Spirit-First OKRs
Write down qualitatively what crushing it looks like before you pick any number
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 94%
Zhang's antidote to OKR theatre. Teams sandbag targets out of fear, then hit every green and nobody — not the company, not the users — feels anything different. The fix is to start qualitatively: describe what it would mean to truly crush the quarter for users and for the business, draw the line from your input metric to that outcome, and only then set numbers. Red and yellow with real learning beats all-green.
Origin
Zhang's own leadership practice at Airbnb, WeWork and Webflow, layered on top of the standard Andy Grove / John Doerr OKR system.
Core principles
- 01All-green OKRs are evidence the targets were not ambitious enough.
- 02Fear of OKRs produces sandbagging, late number-setting, and a company that cannot innovate or move quickly.
- 03'I only own an input metric' is true but is not an excuse to skip drawing the line to the output.
- 04A leader must create a culture where taking a risk and failing does not damage a performance review.
- 05Ambition without a plan is not the job — dream big AND lay out the milestone path.
How to run it
- 1
Ask what the spirit of the quarter is
Before any metric, ask the team: what is the spirit of what you're trying to achieve, and what would make you say you really crushed it this quarter?
- 2
Write out the qualitative success state for users and business
Describe in words what users would feel and what the business would see (e.g. revenue growth) if this went brilliantly. Write it down, don't just gesture at it.
- 3
Do the homework of drawing the line from input to outcome
Connect your owned input metric to the ultimate outcome for the company and users. This is the step teams skip, and skipping it is what produces green OKRs that change nothing.
Watch out If you refuse to sign up for anything but an input metric, you can hit every OKR while the company looks at your work and does not call it a success.
- 4
Set the ambitious North Star, then the milestone path
State the North Star that will not be achieved in a quarter, then lay out the specific quarter-over-quarter milestones that get there, and explain why the first one is meaningful.
Pro tip This milestone path is what a leader should assess in a performance review — not the colour of the OKR.
- 5
Grade for learning, not for green
Prefer red and yellow with a clear account of why you missed over an all-green board. Explicitly protect people who took the risk and failed.
Watch out Without an explicit no-punishment culture, the whole framework collapses back into sandbagging.
In the wild
Zhang describes the recurring pattern where the data scientist and the PM both say: I only own an input metric, not an output metric, so I can't sign up for a revenue target. Every statement in that sentence is true, and the effect is that nobody ever connects the work to the outcome.
→ The team hits all of its OKRs and neither the company nor the users feel anything different — which Zhang calls the worst possible outcome: OKRs for the sake of OKRs.
A PM proposes a hugely ambitious North Star. Zhang does not want them to shrink it — she wants them to say: this is unreasonable in one quarter, here are the five milestones quarter-over-quarter that get there, here is the first one and why it is meaningful.
→ The team can take a big swing and still be judged fairly, because the path — not just the outcome — is the artifact under review.
Common mistakes
Sandbagging and late number-setting
Fear that a missed OKR hurts your reputation or promotion makes people hold back numbers until they're certain, which caps the company's ambition and speed.
Dreaming big with no plan
Setting a super-ambitious target while having no idea how to achieve it is also a failure of the job. The job is to dream big and have a plan to tackle it.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product leaders whose org has drifted into defensive, all-green OKRs and lost its appetite for ambitious bets
Not ideal for
Environments where compensation is hard-wired to OKR attainment and the leader cannot change that policy — the culture step is a prerequisite, not optional
From the transcript
“my biggest tip on okrs is actually get really really crisp on qualitatively like what would make you say yes we did a great job”
“I would rather have all the okrs be red or yellow and like we missed everything and we learned around why we missed it then…”
“you end up hitting all your okrs but the company and and your users at large are like I don't feel anything different”
“here are the five Milestones you know whatever number some number of Milestones that it's going to take me to do quarter over quarter to…”
From the episode
Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM
Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox)