# The meeting runs itself. Your team does the thinking.

> A weekly check-in of fifteen to thirty minutes in four steps, a To do list that says what you owe, blockers held to the next check-in, and a ninety-minute quarterly review that tells you whether a miss was more likely strategy or rhythm.

This is the Markdown version of https://okrgoal.com/product/rhythm

*The rhythm*

OKRs live or die in the weekly check-in. OKRGoal runs it: the reminders, the agenda, the confidence round, the blockers, the digest and the streak. Then, at the end of the quarter, a ninety-minute review that tells you why you hit or missed.

[Start free](https://app.okrgoal.com/sign-up) · [See a weekly session in the demo](https://demo.okrgoal.com/)

*The rhythm is the product*

## Objectives written in January and read in December are a wish list.

What makes OKRs work is a weekly cadence somebody actually keeps. So the product keeps it, instead of reminding you to.

- **1minute** for a check-in, from the browser or a chat app
- **15to30minutes** for the weekly session, in four steps
- **90minutes** for the quarterly review, in four acts

*A check-in is a narrative, not a dropdown*

## Nobody hand-paints a goal green.

A check-in in OKRGoal has four parts, and the goal's health is always derived from the latest one.

| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| Status | On track, at risk or off track |
| Confidence | How likely you are to hit it, out of ten by default |
| The story | One or two lines on what changed this week. Facts, not feelings |
| A snapshot | Every key result's value at that moment, beside its previous value. It never changes afterwards |

Check in when it is due, or any day you have news. Champion two goals? You hear once, and check in on them one after another. With an AI provider connected, the Champion drafts an overdue check-in: a status, a confidence and a line of story, from where each key result stands. You add the numbers, edit it and publish it.

*The weekly session*

## Four steps. Fifteen to thirty minutes.

- **Step 1:** **Confidence round.** Every key result gets a confidence. Where the team votes, everyone submits privately and the votes reveal together, so nobody anchors on the champion. The champion writes what changed this week.

- **Step 2:** **Discuss what dropped.** Any key result whose confidence fell gets a short discussion. Every low score leaves with a next action, an owner and a due date: the next check-in. Where something is actually stuck, it becomes a blocker with a type.

- **Step 3:** **Commitments and wins.** Close last week's commitments, delivered or not. Set this week's: three or four moves that will actually shift a key result. Name the week's wins.

- **Step 4:** **The digest.** Written for you from the session: open blockers and their next actions, commitments and wins. The coordinator edits it and it goes to your channel.

**Then:** the streak. The number of weeks in a row your team held the session. A skipped week breaks it. A holiday does not. It is a light touch, and it reliably keeps the heartbeat.

7 weeks in a row

Weekly, every two weeks or monthly, per space. The session works in the room, on a call, or across time zones with confidence collected from people who cannot attend.

*Updates: what you owe*

## Activity says what happened. To do says what you owe.

One list per person, computed on the server, overdue first.

- **Check-ins due**, for goals you champion
- **Acknowledgements owed**, for check-ins from your people. Acknowledge them one by one, or all at once
- **Blockers you own**, with their clocks
- **Commitments due** this week
- **Sessions to run**, for sessions you coordinate
- **Tasks due**
- **Dependencies escalated to you**
- **Agent proposals** waiting for your yes or no

Every message shows the rule that sent it, the channel it came on and its step on the escalation ladder. A snooze quietens the message. It never hides the obligation.

*Blockers have a clock*

## Every blocker has an owner and a deadline.

A blocker in OKRGoal has a type, an owner and a next action, due by the next check-in of the goal it blocks. The Champion reminds the owner the day before. If the check-in passes with the action still open, the coordinator hears about it. It never reopens the discussion. It moves the clock.

Resource · Dependency · Clarity · Priority conflict · External · Approach not working The work is happening and the number is not moving. · Other

*Honest health*

## "On track" expires.

Reported health that never changes is the commonest lie in OKR software. In OKRGoal, a goal nobody has checked in on past its grace period is shown as **outdated**, everywhere it appears, whatever its owner last claimed. When reported health and the numbers disagree, the Coach says so.

*The monthly review*

## Once a month, step back.

The trend for each objective, the dependency and risk log, the resource shifts, and a decision log where every decision names the key result it affects. So in week eleven, when somebody asks why the target moved, the answer is written down.

*The quarterly review*

## Ninety minutes. Four acts. One honest answer.

About two weeks before the cycle ends. Eleven timed stages, a timer on screen, and minutes you can export at the end. Run it as one session, or as a review and a separate retrospective.

| Act | The question it asks | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Open | How is the room? | A room pulse before any numbers, because steady rooms round their numbers up |
| Review | Did we achieve the results? | Score every key result against evidence. The objective score stays hidden until the team reveals it together. Then the story behind each number, owner by owner. Then recognition |
| Retro | How did we work? | What worked and what did not, written silently then dot-voted. The four questions leadership owes the team. One honest cause for every aspirational key result under 0.6, and every committed one that missed. An anonymous five-statement survey of the process itself |
| Reset | What do we do next? | Every objective closed as achieved, keep, modify, defer or abandon, with a reason. Learnings captured. Every action gets a name and a date |

*The diagnostic*

## Strategy problem or rhythm problem?

That is the one question every executive asks at the end of a quarter, and the one no tracker answers. OKRGoal answers it from the cycle's real check-ins.

You hit the results

### The question is not effort

Ask whether the ambition was high enough to be worth the quarter.

You missed, and the rhythm was strong

### A strategy or quality problem

Fix the key results, not the people.

You missed, and the rhythm was weak

### A rhythm problem

Restore the weekly check-in before you rewrite a single objective.

**Then it feeds forward.** Your scores become next cycle's starting point. Kept objectives pre-fill the next draft. Deferred ones join the issue list, where they must earn their place again. Learnings join the input pack. The lowest-scoring statement about your process becomes next quarter's improvement action. An annual review closes the year the same way.

*Real life*

## Built for quarters that do not go to plan.

### Holidays

Mark a space's holidays and nobody is nudged. The streak survives.

### Leave

A member on leave names a delegate, who covers their check-ins, reviews and acknowledgements. Nobody nudges the person on leave.

### Change mid-cycle

Add, stop, re-parent or move an OKR at any point. Every change is visible at the close.

### Easing a target

Allowed, with a written reason. The original stays on record.

### Reorganisations

When teams merge or split, an objective moves to another space with its key results, check-ins and alignment.

## Your next check-in is on Monday.

Set it up in the cloud in a few minutes, or look at a team running the rhythm in the live demo.

[Start free](https://app.okrgoal.com/sign-up) · [Try the live demo](https://demo.okrgoal.com/)

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OKRGoal, from OKR Institute. A map of this site for AI agents: https://okrgoal.com/llms.txt