Quick answer
Open Goals in the sidebar, click New objective, name what you are trying to achieve and pick the period it covers, then add the key results that will tell you whether it happened. Optionally align it under one of your own objectives or your manager's. It is active as soon as you save it.
Setting an objective
Open Goals
Click Goals in the sidebar. The three tiles at the top show how many objectives you have running, your average progress across them, and how many you have achieved.Click New objective
The form opens in a dialog.Name it
Write the objective the way you would say it out loud — "Make onboarding something a new engineer finishes on day one" beats "Onboarding improvements".Pick a period
A quarter, or the year. These are the same period names your reviews use, so a goal and a review line up without any translation.Add key results
At least one, up to ten. Choose what kind of number it is, then say where you are starting and where you want to get to.Align it, if it rolls up
Pick a parent objective if this work feeds something bigger. You can align to your own objectives or to your manager's — not to a colleague's.Save
The objective goes live immediately. There is no approval step.
The four kinds of key result
- A number — a count of anything: signups, services, milliseconds, open tickets. Add a unit so the number reads properly on the page.
- A percentage — anything measured out of a hundred, like the share of releases that need no evening window.
- An amount in rupees — new business closed, cost saved, budget recovered.
- Done / not done — for the things that either happened or did not. No number to argue about.
Whichever you choose, the number is stored exactly. Rupee amounts are held in whole paise, so nothing is ever lost to rounding.
What alignment does
Aligning an objective under a parent says "this work rolls up into that". The Alignment tab draws the result: parents with whatever sits under them, and how far along each one is.
You can align to your own objectives, or to any active objective owned by someone you report to. You cannot align to a colleague's objective — their goals are not yours to attach to, and you cannot see them anyway. An objective can never be its own parent, and a chain that loops back on itself is refused.
What the statuses mean
- Active — running, and you can check in on it.
- Achieved — you closed it as done.
- Missed — you closed it as not done.
- Cancelled — it stopped mattering, and you closed it rather than leaving it hanging.
Closing is final. The record of how a period actually went is not rewritten afterwards — that is most of the value of writing goals down at all.
Frequently asked questions
- Why do I have to add a key result?
- Because an objective without one is a wish. A key result is the number that settles the argument at the end of the period — without it, "did we do it?" has no answer except an opinion. The form asks for at least one and at most ten.
- Can I type in a progress percentage?
- No, and that is deliberate. Progress is worked out from your key results every time the page loads, so it can never drift away from the numbers it claims to summarise. Move the key result and the progress moves with it.
- What if my key result is about reducing something?
- That works exactly the same way. Set the starting value high and the target low — cutting a response time from 900ms to 300ms, say — and progress counts down instead of up.
- Can my manager or HR change my objective?
- No. Your manager and HR admins can see your objectives, and that is the point — but only you can change, check in on, or close your own. A goal somebody else can quietly rewrite is not your goal.
- Who can see my objectives?
- You, the people you report to, and HR admins. Colleagues cannot see them, and nobody outside your organisation can, ever.
This guide also lives in the help centre at /help/goals-okrs/how-to-set-an-objective, which is its canonical home.