Art of the OKR AND Babies, Bathwater and Goal-Setting

If HomeFood were to hypothetically launch today, these would be top-of-mind OKRs that I believe my team would ideally consider. These would be in the time frame of first-quarter OKRs.

Objective: Create and maintain a diverse offering of home chefs and cuisines.

Key Results: 

  • X number of home chefs are onboarded and active.
  • X distinct cuisines are available on the platform.

Objective: Stanford students value us enough to pay.

Key Results: 

  • X% of Stanford students download HomeFood.
  • Students spend a monthly average of $X.

Objective: Initiate and maintain meaningful relationships between consumers and chefs.

Key Results: 

  • X% of consumers place X distinct orders from the same chef.
  • X% of consumers use the chat feature to communicate with chefs.

I believe these are definitely challenging but “stretch-zone” worthy OKRs as they would push our team to really bring our A-game from all sides to try and accomplish these objectives. I also believe that these are not overly complicated and that it would be tough to remember, but I do wonder if it would be better/more realistic to limit first-quarter OKR even further to two, for example.

Of course, these OKRs are ambitious enough that there will be some failures for us to take seriously and learn from, and I am interested in learning more about what that learning and growth process is like. There can be a lot of pride that a team can hold when launching their product/idea into the world, and failure is tough to process and manage. Would love to hear anyone’s thoughts and/or experiences regarding this!

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