Key results that add up: splitting one goal across teams

A company key result for the year says “grow ARR from $4M to $10M”. Six teams write key results that support it. At the end of the year, every team hits its target, and the company still misses. This happens constantly, and it’s almost always arithmetic, not effort. Here’s how to split a number so the parts genuinely add up to the whole.

#Why team key results don’t add up by default

When each team writes its OKRs separately, three things go wrong:

• Gaps. Nobody owns churn, so the company loses $1M of ARR that no team had a key result to prevent.
• Double counting. Sales and Marketing both count the same $2M of bookings.
• Mismatched units. Marketing measures leads, Sales measures meetings, and the company measures ARR. None of them convert cleanly into the others.

The fix is to split the number deliberately, from the top, before teams write their own OKRs around their slice.

#Step 1: classify the metric

#Step 2: decompose it into a driver tree

Write the parent as a formula of things specific teams control. For ARR growth:

Net new ARR = new business + expansion + self-serve − churn

To go from $4M to $10M, the company needs $6M of net new ARR. Suppose last quarter’s data suggests churn of about $1M is likely without intervention. Then gross additions need to reach $7M.

#Step 3: size each share to the owner, not evenly

An even split (“three teams, $2M each”) ignores how different the channels are. Size each slice from its own baseline and capacity:

• Start from the run rate. If new business closed $0.8M last year, $4.0M of new bookings this year needs a capacity story to match: more ramped reps, more pipeline, a better win rate. Without one, the target is a wish.
• Check capacity. Quota per rep × ramped reps, expansion potential in the installed base, trial volume × conversion.
• Cover more than 100%. If every slice is sized to exactly hit the parent, any single miss sinks it. Many teams plan child targets to add up to 105–115% of the parent.

#Step 4: handle ratios with weights, not sums

Ratios are where most roll-ups quietly break. Say the company key result is “trial-to-paid conversion from 10% to 14%”, and two segments run trials:

Two rules follow. Set ratio targets per segment together with the volume they apply to. And remember that shifting mix moves the company number even when no segment improves: more mid-market trials alone would lift company conversion here.

#Step 5: link the dependent ones

Some of the most important contributions don’t add numerically. Product shipping SSO doesn’t produce ARR by itself, but enterprise bookings can’t happen without it. Treat these as contributing key results:

• Link them to the parent so the relationship is visible.
• Measure the outcome they unlock where possible (“deals blocked on SSO from 9 to 0”), not just delivery.
• Name the dependency in the dependent team’s objective: “Depends on: SSO in production by week 6.”

#Common mistakes when splitting key results

• Even splits. Equal targets across unequal teams guarantee some are sandbagged and others impossible.
• Forgetting the negative terms. Churn, refunds and attrition subtract. Someone needs to own holding them down.
• Summing ratios. As above, weight them by volume.
• Unit drift. If the parent is ARR, child key results that roll up should be ARR too, not “leads” or “meetings”. Those make good leading indicators within a team’s own OKR.
• Splitting at the last level only. Do the arithmetic at each level, so a VP’s slice is split across their managers the same way.

#How OKR.ai keeps the numbers honest

In OKR.ai a key result can roll up into a super key result, usually your manager’s, so each child’s movement contributes to the parent. When you push OKRs to your reports, AI splits them so they cover the parent with no gaps and little overlap. It sizes additive targets to each owner’s realistic share, treats ratios as contributing rather than summed, and writes dependencies into the objective description. You review and edit every number before anything is saved.

See how it works in the OKR workflow docs, or start with the basics in how to write good OKRs.

#Frequently asked questions