Not Every Metric Is a Key Result

System availability.

NPS.

Support response time.

Recurring revenue.

Conversion rate.

All of them can be important metrics.

But that does not mean they should automatically become Key Results.

A simple question helps:

Are we monitoring the business, or trying to change the business?

When a metric continuously tracks the health of a product, service, or operation, it is probably a KPI.

For example:

Maintain system availability above 99.9%.

That may be essential.

But it could simply describe business as usual.

Now consider:

Maintain system availability above 99.9% while migrating 80% of customers to the new platform.

The metric is the same.

But the context is different.

Now maintaining availability demonstrates that the team is protecting reliability during a risky change.

That may deserve a place in the Team OKR.

The difference is not the metric itself.

The difference is the team’s intention.

KPIs monitor health.

Key Results demonstrate meaningful progress during a defined cycle.

The same metric can play both roles.

But it should not enter an OKR just because it is measurable.

—Paulo

🔗

https://chatokr.ai

📘 https://caroli.org/en/team-okr-guide/

Look at one metric in your current OKR.

Is the team trying to change it—or simply monitor it?