OKRs vs KPIs: What’s the Difference and Which Will Drive Growth?

If you're wondering about the best way to measure your business performance, you're not alone.

We speak to founders, COOs and managers all the time who are trying to figure out whether they should be using OKRs or KPIs—or both. It can feel like a tangle of acronyms, especially when you're just trying to answer a simple question: Are we moving in the right direction?

So, in this post, we’ll unpack the difference between OKRs and KPIs, when to use them, their pros and cons, and how they can work together to help you actually run your business—rather than chase your tail.

We also covered OKRs in more detail here if you fancy having a watch of our webinar:

Webinar teching the use of OKRs

What Are OKRs and KPIs?

Both OKRs and KPIs are business performance frameworks. They help teams track goals, monitor progress, and make sure you're not just busy—but effective.

OKRs = Objectives and Key Results

OKRs are for setting strategic goals. They’re best when you want to focus, align teams, and drive meaningful change. You set a big, inspiring objective and measure it with 2–4 key results. These results are ambitious, time-bound, and outcome-based.

💡 Example OKR:

Objective: Improve customer experience

Key Results:

• Increase NPS score from 42 to 60

• Reduce average response time from 4 hours to under 1

• Achieve a 30% increase in 5-star reviews on Google

KPIs = Key Performance Indicators

KPIs are your core business metrics—think dashboards, weekly reporting, and monthly reviews. They help you monitor performance and keep things steady.

🧮 Example KPIs:

• Website conversion rate

• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

• Customer retention rate

• Sales pipeline velocity

Benefits and Disadvantages

✅ Benefits of OKRs

• Help you focus on what truly matters

• Align teams on shared goals

• Push ambition and innovation

• Work well for quarterly planning and scale-up strategies

❌ Drawbacks of OKRs

• Can feel overwhelming to roll out across the business

• Risk of being too vague or disconnected from day-to-day work

• Can be ignored if not tracked consistently

✅ Benefits of KPIs

• Provide clear, quantifiable business data

• Easy to monitor regularly

• Ideal for operational efficiency and optimisation

• Simple to automate and dashboard

❌ Drawbacks of KPIs

• Don’t necessarily inspire change

• Can lead to tunnel vision if they become the only focus

• Might prioritise outputs over outcomes (e.g. number of emails sent vs actual engagement)

OKRs vs KPIs. Ding. Ding.

So – When Should You Use OKRs or KPIs?

If you're trying to figure out how to track business performance in a meaningful way, here’s a quick cheat sheet:

Use OKRs when you want to…	Use KPIs when you need to…
Set and achieve strategic goals	Track day-to-day business performance
Create alignment across departments	Monitor health of core functions (sales, ops, etc.)
Push for growth, change or improvement	Optimise existing processes and systems
Run on a quarterly rhythm	Review monthly or weekly performance

Most successful businesses use OKRs for growth and KPIs for control. You can’t build momentum without direction, and you can’t scale chaos.

Real-World Tip 💡

Inside our Fix & Flow programme, we often start by clarifying KPIs—get the baseline right, understand what's working and what's not. From there, we layer in OKRs to drive strategic progress. It’s not about one vs the other—it’s about how to make them work together.

Final Thoughts

Choosing between OKRs and KPIs isn’t really a choice—it’s a strategy. You use KPIs to measure what’s already happening. You use OKRs to create change. Together, they help you go from running your business reactively to leading it with clarity.