Why Shift from Activity Updates to Key Result Progress Reviews

In my recent client work, I've been emphasizing the importance of shifting OKR review meetings from activity-focused status updates to deliberate discussions about key result progress. Here's why this shift matters and how to approach it.

The Problem with Activity Updates

Teams often default to reporting on activities. Activities feel like they’re within our control: progress on metrics, or actually-measurable truths about our performance on empirically-measurable key results can feel really scary.

Even in an OKR environment, where a set of outcome goals may be enunciated as lagging indicators — they’re what’s ultimately most important, but may be infrequently measured, which means we have periods of time where we’re hoping that we’re making progress, but might not know we’re making progress. Some examples:

• Improve NPS by ___ (when NPS is only measured once a year)
• Achieve a gross margin reduction of ___ for the year

Way too often what I see is people reporting on activity progress as the “leading indicator” of progress toward those lagging important outcomes. When I start integrating into new client environments and observe their OKR reviews or routine executive team meetings where OKRs are discussed, it’s not unusual to see an entire meeting “about OKRs” happen where nobody talks about empirically-measurable progress about the objective or key result: the only topic of discussion is what each person or team is doing.

This talk about activity feels like we’re talking about progress — and if everybody is doing it, why would anyone try anything else?

I’ve always struggled to enunciate why this is such an issue, and that conundrum was solved for me this morning while listening to a Big Think article about AI skeptic Gary Marcus, when I heard the words:

“Frequently wrong, never in doubt.”

That’s the situation I observe when teams are doing their status reporting — high confidence that no matter what their situation, they will get things on track … and here’s everything we’re doing (so see, we’re important! We’re working hard!).

In that situation, people and teams feel that by sharing everything they're working on, they're demonstrating contribution and forward momentum. But being busy doesn't necessarily mean we're making progress on our most important outcomes.

A Better Approach: Focus on the Numbers

Instead of reviewing long lists of activities, I recommend structuring OKR reviews around empirical progress on key results. This means:

• Looking specifically at the numerical targets and current status
• Discussing whether we're on track, off track, or don't have enough data to know (which signals we may have a gap to fill by developing a meaningful leading indicator key result)
• Identifying those leading indicators to give us earlier warning signals of risk (or, opportunities to leverage if we’re ahead of pace)
• Creating space to raise risks and blockers that need leadership support, and having those risks and blockers be treated with calm, focus, and a solution-orientation by leaders, whose job is to help make sure those needs are met or blockers cleared.

Making the Transition