Company OKR, Team OKR, Individual OKR: the levels of OKRs explained

OKRs operate across several levels, matching the levels of organization. The distinction between these levels structures cascading and alignment within the system.

Three primary levels exist: company, team, and individual. A fourth, transverse level, the cross-functional OKR, deserves separate treatment.

Company OKR: the organization-wide OKR

Company OKRs are set by leadership. They translate company strategy into 3 to 5 Objectives over the cycle (typically annual at the Objective level, quarterly for the Key Results).

What Company OKRs are not. A Company OKR is not a "leadership team to-do list" or a recap of everything the organization is doing. It's a small set of shared priorities that deserve the whole organization's attention during the cycle. Anything that can be steered by a single team with its own rituals doesn't belong as a Company OKR.

Their role:

• Provide a single, visible direction for the whole organization.
• Serve as parent OKRs for Team OKRs.
• Enable strategic trade-offs (Initiative prioritization, resource allocation).

How to decide what deserves a Company OKR

Five tests for the call:

• Cross-team impact test: does this topic require coordinated effort from multiple teams? If yes, it's a strong candidate. If no, it's likely a Team OKR or routine business steering.
• Discontinuity test: without collective focus, will this topic actually move? Topics that naturally progress through ongoing operations don't need a Company OKR.
• Strategic test: does this topic directly serve the vision and multi-year strategy? If it's pure optimization, it's a KPI.
• Memorability test: can every leadership team member recite this Objective from memory and explain it in one sentence? If not, it's too vague or there are too many of them.
• "Why now" test: what makes this Objective specifically relevant now, rather than in a later cycle? A vague or recycled timing rationale suggests the Objective could be deferred or handled through ongoing operations.

Example: one Company OKR translated into two teams

Company OKR: Objective "Make Serendly the reference platform for manager-direct report 1:1s in France". KR: grow from 200 to 800 active customers.

Product team translation:

• Objective: "Ship a 1:1 experience managers adopt in under a week."
• KR: Day-7 manager activation rate from 32% to 55%.

Sales team translation:

• Objective: "Build a dedicated outbound motion for the HR scale-up segment."
• KR: 30 new scale-up customers signed during the quarter.

The same Company OKR produces two radically different team Objectives in vocabulary and metrics. That's exactly what shows cascading is working.

In practice, an organization without explicit Company OKRs tends to let each team set its own direction, which makes alignment harder to build outside of informal conversations.

Team OKR: the team-level OKR

Team OKRs are the most operational and most common level. Each team frames 2 to 3 Objectives that contribute to one or two Company OKRs.

Good practices:

• The team co-authors its Team OKRs; leadership validates and arbitrates.
• Each Team OKR explicitly states which Company OKR it contributes to (parent / child relationship).
• Team OKRs are visible to other teams to enable horizontal alignment.

Individual OKR: handle with care

Individual OKRs assign personal Objectives to a contributor. It's the most debated level of the method.

Where Individual OKRs make sense:

• Roles with high autonomy (leads, solo contributors, growth practitioners).
• Cross-functional roles (chief of staff, OKR champion, head of operations).
• Executives and senior managers, whose Individual OKRs often blur into their team's.

Where they're a poor fit:

• Most team contributors. The Team OKR is enough and preserves collective work.
• Organizations new to OKRs, where adding a level mostly adds complexity.
• Contexts where performance is already heavily individualized (risk of turning OKRs into an evaluation tool).

A point frequently raised in practitioner accounts: linking Individual OKRs to variable compensation is generally discouraged. When that link is established, contributors tend to reduce the ambition they put forward to protect their evaluation, which degrades the informational value of the system, particularly on Aspirational OKRs.

Cross-functional OKR: the transverse OKR

A cross-functional OKR is an Objective that can only be reached through collaboration across several distinct functions (Product + Engineering + CS, for instance). Technically a Team OKR shared across teams, but its transverse nature deserves separate attention.

Three conditions for success:

• A named primary owner, even though the OKR is jointly carried.
• An executive sponsor to arbitrate priority conflicts between contributing teams.
• A dedicated review ritual, separate from regular team reviews, where all functions meet.

Which OKR level to use: summary table

Structuring your OKR levels

The mix between Company, Team, and Individual OKRs depends on the maturity and management culture of the organization. Let's discuss the right structure for your context.

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