Why OKRs Work Across Any Industry

Hey folks,

Behind every metric is a human making choices. That's the core message I keep coming back to when talking about OKRs. Whether you're selling tickets or developing an app, the principles of measuring success through customer behavior remain remarkably consistent.

In this newsletter, I break down why OKRs work across any industry and share three universal principles that make them effective. 

We're also prepping something exciting: Josh and I are hosting another free webinar on writing better goals for 2025. You're likely in the middle of making plans for next year.  We'll show you how to create goals that can adapt to whatever 2025 throws your way.

Plus, I share some thoughts on making good use of thought leadership and how leaders can measure their own work using OKRs.

Let's dig in.

- Jeff

P.S. Our international Sense & Respond Learning workshops will continue through the end of this year. Taking place in countries like Austria, Italy, and Brazil, these hand-on workshops on Lean UX and Product Discovery will offer practical insights to drive innovation and deliver value to your customers. 

Article: OKRs across industries: Universal principles for measuring human behavior

OKRs work just as well for selling coffee as they do for developing software. 

That’s because the principles behind measuring success through customer behavior apply universally, regardless of your industry or where you work in your organization.

Consider this: your organization makes something—whether it's a product, service, policy, or program—and someone uses that thing. That someone is your customer. A marketing team's customers consume their campaigns. HR's customers – company staff –  engage with their policies. Sales teams' customers buy their offerings.

This is why OKRs transcend industry boundaries. Whether you're running a restaurant, developing software, or managing corporate policies, understanding who you serve and measuring their response to your work creates a powerful feedback loop. It transforms production goals into concrete evidence of real impact.

Here are three universal principles that make OKRs effective across all sectors:

1. Every organization serves humans

The beauty of OKRs lies in their focus on customers. Instead of measuring success by mere output (did we launch the thing?), OKRs measure how customers respond to what we've created. By recognizing who consumes our work, we can better measure its impact and ensure we're solving real problems for real people.

2. Changed behavior indicates success 

When customers change their behavior in response to our work—through things like increased usage, higher retention, or faster adoption—it signals that we've actually solved their problems. These behavioral changes tell us more than any output metric could. If engagement drops after a new feature launch, we learn something valuable. If policy compliance increases after a revision, that's meaningful data. These behavioral signals guide our next steps.

3. Customer feedback creates continuous improvement

This customer-centric approach forces us to maintain humans in the conversation. We have to understand what brings customers to us in the first place. What are they trying to accomplish? What obstacles do they face? How are they currently working around these challenges? How can we provide something better? When customers change their behavior in response to our work, it not only signals success but teaches us how to improve.

The key is remembering that behind every metric is a human making choices. Those choices tell us whether we're truly delivering value. 

By focusing on these universal principles—identifying our human customers, measuring their behavioral changes, and using their feedback for improvement—any organization or department can implement effective OKRs that drive meaningful results.

The implementation of OKRs provides an effective way to assess your organization's current state, implement new practices to better serve customers, and understand whether these practices are working—regardless of your industry. 

When we truly understand who we serve, we all improve the work we do.

Like this idea and want to learn more? Get a copy of our new book on OKRs.

What’s new on the blog

How to make good use of thought leadership - As an author and thought leader, I know the temptation to implement frameworks exactly as they're written in books—including my own. But the reality is that these ideas work best when you adapt them to your unique context, taking what works and leaving what doesn't. 

How to write OKRs for leadership work - Leaders make things too, like vision statements, strategies, and organizational goals. But how do we know if these outputs actually work for the teams consuming them? Here, I break down how executives can use OKRs to measure their own work, ensuring that what we create as leaders drives real behavioral changes in our organizations.