Your Quarter
One thing, for the next 90 days.
Say what you’re working on and how you’ll know. Add a note a month. Score it at the end, then look in the mirror again.
Stupidly simple, on purpose. Most OKR systems are too complicated to get used, so they end up in Excel. This one is three fields and a score, and your first quarter is free.
Already have one running?
What I’m working on
One objective, in your own words. Nobody fills it in for you: a goal someone gives you is a task.
How I’ll know
One to three results you could check at the end, not tasks. Then a line a month, or a week: what’s true now?
Score it
0 to 1 at the end, the way Doerr grades OKRs. 0.7 is strong. Then look in the mirror again.
Why OKRs fail analytics teams
Most analytics OKRs are a project list in disguise. Deliverables become key results, they score 1.0 the day they ship, and nobody asks whether anyone used them. Usage Is the Receipt: if nobody uses it, it’s a science project, and an OKR that counts deliverables will grade a science project as a win.
The rest fail on weight. Cascades, alignment maps, a dashboard to track the goals. The system becomes a second job, and by week three it lives in a spreadsheet nobody opens. And goals handed down were never goals. A goal someone gives you is a task. A goal you write down is yours.
Your Quarter keeps only the parts that work: one objective in your own words, how you’ll know, a note a month, and an honest score at the end.
Questions
What is Your Quarter?
A stupidly simple OKR (objectives and key results) for analytics leaders. Write one thing you’re working on for the next 90 days and one to three ways you’ll know. Add a note a month. Score it from 0 to 1 at the end, then look in the mirror again. It is the last step of The Analytics Leadership Mirror, the free 20-question self-assessment, but you can start it without taking the Mirror.
Why one goal instead of three?
Because one gets done. An analytics leader’s quarter fills up with other people’s urgent requests, and a list of three goals quietly becomes a list of one anyway, usually not the one that mattered. Pick the one you’ll protect when the ad hoc work hits. Christina Wodtke makes the same case for a single objective in Radical Focus. You can write up to three; most quarters should have one.
How do you score an OKR from 0 to 1?
The way John Doerr grades OKRs in Measure What Matters. At the end of the 90 days, score each “how I’ll know” line from 0 to 1. 0.7 to 1.0 means delivered. 0.4 to 0.6 is progress, short of the line. 0.0 to 0.3 is missed, so say why. The objective’s score is the average. About 0.7 across a quarter means you aimed high enough; 1.0 every time means you aimed too low. It’s the 70% Confidence Principle pointed at yourself: 0.7 is not a failing grade.
Why a note a month, not every week?
Weekly is better, if you’ll do it. Christina Wodtke checks in every week in Radical Focus. A note a month is the least that keeps a goal alive, so that is what the reminder emails ask for: a question on day 30 and day 60, and a nudge to score it on the last day. Write a line whenever something is true that wasn’t before: where it stands, and what’s in the way.
Is it free? What does the Audio Pass add?
Your first quarter is free, and you can write it before you have an account: signing in is only how it gets saved. Every quarter after the first comes with the Audio Pass ($14.99, once), along with the whole audiobook of The Auction Block. Reading, adding notes, scoring and deleting are never locked behind it. What you wrote stays yours.
Who can see what I write?
Only you. Your quarter is stored under your account, and only the site’s own server can read it. It is never used in marketing and never quoted. The monthly reminders carry a question and a link, never your words; the copy sent when you save is the only email that holds them. “Delete my quarter” really deletes it.