OKR vs KPI: The Difference, Real Examples, and How They Work Together

An OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal-setting framework: one Objective that names a change you want, plus typically three to five measurable Key Results that show whether you got there within a set period, often a quarter. A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a single metric you track continuously to see whether work you already do is performing as it should. A KPI monitors the current state; an OKR commits a team to a specific change by a specific date.

Most organizations need both, and the label is rarely what decides whether either one works. In ClearPoint’s research archive, built from anonymized data from 150+ organizations, 77.6% of objectives had no named owner.

Key Takeaways

• An OKR is a time-bound goal with measurable Key Results. A KPI is an ongoing metric with a target or range to hold.
• A KPI can serve as a Key Result for one cycle when you decide to move it on purpose. Afterward, it goes back to routine monitoring.
• In ClearPoint’s research archive (150+ organizations), 77.6% of objectives had no named owner.
• Initiatives with a named owner were completed 2.5× as often as initiatives without one: 21.5% versus 8.7%.
• Organizations whose plans stayed in use cut measures instead of adding them. Carilion Clinic began with a 70-measure leadership scorecard; its clinic-wide scorecard now tracks 7.

What is the difference between an OKR and a KPI?

An OKR pairs a qualitative Objective with Key Results you can measure without debate. John Doerr, who brought OKRs from Intel to Google, sums up the test for a Key Result in one question: “Did I do that or did I not do it?” A KPI, in KPI.org’s definition, is one of “the critical, quantifiable measures of progress toward a desired result.” KPIs run continuously; OKRs run for a cycle and are scored at the end.

The city example comes from the illustrative OKR set in ClearPoint’s government OKR implementation roadmap. For the mechanics of writing OKRs, see our guide to Objectives and Key Results; for metric ideas, see 200+ KPI examples by function.

Can a KPI be a Key Result?

Yes. When leadership decides a KPI needs to move, not just hold, it becomes a Key Result for that cycle. What Matters, the OKR resource from John Doerr’s team, illustrates this with a racing team that tracks a best-speed KPI of 225 mph and sets a Key Result to raise it to 228 mph. When the cycle ends, the metric goes back to being a KPI, with a new baseline. As What Matters puts it, OKRs “don’t replace KPIs, but they can help your team achieve them.”

OKR vs KPI examples from real plans

The clearest examples come from organizations that run both. All of the cases below come from ClearPoint’s published customer stories.

Local government: City of Bartlett, Tennessee

Bartlett, a city of more than 60,000 residents, built a new strategic plan, Bartlett Vision 2030, in 13 months. The plan has five focus areas: Economic Vitality, Growth & Infrastructure, Vibrant Workforce, Health & Public Safety, and Community Engagement. Each of the city’s 11 departments owns objectives and measures linked to one of them. Department directors meet weekly, leadership holds quarterly strategic reviews, and residents can follow progress on a public dashboard.

That rhythm mirrors the OKR/KPI split: the measures get attention every week, and the quarterly review steps back to the objectives. Steve Sones, Bartlett’s Chief Administration Officer, who has been with the city for 22 years, relies on four questions: “What’s going well?” “What’s not going well?” “What can we do to help get there?” and “Is there anything that we need to be tracking that we’re not?” His rule for the plan itself: “Simplicity scales.” Read Bartlett’s story.

Healthcare: Southern Ohio Medical Center

SOMC, a 211-bed hospital with more than 40 clinics, builds its dashboards around five strategic values: Safety, Quality, Service, Teamwork and Finance. Each department tracks its KPIs against them. The performance improvement team asks which metrics are key clinically and operationally, and which “bumpers” will trigger a formal process improvement project. That is the KPI-to-OKR handoff in practice: the KPI runs continuously, and crossing a bumper starts a focused improvement effort, which SOMC calls “A Better Way.” Read SOMC’s story.

Healthcare: Carilion Clinic

Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, Virginia, built its first scorecard for senior leadership in 2007, after its leadership team studied Kaplan and Norton’s The Balanced Scorecard. That scorecard had 70 measures. The clinic-wide scorecard now tracks 7, each tied to the Carilion Vision 2025 strategic plan. “Having that refined list of only the most important measures and ensuring they link to your organization’s strategy was a big lesson learned for us,” says Darren Eversole, Director of Finance. Carilion also ties 20% of provider compensation to scorecard performance. When pay depends on a number, the number needs a stable definition and target, which is the job of a KPI rather than a stretch Key Result. Read Carilion’s story.

Higher education: Metropolitan Community College

Metropolitan Community College, Missouri’s oldest community college, plans on three levels. A ten-year plan sets 14 goals, organized by Balanced Scorecard perspective. An operational playbook turns them into deliverables. Every year, each of the college’s 61 planning units sets four goals, three of its own and one aligned with the college’s annual objective, each with tactics, performance measures and targets. The cycle opens in June and closes in May with a review of lessons learned. MCC doesn’t use the OKR label, but its annual goals do the same job. Read MCC’s story.

Higher education: LSU College of Engineering

For its Vision 2015 plan, LSU’s College of Engineering gave each of its eight strategies its own measures, targets and improvement goals, tracked with simple red-amber-green status indicators. The first two years were hard going. “We realized that we needed to get our stakeholders invested in the strategic plan. They needed to own it,” says Heather Herman, who also served as the college’s strategy management officer. Since implementing Vision 2015, total enrollment is up 41%, against a national increase of about 20%. Read LSU’s story.

State government: Washington State Department of Licensing

The department serves 6 million residents and, under a 2006 state law, reports its performance quarterly. By 2017, its system had grown past 150 measures and was becoming too overwhelming to be effective. The 2019 relaunch kept the measures most critical to its mission. It also stopped leaning on averages: instead of relying on figures such as average wait time, it tracks the share and number of customers who don’t get the result they need. Read the department’s story.

What ClearPoint’s data shows: the gap is ownership

ClearPoint’s research team analyzed 20,582 strategic plans for the 2026 Strategic Planning Report. A separate research archive, built from anonymized structural data from 150+ organizations, shows how objectives, measures and initiatives are owned. Two results matter for the OKR vs KPI question.

First, the objective layer, the “O” in OKR, is the layer most often left without an owner.

Without a named owner, nobody is accountable for reporting on that objective, and any OKR built on it inherits the gap.

Second, ownership shows up in results. Across the 90,305 initiatives in the same archive, those with a named owner were marked complete far more often than those without.

This is an association, not proof that naming an owner causes completion: organizations that assign owners may be more disciplined in other ways too. The practical step is the same either way: give every objective, measure and initiative one named person before you debate frameworks.

Why the owner matters more than the label

Two well-documented effects explain why changing frameworks rarely rescues a plan on its own.

The second is Goodhart’s Law, best known in anthropologist Marilyn Strathern’s 1997 wording: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Both risks are easier to catch when someone owns the measure. The owner is the person who notices when the number and the goal start to drift apart, and who raises it in the review.

When to use an OKR, a KPI, or both

Use a KPI when the work is ongoing and the goal is to keep it in range: response times, budget variance, readmission rates, retention. KPIs are also the better fit when a number feeds compensation, as at Carilion, or has to stay comparable from year to year.

Use an OKR when you need a specific change within a set period and the team needs one shared priority: cutting a backlog, launching a program, fixing a measure that has drifted.

Use both, in sequence. A KPI shows the gap, an OKR sets the push for one cycle, and once the target is reached the metric goes back to KPI monitoring with a new baseline. SOMC’s bumpers are a working version of this handoff.

Review them on different clocks. Review KPIs on their reporting cycle, often monthly. Check Key Results during the cycle and score them at the end. Step back to the objectives on a slower rhythm, the way Bartlett pairs weekly director meetings with quarterly strategic reviews. For setting the thresholds that trigger action, see our guide to RAG status.

OKR vs KPI vs Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard, introduced by Robert Kaplan and David Norton in Harvard Business Review in 1992, organizes multi-year strategy into perspectives, commonly financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth, each with its own objectives and measures. It is a structure for the whole plan, not a type of metric. That is why the three are usually layered rather than chosen between: the scorecard holds the long-range objectives, OKRs push the few that need to move this cycle, and KPIs monitor everything else.

In government, ClearPoint’s guidance separates committed targets, which are expected to be met in full, from stretch targets, where 60–70% achievement is a reasonable result. That keeps council-approved commitments out of the stretch category. For the full model, see the Balanced Scorecard + OKR hybrid for government and our Balanced Scorecard guide.

How to set up OKRs and KPIs so they stay current

1. Keep the list short. Carilion went from a 70-measure leadership scorecard to a 7-measure clinic-wide scorecard, and the Washington State Department of Licensing trimmed a system of more than 150 measures to the ones most critical to its mission. Bartlett’s rule is “simplicity scales.”
2. Name one person for every objective, measure and initiative. In ClearPoint’s archive, initiatives with a named owner were completed 2.5× as often. Assign a person, not a department.
3. Give every number a review date. KPIs on their reporting cycle, Key Results within the cycle, objectives on a slower rhythm.
4. Separate commitments from stretch goals. Statutory and service-level commitments belong in KPIs or committed Key Results.
5. Measure the outliers, not only the average. The Department of Licensing tracks how many customers don’t get the result they need, not just the average experience.
6. Ask Sones’s last question every quarter: “Is there anything that we need to be tracking that we’re not?” Then ask the reverse, and retire the measures nobody uses.

Our view at ClearPoint

ClearPoint’s founders worked with Robert Kaplan and David Norton, and the platform runs Balanced Scorecards, OKRs and KPIs in one place because real plans combine them, as the examples above show. Our position: pick the framework that fits the decision, then make sure every objective, measure and initiative has a named owner and a review date. The software’s job is to make the gaps visible. It chases missing updates and turns the plan into a council or board report in one click.

FAQ

What is the main difference between an OKR and a KPI?

A KPI is an ongoing metric that shows how an existing process or service is performing. An OKR is a time-bound goal: an Objective plus measurable Key Results that show whether a specific change happened by a set date.

Can a KPI be a Key Result?

Yes. When you decide to improve a KPI within a set period, it becomes a Key Result for that cycle. When the cycle ends, it usually goes back to routine KPI monitoring with a new baseline.

Can OKRs replace KPIs?

No. OKRs cover the few changes you are pushing now. KPIs keep watch on everything else you have to keep running.

Is revenue an OKR or a KPI?

Revenue is a KPI. A specific increase in revenue by a deadline, for example a set amount of new-customer revenue by the end of the year, is a Key Result.

How do OKRs and KPIs fit with a Balanced Scorecard?

The Balanced Scorecard holds the multi-year objectives, organized by perspective. OKRs push the few objectives that need to move this cycle, and KPIs monitor the rest. Metropolitan Community College uses this layering, with a ten-year plan of 14 goals and annual goals for each of its 61 planning units.

How many KPIs should each objective have?

There is no universal number. Keep only the measures your owners can review on schedule. Carilion Clinic went from a 70-measure leadership scorecard to a 7-measure clinic-wide scorecard, and the Washington State Department of Licensing trimmed more than 150 measures to the ones most critical to its mission.

Where does the ClearPoint data in this article come from?

From ClearPoint’s research archive of anonymized, structural plan data from 150+ organizations. We counted objectives with and without a named owner (52,247 objectives) and the share of initiatives marked complete with and without a named owner (90,305 initiatives). All figures are aggregates, and no organization is identified. ClearPoint’s separate 2026 Strategic Planning Report analyzes 20,582 strategic plans.