525. It's OKR time againš
Five free OKR templates to help you stay on track with your new goals
Hellooo š So happy to have you here. Iām Kevan. I have spent 15+ years as a head of marketing for some cool tech startups. Now Iāve co-founded a brand storytelling business called Bonfire. We do coaching, advisory, and content. If you identify with creativity and marketing, weād love for you to join us.
Free OKR templates for marketing leaders
It is the end of June, quarters are ending, first halves are coming to a close, and everyone is turning their attention to planning andāif my in-house experience is any indicationāwondering whether thereās a better way to do OKRs than weāre currently doing them.
The answer for most teams: Yes, there is almost a certainly a better way to do OKRs.
(Iāve been part of some build-the-plan-as-you-fly OKR processes, and Iāve also been part of some pretty fantastic ones at Buffer and at Oyster.)
Iāve written before about my process for coming up with great OKRs and tracking them throughout a quarter.
Itās served me well as a way to:
Prove the value of all the marketing work my team is doing
Keep everyone on the same page and aware of what weāre working toward
Cut down on ambiguity around reporting and progress
And my process stays mostly the same regardless of which tool or template Iām using. There are lots of templates I love. So I thought Iād share a bunch with you in case youāre wanting a fresh way to coordinate OKRs for your team or for your company.
1. My go-to OKR template in Notion
Most every startup Iāve worked at is using a tool like Notion (or Slite or Coda, etc) for its internal documentation and team wiki. What a perfect place then to show off the numbers and goals that are most important to a company!
With this template, you can see visual progress bars for each Key Result, you can nest Key Results underneath specific Objectives, and you can even assign ownership and add contextual updates to progress throughout the period.
Get a free copy below (just click the āduplicateā icon in the upper right-hand corner to add this to your teamās Notion workspace).
2. My new favorite OKR template in Daydream
You can think of Daydream as like the Figma for data. If youāve ever used a tool like Looker or Heap or really any analytics or business intelligence platform, you have likely wanted just a bit more context and explanation for all those numbers youāre seeing. Daydream does this by joining data with documentation, as if Looker and Notion were melded together.
So obviously Daydream makes a super candidate as a hub for OKR reporting.
I spent a minute with the Daydream team to put together a template for how OKRs can work in their platform and how marketing leaders like you can use them to gain that well-deserved appreciation and influence!
3. An OKR template I love from Buffer
The Buffer team makes everything transparentāeven salariesāso of course their OKR process is available for anyone to see and use, too. Hereās a link to the template in Notion.
I had left Buffer before we started using Notion for OKRs, but I can imagine some of the brilliant teammates who invented this process. The template is great, clean, easy to understand, and straightforward enough to scale to pretty much any size of company or team.
4. How we did OKRs in Asana when I was at Oyster
When I was at Oyster, we ran all of our projects through Asana. We also ran all of our OKRs through the platform.
The beauty with this is that each project could be tied back to a company goal, which made all the work feel extra important and valuable. Itās quite encouraging to know that the thing youāre working on has an impact on a thing everyone cares about!
If youāre an Asana user, the actual feature is called Goals (not OKRs), but all the OKR methodology is covered in the featureset: you can nest goals under other goals (i.e. objectives), you can assign owners, and you can update progress toward a goal amount with a deadline.
5. An OKR template in a Google Sheet
Iāve been at many places, especially early stage, that live and breathe spreadsheets. So sometimes it makes sense to put your OKRs in there, too.
One of my favorite templates is this one from Perdoo.
It includes all the things youād need to have in an OKR template, plus it has the spreadsheet math to show you how youāre faring with progress and completion throughout the quarter.
About this newsletter ā¦
Hi, Iām Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Now I am cofounder at Bonfire, a brand storytelling company.
Each week on this substack, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
Thank you for being here! šāāļø
Iām lucky to count folks from great brands like these (and many more) as part of this newsletter community.