What are Bottom-Up OKRs?
Bottom-up OKRs are Objectives and Key Results proposed by individual contributors and teams, then negotiated with leadership rather than handed down from the top. The approach pairs executive strategy with frontline judgment, with teams typically authoring roughly half of their own OKRs in consultation with managers.
- Authorship matters: Bottom-up OKRs are proposed by teams, then negotiated with leadership, instead of being dictated downward.
- Doerr's 50/50 ratio: In Measure What Matters, John Doerr recommends teams set roughly half of their OKRs themselves to protect motivation.
- Engagement is the payoff: Gallup ties engaged teams to 23% higher profitability, and goal authorship is one of the most controllable engagement levers.
- Alignment still required: Bottom-up only works when team-level proposals visibly ladder up to a company objective leadership has named.
Definition: Bottom-Up OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal setting approach where team members at various levels within an organization are actively involved in setting the Objectives and Key Results, rather than having these goals solely dictated by top management.
How bottom-up OKRs differ from the top-down default
The OKR framework originated at Intel under Andy Grove and was popularized by Google. In its earliest form at Intel, OKRs cascaded heavily from the executive team.
The bottom-up variant flips the default. Leadership still sets the company Objectives, but teams draft their own contributing Objectives and Key Results before any cascade happens. The two approaches differ on five practical dimensions.
Dimension | Top-down OKRs | Bottom-up OKRs |
|---|---|---|
Who drafts the Objective | Executive team or department lead | The team that will execute |
Cascade direction | Company OKR splits into team OKRs | Team OKRs ladder up to a company OKR |
Manager role | Allocator | Coach and negotiator |
Risk | Low strategic drift, low engagement | High engagement, risk of fragmentation |
Typical mix | 100% top-down (rare) | 50-60% bottom-up at mature OKR adopters |
For a deeper look at the opposite pattern, see top-down OKRs.
Why teams author their own goals
Authorship is the mechanism. When people draft the wording of an Objective they have a measurable cognitive stake in hitting it: the goal feels like a commitment, not an assignment. This is the engagement claim Doerr puts at the centre of the bottom-up case.
The business case is supported by engagement research. Gallup's 2024 State of the Global Workplace report links engaged teams to 23% higher profitability and 81% lower absenteeism, and identifies clarity of expectations and intentional goal-setting as the most controllable drivers managers have (Gallup, 2024).
Letting teams co-author their OKRs is a direct lever on both:
- Higher commitment: Authored goals create ownership that allocated goals rarely produce.
- Better strategic information: Frontline teams see customer signals and operational constraints leadership cannot.
- Faster identification of bad goals: Teams will refuse to commit to a Key Result they know is unmeasurable, which surfaces planning errors early.
- Talent retention: Goal authorship is a low-cost recognition mechanism, especially in knowledge-work organizations.
Running a bottom-up OKR planning cycle
The most common mistake is calling the process "bottom-up" while still dictating the Objectives, then asking teams to invent the Key Results. Real bottom-up cycles give teams a say in the Objective too. The cycle has five steps:
- Leadership publishes the company Objective. This is the anchor every team needs before they can draft a useful contribution. Without it, bottom-up becomes "make up something."
- Teams draft proposed OKRs. Each team writes Objectives and Key Results they believe move the company Objective forward, using their direct knowledge of customers and operations.
- Manager negotiation. Managers and teams negotiate the draft for ambition, measurability, and fit. This is where weak Key Results get rewritten and where aspirational vs committed scoring is set.
- Cross-team alignment. Teams whose OKRs depend on each other surface dependencies before commitment. This step prevents the fragmentation risk that pure bottom-up creates.
- Commit and check-in. Final OKRs are committed and tracked through weekly check-ins and quarterly review meetings.
The right ratio of bottom-up to top-down varies by organization. Google's published OKR guidance and Doerr's writing both suggest roughly 50% bottom-up as a healthy target, and mature OKR adopters often land between 50% and 60%.
When bottom-up OKRs break
Bottom-up does not suit every organization or every cycle. Three patterns predict failure:
- No clear company Objective. If leadership has not named what the company is trying to achieve this quarter, team-level OKRs will fragment. Bottom-up requires a strong top anchor, not the absence of one.
- First-time OKR adopters. Teams that have never written a Key Result struggle to draft measurable ones on their first attempt. A short top-down cycle to build the muscle is often faster than a year of false starts (see OKR mistakes for the common failure modes).
- Crisis or turnaround mode. When the company is in survival mode, the cost of strategic drift outweighs the engagement gains. Most turnaround CEOs default to top-down for the duration of the reset.
These patterns are why most mature OKR programs operate as hybrids rather than pure bottom-up. The pure form is the exception.
Examples of bottom-up OKRs in practice
The format below shows how a marketing team and a product engineering team might author OKRs that ladder up to a single company Objective ("Become the default OKR tool for European mid-market SaaS"):
- Marketing team Objective: Be top-of-mind for European mid-market SaaS buyers evaluating OKR tools.
- KR1: Increase organic traffic to the OKR pillar page from 12k to 25k monthly visitors.
- KR2: Land 4 case study features in mid-market SaaS publications.
- KR3: Move from position 8 to position 3 on the keyword "OKR software for SaaS."
- Product team Objective: Make Mooncamp the fastest OKR tool to deploy at a 200-person SaaS company.
- KR1: Cut time-to-first-OKR from 14 days to 5 days for new accounts.
- KR2: Ship single-sign-on with the top three identity providers used by SaaS buyers.
- KR3: Reach 90% activation within 30 days for new mid-market accounts.
Both teams authored the Objective themselves. Neither was assigned a Key Result by leadership. Both visibly ladder up to the same company Objective.
Pairing bottom-up OKRs with the rest of your OKR cycle
Bottom-up authorship is a planning-cycle decision, not a one-time choice. The hybrids that hold up over multiple quarters tend to ratchet the bottom-up share upward as the organization's OKR muscle improves: 20% bottom-up in cycle one, 40% by cycle three, 50-60% once teams reliably write measurable Key Results. Tie this progression to your broader OKR implementation plan and your standing OKR planning routine, rather than running it as a separate initiative.
