From Moonshots to Milestones: How OKRs Propel Strategy Execution
When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969, it wasn’t just the result of a lofty idea shouted from the rooftops. It was the culmination of a meticulously connected network of goals that guided every team and individual.[1] NASA’s mission—“land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth”—was audacious, but it succeeded because it cascaded into precise objectives at every level. By breaking the impossible into achievable steps, NASA turned an aspirational vision into a coordinated effort that worked.
Every organization needs goals that do the same. Effective goals take strategy out of the abstract and turn it into meaningful, actionable work. When properly aligned, goals ensure every individual knows how their contributions matter.
But too often, organizations treat goal-setting as an HR-driven exercise focused on annual performance reviews. If your goals are primarily driven by HR, your strategy is probably doomed. This isn’t a knock on HR—it’s about understanding that goal-setting must be at the core of strategic execution, not just a tool for annual evaluations.
When goals are deeply tied to strategy, they can transform execution. A quality goal-setting process may produce useful performance data, but its real purpose is to bring clarity and motivation to the strategy, making it tangible and engaging for every individual involved.
The most effective framework for achieving this connection, in my experience, is OKRs—Objectives and Key Results.
Objectives articulate what we want to achieve in its simplest form. They are aspirational, challenging, and motivating, focusing on what we want to accomplish, not how we’ll measure it. Key Results are specific, quantifiable indicators of progress—how we will measure successfully achieving the objective.
As my friend and long-time CEO and board member Angela Kapp points out, “When setting up a new initiative or launching a new product, it’s crucial to determine what success looks like from the start. If you don’t define success, you can’t measure progress effectively or know when to pivot or move on.” Defining outcomes clearly from the beginning is essential for ensuring everyone understands what success looks like before diving into tasks. This kind of clarity is what gives Key Results their power—providing concrete targets that teams can rally around and measure against.
The magic of OKRs, however, lies in how they cascade through the organization, connecting every individual’s work to the overall strategy. When done right, this process creates a line of sight from the CEO’s vision down to the daily tasks of frontline employees, ensuring that everyone understands how their role contributes to the highest-level objectives.
As we discussed previously with tools like the Ladder of Abstraction and KPI Trees, OKRs take a hierarchical approach to breaking down broad concepts, making them more understandable and relatable at various levels of the organization. We use the Ladder of Abstraction to guide our Objective language, ensuring it resonates with the teams assigned, and we use KPI Trees to provide the right metrics for our Key Result targets.
From Moonshot Vision to Daily Actions
To understand how cascading works at a deep level, let’s carry the NASA example forward. In 1962, during a visit to NASA, President John F. Kennedy reportedly encountered a janitor and asked him what he was doing. The janitor responded, “Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.” This simple statement captures the essence of purpose and alignment across every level of an organization. It shows that every role can be meaningful when everyone is working toward the same goal. The janitor wasn’t just cleaning floors—he understood that his work was part of something much bigger.
Let’s use our NASA example to illustrate how cascading OKRs can link a big-picture vision to individual actions, from astronauts all the way to support staff, ensuring each person knows exactly how their efforts contribute to the mission.
Level 1: NASA’s Organizational OKRs
Objective: Establish U.S. leadership in space exploration and technology.
This objective is aspirational, encapsulating NASA’s role as a leader in space and technology. To support it, we have measurable Key Results:
Key Result 1: Be the first nation to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the 1960s.
This Key Result provides clarity on what it means to establish U.S. leadership in space—it is concrete, time-bound, and focused.
Level 2: Mission Division OKRs
To achieve NASA’s overarching objective, various divisions and departments need to contribute.
Mission Division Objective: Successfully execute the Apollo program to achieve a lunar landing and return.
Key Result 1: Assemble and prepare a team of astronauts trained for lunar mission operations by 1968.
Key Result 2: Develop, test, and certify Saturn V launch vehicles by the end of 1967.
Key Result 3: Conduct at least three successful orbital missions to validate spacecraft systems by 1969.
At this level, the focus shifts from broad leadership in space to specific initiatives directly supporting the Apollo mission.
Level 3: Engineering and Support Department OKRs
Moving down another level, the departments within the Mission Division contribute to the technical, engineering, and support roles needed for Apollo’s success.
Engineering and Support Department Objective: Ensure the reliability and safety of the Apollo spacecraft and support infrastructure.
Key Result 1: Achieve a 99.9% reliability rating for all critical spacecraft systems by mid-1968.
Key Result 2: Complete development and safety testing of the lunar module by early 1969.
Key Result 3: Reduce average turnaround time for ground support operations to under 4 hours per task by June 30, 1968.
These Key Results bring specificity to what the engineering teams must achieve, ensuring that their work feeds into the higher-level Key Results of the Mission Division.
Level 4: Individual Contributors and Support Staff OKRs
Finally, we reach the level of individual contributors and support staff, such as technicians, engineers, and the janitors who keep NASA running smoothly.
Facilities and Support Objective: Maintain optimal working conditions to support the Apollo mission effectively.
Key Result 1: Ensure all mission-critical areas are cleaned and maintained according to safety standards, with zero incidents affecting operations.
Key Result 2: Implement efficient waste management processes, reducing waste-related issues by 20% by the end of 1968.
Key Result 3: Achieve a 95% satisfaction rate in quarterly surveys on cleanliness and facility conditions by mission-critical teams.
Even the janitor’s role is connected to the broader mission. By maintaining clean, safe conditions, he ensures that the engineers and astronauts have an environment conducive to peak performance. When he said, “I’m helping put a man on the moon,” he wasn’t speaking metaphorically—he was recognizing that his contribution played a vital role in the mission’s success.
Why OKRs Work
OKRs don’t just cascade goals. They tap into something more profound: our need for purpose. Neuroscience tells us that clearly defined, challenging goals trigger a release of dopamine—the chemical that fuels motivation and reinforces focus.[3] Breaking a bold objective into smaller, measurable results keeps us engaged. Every time a Key Result is achieved, it’s like crossing the next milestone on a long journey.
This is why OKRs aren’t just checkboxes for annual reviews. They create clarity and intrinsic motivation by linking daily tasks to an inspiring vision. When implemented effectively, OKRs ensure everyone—from the CEO to the frontline employee—understands how their work contributes to the organization’s success.
The Impact of Proper Goal-Setting
Gabe Dalporto stepped into the CEO role at Udacity during an incredibly challenging time. Just as he began leading the company, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, creating a wave of uncertainty for Udacity and its customers. This crisis hit at a critical moment when Udacity’s strategy was still evolving, and an operating framework was not yet in place to guide the team through this turbulent period.
With no formalized operating structure or established strategy, Udacity faced the risk of becoming directionless and struggling to adapt to the pandemic’s impact. As Gabe recalled, “We had maybe the seeds of a strategy, but it wasn’t quite set yet… and then COVID hit.” Without clarity or alignment, the team’s ability to execute effectively was significantly impaired.
In just seven days, Gabe implemented OKRs across the company, providing a framework to prioritize and align. “Everybody had total clarity,” he says. “It was a matter of survival.” The immediate clarity allowed Udacity to focus its efforts, stabilize, and eventually adapt to the crisis.
OKRs have been credited with transforming organizations of all sizes, from startups to tech giants. Google, for instance, used OKRs to help scale from a fledgling startup to a global powerhouse, with every employee having visibility into their colleagues’ objectives, promoting transparency and collaboration. Larry Page, Google’s former CEO, once noted, “OKRs have helped lead us to 10x growth, many times over.”2 The cascading alignment facilitated by OKRs was part of what transformed Google into the company it is today
These stories highlight a critical truth: OKRs are not just a management tool. They are a way of creating clarity and alignment at every level of the organization, turning strategy into action.
A well-designed OKR framework doesn’t just tell people what the company wants to achieve. It taps into the human need for purpose, ensuring that each team member knows why their work matters. And when the work is meaningful, it drives the type of engagement and motivation necessary for successful strategy execution. This connection between clarity, motivation, and execution is why OKRs are such a powerful tool for turning strategy into reality.
Goals have to be far more than checkboxes for annual reviews. They are the building blocks that connect strategy to action, providing clarity, motivation, and meaning at every level of the organization. When effectively connected through OKRs, goals guide every person toward the same mission, ensuring coordinated efforts calibrated toward driving the most critical elements of the strategy.
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This post is an excerpt from my upcoming book, a practical handbook for executing strategy from an operator’s point of view. Drawing on decades of real-world experience, it’s designed to help leaders turn strategy into action through clear, actionable steps. Stay tuned for more insights and updates as we get closer to launch!
Footnotes:
Alonso, T. (n.d.). How NASA went to the Moon and beyond. Cascade Strategy. Retrieved from https://www.cascade.app/studies/nasa-strategy-study
Doerr, J. (2018). Measure what matters: OKRs: The simple idea that drives 10x growth. Portfolio.
Schultz, W. (2017). Reward prediction error. Current Biology, 27(10), R369–R371. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5854216/
