How companies use objectives and key results for strategic planning

Examples of how companies like Miro, Netflix, and Tonal leverage OKRs to effectively execute and achieve their strategic goals.

Rachel Ding

Solutions Architect at Coda

How companies use objectives and key results for strategic planning

By Rachel Ding

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Product teams · 6 min read
It’s the end of the year, which can mean a lot of different things for different folks. There’s holiday shopping to be done. Festive parties to attend. Not to mention the checklist wrap-ups to complete at work. For many companies, this is a time of year to both look back on all that they’ve accomplished over the past 12 months, as well as make plans for the upcoming 12. This often means setting aside time to hone in on objectives and key results (OKRs) and build on the overarching goals that will shape their team’s strategy. The origin of the OKR framework has shown impressive staying power—nearly five decades’ worth, in fact. The concept was first introduced in the 70s by the co-founder and former CEO at Intel, Andrew Grove. A few years later, John Doerr (who at the time was working at Intel), learned about OKRs through Grove and brought the idea with him to Google. From there, OKRs was worked into the central culture of Google—but it didn’t stop there. Through the decades, organizations of all sizes and stages—from emerging startups to small- and medium-sized businesses—have adopted OKRs and put it into practice. Here are a few companies who have integrated the OKR framework and made it their own in their strategic planning, and how you can do the same.

How digital collaboration platform Miro bridged the planning and execution gap with OKRs.

 There are various individual approaches to OKRs, from the simple, no-hierarchy OKRs for small or emerging teams to the classic Google-style OKRs that cascade down through company levels. Then there are the flexible modeled hierarchy OKRs used by companies like Miro. Under this OKR paradigm, teams add an intermediate layer that defines key focus areas for the business. These might be called initiatives, pillars, or epics and are limited to just a handful. Initiatives and Objectives are shared company-wide, but Key Results are only viewed and managed by individual teams. This allows them the freedom to create as many KRs as they need and organize them however they’d like—as long as they align with company Objectives.
In Coda, we have all the needed information about each OKR and initiative, from involved people to details on RACI, what success looks like, target audience, risks, and dependencies. Automations help us to bring together actual data on OKRs and send notifications to DRIs to prepare their updates.
Ilia Tregubov
Head of Product Operations at Miro
With too much complexity in their planning process, Miro recognized that they needed to step back and find a solution that fit their company, not the other way around. Learn more on how Miro bridged planning & execution from their Head of ProductOps. According to Ilia, Miro faced an issue with their own quarterly implementation of OKRs—they were spending too much time in planning mode, which often left to the Miro team feeling misaligned in key areas. The solution? They needed to simplify.
While we liked OKRs as a concept, we stepped back and worked on an application that would work better for our process and needs.
Ilia Tregubov
Head of Product Operations at Miro
As a result, the team refreshes its Objectives every year, while KRs are defined every 6-12 months and initiatives are updated as frequently as every 3 months. To make sure they don’t get too caught up in rigid structures, Miro customizes its OKR process based on the following principles:
  1. Reduce and amplify OKRs: Don’t set too many OKRs, and ensure all teams know what they are.
  2. Improve tracking rituals: Meet weekly to measure progress.
  3. Link strategy and execution with the right tools: Use tools like Coda to transition from idea to action.
To track their OKRs, Miro uses Coda, which integrates seamlessly with its own platform. The team starts by using Miro boards to draft and collaborate on goals and initiatives. Then, the finalized OKRs are moved into Coda. If your team loves using Miro to ideate, Coda makes it easier to take your brainstorm copy-paste tedium to the next action step. In the case of OKRs, once you’ve set a clear goal through a Miro board, you can finalize your OKRs into Coda with one of our templates, or one of your own.
Try the Coda for Miro app

How popular streaming service Netflix flexes company strategies with OKRs.

 Another company that's crushing strategic planning is Netflix. Netflix’s OKR journey began in the early 2000s when co-founder Reed Hastings brought the framework to his leadership vision for the company. Netflix's product team's approach to goal-setting and organizational performance, including aspects related to OKRs, is also closely tied to its broader company culture, which prioritizes autonomy, accountability, and innovation. Netflix describes its framework as "context, not control," emphasizing clear communication of strategic objectives without micromanaging execution. Teams are empowered to make decisions aligned with company goals, fostering agility and innovation. And at Netflix, the customer comes first. We heard about this recently at the Lenny & Friends Summit during Netflix CPO Eunice Kim’s presentation. She shared three principles for building empathy as a product manager: respect customers, preserve your core value proposition, and show vs. tell. Like OKRs, these guidelines help the company stay focused on its principles and aligned to its objectives. As an example, Eunice shared that user research uncovered that user account sharing was a deeply emotional topic for Netflix’s customers. OKRs help address discoveries like that, allowing companies like Netflix to connect data to solutions. As a result, they can see evidence of customer frustration or low user satisfaction and pivot or jump into action.
At Coda, we use the Quarterly Plus OKRs model that can connect to the similar sentiment of Netflix’s autonomy, accountability, and innovation mission, by enabling teams to link their OKRs to overarching strategic initiatives. Additionally, we leverage our own platform to manage OKR tracking. In a single Coda doc, we can bring our goals and day-to-day work side-by-side so they can evolve together as we move closer and closer to our objectives.
Try the Quarterly Plus OKRs template

How smart gym company Tonal aligns leadership on progress with OKRs.

At Tonal, a leading smart home gym company, product managers were spending hours compiling and re-writing slide decks to update executives on their progress against OKRs—copying, pasting, and re-telling the same story over and over. Not only was this time-consuming, but as soon as the files got shared, they were out of date.
Now, every team can sync their OKR updates into an “exec binder” with one synced page from each team. This creates an Exec Dashboard that covers multiple teams. Then, during weekly check-ins, execs can debrief on overall progress without needing to scour multiple team-level OKR docs. This gives them the best of both worlds: The PDE teams get the autonomy to work how they want to, but in a way that provides transparency across the org. In a recent webinar, Coda’s Head of Solutions Marketing, John Scrugham walks through Tonal’s product team hub. In it, he dives into how Zach Lebovics (Staff Product Manager at Tonal) built the doc for alignment, autonomy, and adaptability with 2-way sync integrations in Jira that can win back time for everyone. Thanks to sync pages, it’s easier than ever to give executives visibility into org-wide execution.
See Tonal's Exec Dashboard

Uplevel your own OKRs.

 Whether’s the the end of the year, the start of a new one, or somewhere in between, OKRs play a transformative role in how a company grows and strategizes for their future. These are just a few snapshots of companies who utilize the OKR framework to take their planning process to another level. And just like these companies have had huge success applying OKRs into their strategic planning, yours can as well. The good news is having a powerful, flexible tool like Coda makes it easy to run your planning process. On top of that, our OKR templates enable teams of all sizes to better execute their vision and strategy, plan bottom-up and top-down, reflect together on the past, and focus on the future—all in one centralized place. Ready to get started with OKRs? Begin by building your own OKR doc or by checking out our OKR handbook.
Ultimate Coda Handbook for Planning & OKRs

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