Simple Annual Planning.
A theme, a reframe, three OKRs, and the initiatives that ladder into them. The plan that fits on one page — and the planning system that keeps every department working in the language they already use.
A theme, a reframe, three objectives.
Annual planning collapses into four artifacts. A theme the whole company can rally behind. A reframe that grounds everyone in why the customer should care. Three OKRs at the company level. And underneath each one, a short list of initiatives that departments own. That's the plan. Anything more and you're building bureaucracy, not direction. Here's our an example from PetDesk.
A rallying cry. One short, memorable phrase the CEO, an AE, an engineer, and a CSM can all hold in their head and use to make a tradeoff on a Tuesday.
Win Vet.
This year we win every location in small animal GP — the one-doc practice, the four-doc clinic, the 200-location PE rollup. Winning the location matters more than maximizing the ARR on any single one. Footprint compounds; price doesn't.
The selling-to-customers lens. Why the world we want to build is better than the one that exists. One declarative sentence the AE uses on a discovery call.
"You don't have a client problem. You have a Reach problem."
OKRs don't waterfall. Initiatives ladder up.
The reason most OKR rollouts fail isn't the format — it's the cascade. By the time a company-level OKR has been pushed through every department, every team, and every individual, you've spent a quarter writing OKRs and built a tracking system nobody trusts. Skip the waterfall. Keep OKRs at the company level, where they belong.
Waterfalled OKRs at every level.
- Company OKRs are copy-paste ‘cascaded’ into department, team, and individual OKRs.
- Quarterly grading meetings, color-coded confidence scores, three-page docs per person.
- Most of the goals are derivative or lagging. Nobody believes the numbers.
- Ops and HR end up owning the system. Operators stop reading it.
Three OKRs at the company. Initiatives underneath.
- OKRs live at one level only — the company. Every employee can name all three.
- Each OKR has a short list of initiatives. Departments own them.
- Departments track their own work in their own language: roadmap, funnel, dashboard, runbook.
- The plan ladders up. We never push the plan down.
Three layers. One direction of travel.
The plan is a stack. The theme and reframe sit on top — the why. The three OKRs and their initiatives sit underneath — the how. And at the floor, each department's native instrumentation — product roadmaps, sales funnels, CX playbooks.
Theme & Reframe
Rallying cry · customer lens.
OKRs & Initiatives
Three OKRs at the company level. 3–5 initiatives ladder into each — owned by one department, named to one person.
Department instrumentation
Each team uses the tools they already use to monitor what's happening.
A reusable shape, year after year.
After two cycles, the three company OKRs almost always settle into the same three buckets — one for the top line, one for the customer, one for the operating system. The names change. The shape doesn't. Use the template; spend your energy on the initiatives underneath.
OKR 01 · Accelerate revenue production.
The growth OKR. Key results are usually ARR, ARRv (net-new ARR per month), and ACV. Owned at the company level, but every initiative beneath it lives inside GTM, marketing, or partnerships.
OKR 02 · Build customer value.
The retention and expansion OKR. Key results are usually GRR/NRR, time-to-value, and upsell ARR. The owners live in CX, implementation, and product — the three teams who, together, decide whether the customer renews.
OKR 03 · Uplevel operations.
The internal OKR. Key results are usually process visibility, product velocity, and gross margin. Initiatives here belong to finance, people, and engineering — the teams that make the other two OKRs cheaper to deliver next year.
What to leave out.
No fourth OKR. No “culture” OKR, no “brand” OKR, no “learning” OKR. If it matters, it shows up as an initiative under one of the three. A fourth OKR is almost always a sign you're afraid to make a tradeoff.
The unit of work for the year.
An initiative is a multi-quarter bet, owned by one department and named to one person. It's bigger than a project and smaller than a strategy. Each OKR has 3–5 of them. The whole company plan, written end-to-end, fits on a single page because it's never more than ~15 initiatives.
One owner. Named to a single person, not a team. The owner can be supported by anyone, but the accountability doesn't split.
One outcome. Written as a verb on a noun — “ship the operations console”, “rebuild outbound motion”, “cut implementation to 30 days”. Not a deliverable list.
One OKR. Each initiative ladders into exactly one company OKR. If it ladders into two, it's actually two initiatives — or it's not real.
One year. An initiative is a large workstream. If it's a sprint, it's a project. If it's three years, it's a strategy. Initiatives are 3 to 12 months.
Departments · what they own, how they track it.
The trick: every department keeps its own instrumentation. Product runs a roadmap. Sales runs a funnel. CX runs health scores. Finance runs a close. The framework doesn't tell them what tool to use. It only tells them which company OKR their work ladders into.
Tracks in
Roadmap, sprint board, release notes. Velocity in story points or shipped features. Quality in bug rate, p95 latency, NPS deltas after release.
Ladders into
OKR 02 (build value) and OKR 03 (uplevel ops). Product owns the roadmap initiatives; eng owns the velocity initiatives.
Tracks in
Pipeline funnel, win rate, ACV, ramp. Forecast by stage. Coverage ratio. AE attainment.
Ladders into
OKR 01 (revenue). Owns the new-logo, expansion, and pricing-model initiatives.
Tracks in
Demand funnel, MQLs, SQLs, pipeline sourced. Brand metrics if you have them — otherwise share-of-voice anecdotes are fine.
Ladders into
OKR 01 (revenue). Owns demand, brand, and reframe-narrative initiatives.
Tracks in
Health scores, GRR/NRR, time-to-value, ticket volume. Onboarding milestones by cohort. Renewal calendar.
Ladders into
OKR 02 (customer value). Owns onboarding, retention, and expansion initiatives.
Tracks in
Close cadence, gross margin, headcount plan, cash runway. Hiring funnel. Comp bands. Process audits.
Ladders into
OKR 03 (uplevel ops). Owns the financial discipline, hiring, and process-visibility initiatives.
Plan once a year. Check four times. Track every month.
The plan itself is annual. The check-in is quarterly — not to grade, but to redesign initiatives that aren't working. The metric review is monthly, weekly, or daily. Anything less and the plan drifts.
Lock theme, reframe, OKRs, and 12–15 initiatives.
Late-year offsite. Owners named. Initiatives sized. The plan is signed in blood by the leadership team and shared with the company in week 1.
First 90-day check. Are the initiatives real?
Each owner walks their initiative. Two questions: is it on track, and is it still the right initiative? Kill or reshape what isn't real. Don't reshuffle the OKRs.
Mid-year. Compounding starts to show.
By Q3, the initiatives that are working are obvious. Reallocate budget, headcount, and attention toward them. The half that aren't yet working get one more cycle — or get cut.
Land the year. Draft next year.
Run the right side of the value equation. That's the left side of next year's plan. Start the next theme conversation in October, not January.