How to Use OKRs in Regulated Environments

Hey folks,

Working in regulated environments can feel like trying to measure the immeasurable. Whether you're in pharmaceuticals, medical services, or financial institutions, the challenge of keeping customer data private while still understanding customer behavior is a constant balancing act.

In this newsletter, I dive deep into how teams can successfully implement customer-centric OKRs even in highly regulated spaces. I'll share specific techniques for measuring outcomes without compromising privacy, from leveraging aggregate data to conducting meaningful customer observations.

Speaking of measuring success, I'm excited to share my latest conversation with Mahan Tavakoli on the Partnering Leadership podcast, where we explored how OKRs transform the way organizations think about goals. Plus, I'll be leading a hands-on workshop at Product at Heart 2025 in Barcelona this April, helping teams create truly customer-centric products.

Let's dive in.

- Jeff

P.S. Our international Sense & Respond Learning workshops will continue into January. Taking place in countries like Israel and India, these hand-on workshops on Lean UX and Product Discovery will offer practical insights to drive innovation and deliver value to your customers. 

Article: Is it possible to use OKRs in regulated environments?

OKRs work best when they are customer-centric. To be specific, your objective should be the future benefit or state you’d like to create for your customer. Your key results should be outcomes – meaningful changes in the behavior of your customer – that show you’ve achieved the objective. This framework is (relatively) easy to apply in most business contexts. 

However, in regulated environments like pharmaceutical, medical, and financial services, customer behavior is often highly private and sensitive, not to mention illegal to share. Can we use customer-centric OKRs in these situations?

Outcomes in regulated environments

In order to measure outcomes in regulated environments, we need to understand what our customers are doing with our products, services, and experiences. If we work in a medical or pharmaceutical context, we have doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and patients (at the very least) as customers. 

While there are visible, public behaviors we can measure like the number of prescriptions a pharmacist fills (by tracking their ordering habits), there are others that are much more difficult. Did a doctor prescribe a particular medicine? Did a patient fill it? If you work in these fields, that data is important to you. It’s also highly guarded and difficult to get, if possible at all. 

In financial services, a bank can look at customer transactions, transaction volume, general behavior trends, credit usage, etc. to determine if the products and services they’re providing are generating meaningful value to their customers. Again, however, this data — especially on an individual level — is highly regulated and difficult to get. 

How do we know if we’re building a useful and valuable system if we can’t really look at customer behavior data?

How do we measure regulated key results?

There are a few techniques we can put in place to understand how our regulated products and services are meeting customer needs. First, we can start with aggregate data that anonymizes individual users. In many industries, it’s possible to get data on a selection of the user population that speaks to the overall behavior of that target audience. Individuals can’t be identified but overall trends can. In this way, it becomes easier to see if customer behavior is trending in the right direction. 

Another way is through observation. If your company has physical locations like clinics, pharmacies, or bank branches, you can spend time in some of them and observe the behavior of customers as they come in and out. You’re not identifying them individually nor are you speaking with them (at this point). You’re observing and noting general behavior patterns. 

Yet another way is to actually speak with a cross-section of your target audience on a regular basis. This would be done in-house and on-site at your office or another location. Your customers would be briefed on the types of conversations you’d like to have with them. They will have consented to have those conversations and in all likelihood they will be compensated for their time. 

Yes, this is qualitative data, but over time, it becomes quantitative. In the meantime, you’re starting to get a stream of inbound data on how and why your customers behave a certain way and what they’re actually looking for in your products and services. 

OKRs are harder in regulated environments. You should still use them. 

Inevitably, regulated environments will be a tougher fit for OKRs. Consumer privacy is paramount, as it should be. That said, there are ways for you to learn — ahead of time — if you’ll be solving meaningful customer problems and meeting their needs. 

Ultimately, the measure of success is behavior change, and by finding ways to understand what those are, you ensure your regulated business continues to thrive. 

What I’ve been up to

Success in product development requires multiple tools working together in harmony. I've been exploring this idea extensively lately - both through speaking engagements and in practical application with teams around the world.

I recently had an enlightening conversation with Mahan Tavakoli on the Partnering Leadership podcast about transforming the way organizations think about goals. We dug into why OKRs aren't just another framework, but rather a fundamental shift in how teams align around outcomes that truly matter. 

This mindset shift helps organizations build stronger products while fostering collaboration and innovation. When teams focus on customer behavior changes instead of just outputs, the impact becomes tangible and measurable.  

Watch, Listen, Read

Watch: There’s been a lot of great stuff released recently. Season two of Silo is still running, and I’ve enjoyed it. I’m also enjoying HBO’s Dune: Prophecy. It’s like a space soap opera. 

Listen: Been diving into a lot of instrumental, groovy stuff. Khurangbin is always a good time. But I’m really enjoying The Marias. Their music is spacey pop, but with a nice edge to it. Check out their second album, Submarine, which came out earlier this year.

Read: Andy Budd, an old friend and colleague, has a new book called The Growth Equation. The book brings Budd's design sensibilities and design leadership background to venture capital and startup investments. It's a unique aspect of the book that makes it a must for founders and entrepreneurs.

What’s new on the blog

OKRs for OKRs - Just like implementing any framework is an output and not an end goal, implementing OKRs needs its own set of OKRs to measure success through behavioral changes in your organization. It might seem meta, but it’s also crucial to the OKR’s success.

Does every target audience need an OKR? - When setting OKRs, we often think every target audience segment needs its own objective and key results, but in reality we should only set OKRs for audiences whose behavior we can directly influence. This is especially true in B2B environments.