting is that none of these signals come from a wrong methodology. They come from a wrong mindset, from confusion about what OKRs really are, and from a lack of rituals in the crucial early days.
If your team recognizes one of these five signals or, worse, more than one, it’s not too late yet. But the time to fix it is limited. The first 30 days are decisive.
Let’s see what to look for.
Signal 1: that familiar “wishlist” smell
The first signal that an OKR system is doomed to fail is very simple to recognize once you know it.
Read your team’s Objectives.
If they sound like aspirations, not tensions.
If they are phrased as hopes and wishes more than as clear problems to be solved, you are not doing OKRs.
You are writing a wishlist.
Here’s how it usually sounds:
“Increase customer engagement”
“Improve product quality”
“Scale growth”
All vague phrases. All lacking real urgency. All formulations that allow the team to interpret them however they want.
When you write an effective Objective, it needs to have a specific edge. It must identify a real tension the company is experiencing right now. A problem that, if not solved in the next 90 days, will have tangible consequences.
Research on 7,800 OKR implementations shows that 60% of companies confuse OKRs with simple KPIs or aspirations without rigor in measurement. It’s not a lack of intelligence. It’s that real Objectives are hard. They require you to look your business in the eye and say: “Here is a problem. And in the next 90 days we have to fix it.”
Here’s the contrast:
Go from “Increase engagement” to “Double customer engagement on digital platforms by Q2, inspiring the whole company to deliver exceptional experiences.” In the “Why now” section below the Objective, you argue with something like: “In recent quarters, we’ve observed stagnation in interaction rates across our digital channels, while customer expectations are rising quickly.
With digital transformation as a strategic pillar and competitors offering increasingly personalized and engaging experiences, increasing customer engagement is not just an opportunity, it’s a critical priority. We also have up-to-date data showing that for every additional percentage point of customer churn, the business loses 5% of annual revenue from existing customers.
This Objective will allow the entire organization to realign on what matters: creating continuous value and building deeper relationships with our customers.”
See the difference? The second is not just a number. It is a statement of a problem. It says why it matters. And that’s what makes the difference between a team that performs well at a retrospective and a team that actually mobilizes.
The wishlist smell appears for two reasons.
Leaders often confuse “long-term company aspirations” (the ones that belong in the mission) with “operational quarterly objectives” (the ones that must be concrete and urgent). They are not the same thing.
It’s easier to write wishes. It’s hard to identify real tensions and state them to the team. It requires vulnerability. It requires admitting there is a problem. And many leaders prefer a nice aspiration to an admission of failure.
But this is the point of OKRs: they are not tools for abstract motivation. They are tools for operational clarity.
If your Objective does not answer “What is the real problem we must solve in the next 90 days?”, then it is not an Objective. It’s a slogan for the retrospective.
Signal 2: no alignment and update cadence
This is the signal that kills more OKR systems than any other.
A team that sets OKRs at the beginning of the quarter and then doesn’t touch them for 13 weeks is not doing OKRs. It’s doing a strategic planning exercise. Two completely different things.
A system without cadence is not a system: it’s a forgotten document.
Here is how to recognize it. Ask your team a simple question: “When was the last time we did a check-in on this Key Result?”
If the answer is “a few weeks ago” or “when the month ends”, you’re in trouble. You’re already losing.
The research is crystal clear on this. Across 7,800+ monitored Key Results, teams that update their KRs every 7–10 days hit their OKRs about 70% of the time. Teams that go more than 14 days without touching them? The success rate collapses.
It’s not magic. It’s ritual.
When you do a weekly check-in on a Key Result, three things happen:
You see the problem immediately. You don’t wait two months to find out your approach isn’t working. You discover it in time to adjust course;
The team maintains focus. Urgency stays real. It doesn’t become a vague thing you “will do when you have time.”;
You create natural accountability. When you know that on Tuesday you have to say to the team “the number is flat compared to last week”, you start making different choices on Monday.
Failure, however, is almost always the same: the cadence dies within the first three weeks.
Here is how it happens.
In the first week, the team does the check-in enthusiastically. All of you sitting around, “ok, let’s see where we are.”
Second week, fine.
Third week, something happens (an urgent release, an important meeting overlaps) and “let’s do the check-in tomorrow.” becomes “let’s do it next week.” and so on.
Two weeks later, the cadence is dead. And with it, the OKR system.
This is why the first 30 days are critical. If the cadence survives the first month, it has a good chance. If it dies earlier, the system will not recover.
Signal 3: Key Results that are just tasks
This is the most common confusion I see, and the most devastating.
A Key Result is a measure of a change in behavior, not of a completed activity. If you can check it off your to-do list, it’s not a Key Result. It’s a task.
Read these two sentences:
Task: “Publish three blog articles per month”
Key Result: “Get 50,000 unique readers from our articles, with an average reading time above 3 minutes”
In the first case, you completed the action. Three articles, check. In the second, you measured an outcome. How many readers? How much engagement?
The confusion is common because it’s intuitive. It’s easy to say “let’s do three things” and then say “done.” It’s harder to say “let’s increase impact and measure it weekly.”
About 60% of organizations implementing OKRs fall into this trap in the first 90 days.
I understand why this happens. OKRs and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) live in the same universe. A KPI measures the health of a process. A Key Result measures whether you’ve moved the needle. They are not the same, but it’s easy to confuse them.
If your Key Result can be described as a to-do list, it’s a task disguised as a Key Result.
Here’s how you recognize it:
“Implement the new CRM system” = task
“Reduce the sales cycle from 45 to 30 days through the new CRM” = Key Result
“Hire 5 new developers” = task
“Increase delivery speed by 40% thanks to a larger team” = Key Result
The difference is subtle but critical. One is something you do. The other is something that changes in your business.
Why is it dangerous? Because it creates an illusion of progress. Your to-do list is full of completed tasks. But the number that matters, the number the CEO looks at and says “ok, we are really moving the business”, stays flat.
And after four weeks, the team does not see the desired outcome. Motivation dies. The system dies.
Signal 4: shared ownership = no ownership
A Key Result that belongs to three people, in 99% of cases, belongs to no one.
This is less intuitive, but the pattern is statistically robust. When you ask the team “who is responsible for achieving this Key Result?”, if the answer is more than one name, it is already compromised.
Here’s why. When there are three owners, this happens:
Person A thinks: “Well, if I don’t do it this week, B or C will.”
Person B thinks the same.
Person C is busy on a project, so they assume A and B are doing it.
Three weeks later, no one has done anything. And no one is responsible because everyone was responsible.
Countering this is simple: one Key Result = one owner.
This does not mean one person does all the work. It means one person has final responsibility for making sure the number moves. If something is blocking progress, that person is the one who shouts “blocked!” at the weekly check-in.
The research on the effectiveness of accountability is clear: organizations that assign single ownership for each Key Result see completion rates of 74%. Those with multiple ownership? 41%.
That’s not small. It’s almost double.
Signal 5: OKRs floating in the void
This is the signal we see in slightly more complex organizations.
You define your team OKRs: “Increase customer retention by 20%.” Beautiful. Concrete.
But then? That OKR floats in the void. It’s not connected to the company’s quarterly priorities. It is not known by dependent teams. It does not influence decisions on resources or timelines.
An OKR that is not anchored to the bigger picture will die of slow neglect.
Here’s a real example. A product team has an excellent OKR on improving delivery speed. But the engineering team has an OKR on “reducing technical debt.” Are they in conflict? Nobody knows, because the OKRs were never discussed together.
Result: two teams working against each other. The product team pushes for fast features. The engineering team brakes because it wants to consolidate. Nobody wins. The OKR dies.
Why does this happen? Because OKRs were not aligned vertically.
A company OKR might be: “Increase NPS from 40 to 55 by Q2.”
A team OKR might be: “Release 3 critical features for customer satisfaction.”
An individual OKR (for the brave who want to apply the framework to individuals) might be: “Conduct 20 customer interviews to prioritize which feature has the most impact.”
See it? One leads the other. One supports the other.
If your OKR does not answer “How does this contribute to the company’s success in Q2?”, then it floats in the void.
The invisible cost of misalignment
So far we’ve looked at the 5 signals that announce failure. But what is the real cost of not acting?
Loss of productivity
A team that is not clear on where it is going loses about 15% of its productivity. It’s not a joke. In a 10-person team, that means one full person working with poor effectiveness every week.
Multiplied over months, it’s huge.
Talent exodus
Ambiguity kills engagement. Top talent wants to know where the company is going. When the company does not know (because OKRs are confused), the best people go elsewhere.
The cost of replacing a good contributor? Twice their annual salary. For a person at €60k, that’s €120k. For a 10-person team with decent turnover, that’s 20% every year. Do the math yourself.
Waste of time in meetings
Without clear OKRs, meetings become sterile. You ask: “How are we doing?” without a clear answer. You end up talking about tasks and activities instead of outcomes. One hour of meeting with 8 people, not clarifying.
Decision paralysis
Without OKRs, every decision is a debate. “Do we do this project or that one?” Without a clear measure of what matters, the CEO has to decide everything. Teams freeze and wait.
How to fix each signal
If you recognize yourself in one or more of these signals, all is not lost. But you need to act immediately.
Fix 1: Turn aspirations into tensions
Take your current Objectives. Rewrite them.
Don’t ask “what do we want to do?” Ask “what are we not doing that, if we don’t do it, will have a real consequence?”
Facilitate a 90-minute session with key leaders. Questions:
What is the biggest bottleneck in the business right now?
Which number, if it doesn’t move in the next 90 days, is going to hurt?
Which problem are we postponing?
These questions produce real Objectives.
Fix 2: Establish weekly cadence
Block 30 minutes every Wednesday (or whatever day you prefer). Team of 6–8 people. Only Key Result owners.
Simple structure:
KR status (5 minutes). What is the number this week?
Trend (5 minutes). Are we improving or deteriorating?
Blocks (10 minutes). What is the problem? Who solves what?
Priorities for next week (10 minutes). What do we need to do in the next 7 days to move the number?
Done. Nothing more.
If the meeting lasts more than 30 minutes, you have too many KRs or people are not prepared. Or both.
Fix 3: Redefine what a Key Result is
Ask your team: “If you could complete all the work but the number didn’t move, would it still be a success?”
If the answer is yes, then what you’ve described is a task, not a Key Result.
A real KR answers the question: “If we achieve this result, are we reasonably confident we will reach the corresponding Objective?”
Fix 4: Assign a clear owner
For each Key Result, one question: “Who is the bottleneck?”
That person is the owner. Not the “main responsible” plus two “also involved.” Just one.
Communicate this publicly to the team. “For Q2, the OKR ‘Reduce churn from 12% to 6%’ is owned by Sarah. If you have questions, ask Sarah. If there is a block, Sarah will solve it or escalate it.”
That’s it. Clarity wins.
Fix 5: Reconnect to the business
Run a 60-minute exercise with leaders. Map each team OKR to a company OKR.
Write it like this:
Company OKR: Increase NPS from 40 to 55
Product Team OKR: Release the 3 most critical features for NPS
Customer Team OKR: Reduce ticket time-to-resolution from 24h to 8h
Retention Team OKR: Increase renewal rate from 88% to 93%
See the link? Each one supports the primary. None are floating.
Share this map publicly. “Here is how your OKR supports the business.”
The mindset that really transforms
All of this is methodology. Important, but not sufficient.
The real difference between teams that win with OKRs and those that fail is a mindset: OKRs are not a tool for motivation. They are a tool for learning.
A successful OKR system is built on this question: “What did we learn this week about what works and what doesn’t?”
If your KR is not moving, that is not bad news. It’s information. Your hypothesis was wrong. Perfect, now you know. Adjust the tactic.
Winning teams see not hitting a KR as feedback, not as personal failure. And this mindset changes everything.
When I created this checklist of 5 signals, the most consistent observation was this: the teams that failed were those who were afraid to admit their approach wasn’t working.
The teams that won said: “This KR didn’t move. Why? Let’s try something else next week.”
Next step: use the checklist
I created an OKR Readiness Checklist that lets you diagnose your system in 5 minutes.
It asks you 20 questions about:
Strategic Focus
Culture & Leadership
Organisational Readiness
Measurement & Outcomes
Operational Capacity
At the end, a score:
18–20 yes → You’re ready. Move forward with confidence.
14–17 yes → You can do it, but you need structured guidance.
Below 14 yes → High risk of failure. Address structural gaps first.
To get the checklist, fill out the form below:
Who I am and how I can help you
I’m Francesco Malmusi, founder and C-level operator with 20 years of experience scaling teams and companies in Europe and the United States.
Today I help founders, CEOs, COOs, and HR leaders bring clarity, focus, and operational discipline into their organizations through OKRs, managerial coaching, and strategic advisory.
If you want to discuss how OKRs can accelerate alignment and growth in your company, or you simply want to chat about how to make this framework real in your specific context, I’m always available for an informal conversation.
No pressure, no pitch. Just honest dialogue with those who are trying to solve the problem.
