Goals & KPIs Skill

A specialised guide for defining, cascading, tracking, and reviewing business goals and key performance indicators. While the Sales Operations Setup skill covers end-to-end sales infrastructure, this skill zooms in on the goal-setting and measurement discipline that every function — sales, marketing, product, customer success, finance, or HR — needs to operate effectively.

NEW: This skill now includes Small Company Quick Start guidance (5-50 people) with simplified frameworks, templates, and real-world case studies showing both successes and failures.

🚀 Quick Start by Company Size

Choose your starting point:

For 5-20 People: Small Company Quick Start

→ Read: references/small-company-quick-start.md

Start with Simple OKRs (3 company objectives, no cascade):

• 30-minute setup with Google Sheets
• 15-minute Monday check-ins
• No fancy tools needed
• Real examples from 5-50 person companies

For 20-100 People: Scaling OKRs

→ Read: This SKILL.md (full guide)

Use 2-Level Cascade (Company → Department):

• OKRs with department alignment
• Weekly + monthly review cadence
• Notion or Asana for tracking
• Department dashboards

For 100+ People: Enterprise Goal Systems

→ Read: references/framework-comparison.md + templates/goal-map.md

Consider Goal Map + OKR Hybrid:

• Annual Goal Map (strategic alignment)
• Quarterly OKRs (execution)
• Full review cadence (weekly → annual)
• Enterprise BI dashboards

🎯 Consultative Approach: Discovery Before Prescription

IMPORTANT: This skill uses a consultative, discovery-first approach. Before recommending any framework, templates, or OKRs, always ask qualifying questions to understand the user's context, challenges, constraints, and culture.

Discovery-First Workflow

Step 1: Quick Context (2-3 questions)

• Company size and stage
• Current goal-setting state (have something / have nothing / have something broken)
• Primary objective (Why now? What's the pain?)

Step 2: Deep Discovery (5-8 questions)

• Organization structure and culture
• Current processes and what's working/not working
• Strategic priorities and success criteria
• Resources and constraints (time, budget, tools)
• Team readiness and leadership commitment

Step 3: Synthesize & Recommend Only after understanding their context, provide:

• Recommended framework (and why it fits)
• Implementation scope and timeline
• Specific templates and tools
• Risk mitigation for their concerns

Key Discovery Questions to Ask

Organization Context:

• "Tell me about your company — how many people, what stage, what industry?"
• "How is your team structured? What functions exist?"

Current State:

• "Do you have a goal-setting process today? What does it look like?"
• "What's working well? What's frustrating or not working?"
• "When did you last review or update your goals?"

Strategic Context:

• "What are your top 2-3 strategic priorities for the next 12 months?"
• "What's driving the need for goals/KPIs right now?"
• "What does success look like 12 months from now?"

Culture & Readiness:

• "How do decisions typically get made? Top-down or collaborative?"
• "Have you tried implementing OKRs or similar frameworks before? What happened?"
• "How much time can leadership commit to goal-setting and reviews each week?"

Constraints & Resources:

• "What's your timeline? When do you need goals in place?"
• "Do you have a budget for goal-setting tools?"
• "What tools do you currently use?" (Notion, Asana, spreadsheets, etc.)

→ For the complete discovery framework with 50+ questions, decision trees, and red flags, see: references/discovery-questions.md

Why Discovery Matters

Anti-pattern: Jumping straight to "Here are your OKRs" without understanding:

• Current goal-setting maturity
• Team culture and buy-in
• Existing processes and tools
• Available time and resources
• Leadership support and commitment

Consultative approach: Ask, listen, understand — then recommend what actually fits.

Example:

• ❌ Bad: User says "help me set OKRs" → You immediately draft 5 company objectives
• ✅ Good: User says "help me set OKRs" → You ask: "Tell me about your company size, current goal process, and what's prompting this now?" → Then recommend based on their answers

📚 New Resources in This Skill

When to use what:

• First time user or unclear context? → START HERE: Read discovery-questions.md and ask qualifying questions
• New to OKRs? Start with small-company-quick-start.md + okr-anti-patterns.md
• Choosing a framework? Read framework-comparison.md
• Setting up tools? Read tool-integrations.md
• Learning from others? Read case-studies.md
• Designing KPIs? Read leading-vs-lagging.md + kpi-library.md

What This Skill Does

1. Goal Architecture

Design the right goal structure for your organisation:

This skill will:

• Recommend the best framework for your company size, stage, and culture
• Generate the full goal tree (company → department → team → individual)
• Define measurable Key Results / KPIs for every objective
• Create alignment maps showing how individual goals ladder up

1b. Goal Map Framework

A Goal Map is a single-page strategic planning tool that aligns every function around the company's most important objectives. It combines qualitative vision with measurable targets, risk analysis, and an operational metrics map.

Functional View — One Row per Function

The Goal Map lays out the following rows for each function (Corporate, Sales, Strategy & Ops, Marketing, Client Success, Services/Interactive, Product, Technology, Finance & Admin, Human Resources):

This skill will:

• Generate a complete Goal Map template for your company
• Pre-populate purpose statements and BIG Goals for each function
• Help you fill in key questions, critical success factors, and risks
• Link the Goal Map to a detailed Metrics Map (see below)

Metrics Map — The Operational KPI Registry

The Metrics Map is the companion to the Goal Map. It lists every KPI by function with operational detail:

2. KPI Design & Libraries

Build the right KPIs for any function:

Revenue & Sales KPIs

• MRR / ARR growth rate
• Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
• Average Revenue per Account (ARPA)
• ACV Bookings — Net New $ and count
• Sales velocity (Opportunities × Win Rate × ACV / Cycle Length)
• Sales funnel conversion rate (ACV by stage)
• Quota attainment (% of reps at ≥ 100 %) and average attainment per seller
• Pipeline health and coverage ratio
• CAC payback period
• LTV : CAC ratio
• Magic Number
• Forecast variance (forecast vs. actual)
• Close to Revenue — measured in days
• Average time to close
• Average deal ACV

Marketing KPIs

• Marketing Generated Leads (MGLs) / Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) — count
• Cost per Lead (CPL) by channel
• MGL → Sales Accepted Lead conversion (count, $, %)
• MGL → Weighted Pipeline conversion (count, $, %)
• MGL → Closed/Won conversion (count, $, %)
• Cost per Unweighted Opportunity
• Cost per Closed/Won
• Website traffic growth (unique visits, YoY)
• Subscriber database growth
• Content creation volume (case studies, whitepapers, infographics, webinars, blogs, videos)
• Media impressions
• Social reach & impressions
• Brand messaging & rebrand execution (on time, on budget)
• Marketing-sourced pipeline %
• Event-to-opportunity rate
• Brand awareness / NPS lift

Product KPIs

• Feature adoption rate / usage adoption (logins, campaigns, key actions)
• Daily / Weekly / Monthly Active Users (DAU / WAU / MAU)
• Time to value (onboarding)
• Throughput — new features (total department, passed to engineering)
• Delivered capacity — revenue-creating vs. non-revenue-creating features
• Value creation / RONP (Return on New Product: new revenue forecasted via business case vs. delivered)
• Roadmap execution performance (strategic score 1-5 × delivery %)

Technology & Engineering KPIs

• Uptime — SLA (e.g., 99.9 %) and internal target (e.g., 99.99 %)
• System performance — API response time, page load, click redirects (ms)
• Production incidents by severity (Sev 1 / 2 / 3) — count per quarter
• Defect SLA performance (time to fix by severity)
• First Time Right rate (features/releases passing QA on first attempt)
• Engineering productivity / sprint velocity / throughput
• Bug resolution time (P0 / P1 / P2)
• Deployment frequency
• Release-to-incident ratio
• Customer-reported defect rate

Customer Success KPIs

• Growth — existing base revenue (% growth YoY)
• Upsell revenue by segment and type (volume, services, pricing, related)
• Retention — customer revenue by segment (% of starting ARR retained)
• Retention — customer count by segment (% of logos retained)
• Lifetime Customer Value / LCV (ARPU / churn rate)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) — via third-party survey
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
• Gross / Net Churn Rate
• Customer profitability — P&L for top 25-50 customers
• RYG (Red/Yellow/Green) health score by segment, including trending
• Health Score (composite: usage + support + engagement)
• Time to First Value
• Support ticket volume & resolution time
• Renewal rate
• Expansion revenue (upsell + cross-sell)

Finance & Operations KPIs

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (plan, actual, forecast)
• Revenue (plan, actual, forecast)
• Expenses by function (plan, actual, forecast)
• Burn rate & runway
• Gross margin %
• COGS and marginal cost (e.g., CPM for platform companies)
• Operating expense ratio
• AR performance (DSO, aging)
• AP performance
• Cash generation performance / cash conversion cycle
• Cost per acquisition
• Revenue per employee (by function & total)
• Headcount plan attainment
• Budget variance

People & HR KPIs

• Employee engagement score
• Regretted attrition rate
• Time to hire
• Offer acceptance rate
• Diversity index
• Internal mobility rate
• Training completion rate

3. Goal Cascading & Alignment

Ensure every team's goals connect to the company mission:

Company Vision & Purpose
  └─ BIG Goals (aspirational, 2-3 year)
       └─ Annual Strategic Priorities (3-5)
            └─ Measurable Goals per Function
                 └─ Quarterly OKRs / Rocks by Department
                      └─ Team-level OKRs
                           └─ Individual OKRs / Goals

For each level, capture the full strategic context:

This skill will:

• Build a visual cascade map
• Identify misalignments and orphan goals
• Suggest cross-functional dependencies
• Create RACI matrices for shared objectives
• Define contribution weights for shared KPIs
• Generate a Goal Map (Functional View) showing all functions side-by-side
• Link each function's goals to its Metrics Map KPIs

4. Dashboards & Reporting Blueprints

Design actionable dashboards at every level:

Executive / Board Dashboard

Department Dashboard

Individual / 1:1 Dashboard

5. Review Cadences & Rituals

Build the operating rhythm that keeps goals alive:

This skill will generate:

• Agenda templates for each cadence
• OKR scoring guides (0.0 – 1.0 scale)
• Retrospective question sets
• Goal-setting workshop facilitation guides

6. Scoring & Confidence Models

Quantify goal progress honestly:

OKR Scoring Guide

Confidence Rating (for forecasting & reviews)

7. Anti-Patterns & Common Mistakes

Avoid the traps that kill goal programmes:

→ For 20+ before/after examples with detailed fixes, see: references/okr-anti-patterns.md

This includes common mistakes like:

• Vague objectives ("Improve the product")
• Activities disguised as KRs ("Hire 5 people")
• Too many objectives (10+ per quarter)
• No connection between objectives and KRs
• Business-as-usual disguised as OKRs
• And complete rewrites showing how to fix them

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need to:

• Define company / team / individual goals for the quarter or year
• Select a goal-setting framework (OKR, SMART, BSC, V2MOM, 4DX, EOS Rocks)
• Design KPIs for any function (sales, marketing, product, CS, finance, HR)
• Build dashboards that your team will actually look at
• Cascade goals from company down to individual
• Set up review cadences (weekly, monthly, quarterly)
• Score and grade goal progress
• Run a goal-setting workshop or offsite
• Diagnose why goals aren't being met
• Align cross-functional teams on shared objectives

How It Works

When you invoke this skill, Claude will follow a consultative, discovery-first process:

Phase 1: Discovery & Qualification (5-10 minutes)

1. Ask qualifying questions — Understand your organization, current state, strategic priorities, culture, constraints
2. Listen and diagnose — Identify what's working, what's broken, and what's needed
3. Assess readiness — Determine cultural fit, leadership commitment, and resource availability
4. Identify red flags — Surface risks that could cause failure (no leadership time, cultural resistance, unrealistic timeline)

→ See references/discovery-questions.md for the complete discovery framework

Phase 2: Recommendation & Planning (10-15 minutes)

5. Recommend a framework — OKR, SMART, BSC, EOS Rocks, or hybrid based on your context (with explanation of why it fits)
6. Define scope — Company-level only? Cascade to departments? How many objectives?
7. Propose timeline — Setup, rollout, review cadence
8. Suggest tools — Based on budget and existing tools
9. Address concerns — Mitigate risks you identified

Phase 3: Implementation & Execution (Ongoing)

10. Draft goals — Objectives, key results, and KPIs tailored to your business
11. Build the cascade — Company → department → team → individual (if appropriate)
12. Design dashboards — Metrics, layout, refresh cadence (if data available)
13. Create review rituals — Agendas, scoring guides, retrospectives
14. Identify leading indicators — So you know early if you're on/off track
15. Generate templates — Customized for your organization

Key principle: Discovery before prescription. Understanding before recommendation. Fit over framework.

Usage Examples

Example 1: Quarterly OKR Planning for a Startup (Discovery-First Approach)

User: "Help me set Q2 OKRs for my 30-person B2B SaaS startup"

Claude will (Discovery Phase):

1. Ask discovery questions first:

   • "Do you have a goal-setting process today? What does it look like?"
   • "What are your top 2-3 strategic priorities for Q2?"
   • "What's prompting you to implement OKRs now?"
   • "How is your 30-person team structured? What functions exist?"
   • "How much time can you and your leadership team dedicate to this each week?"
   • "Have you tried OKRs before? What happened?"

2. Based on your answers, recommend an approach:

   • If starting from scratch → Simple OKRs (3 company objectives, no cascade yet)
   • If have goals but misaligned → Full cascade (company → department)
   • If tried before and failed → Diagnose root cause first

3. Then implement:

   • Draft 3-4 company-level objectives with 3-5 KRs each (customized to your priorities)
   • Cascade into department OKRs (Sales, Engineering, Marketing, CS) if appropriate
   • Suggest leading metrics to track weekly
   • Create a scoring template for end-of-quarter grading
   • Design a weekly check-in agenda that fits your culture
   • Address any concerns you raised (e.g., "worried nobody will use it")

Example 2: Building a KPI Dashboard

User: "Design a KPI dashboard for our sales team"

Claude will:

• Recommend tier-1 (critical), tier-2 (important), and tier-3 (monitor) metrics
• Define formulas and data sources for each KPI
• Design dashboard layout with sections and visualisation types
• Set RAG thresholds (red/amber/green) for each metric
• Specify refresh cadence and data owners
• Suggest alerting rules for anomalies

Example 3: Annual Strategy → Goal Cascade

User: "We want to grow ARR from $5M to $10M. Help me cascade this into team goals"

Claude will:

• Break down the $10M target into new business, expansion, and retention
• Assign revenue targets to Sales (new logo), CS (expansion/renewal)
• Identify Marketing pipeline contributions needed
• Define Product goals to reduce churn and increase adoption
• Create Engineering capacity goals for feature delivery
• Set HR/People goals for hiring the team to execute
• Build a RACI matrix for cross-functional dependencies

Example 4: Goal-Setting Workshop Facilitation

User: "Facilitate a 3-hour goal-setting offsite for our leadership team"

Claude will:

• Create a detailed agenda with time blocks
• Prepare vision/mission review prompts
• Design breakout exercises for priority identification
• Build a template for drafting OKRs collaboratively
• Create alignment exercises (dependency mapping)
• Prepare voting/prioritisation frameworks (dot voting, impact/effort)
• Design follow-up action items and accountability plan

Example 5: Diagnosing Goal Failure

User: "Our Q1 goals all came in at 30-40 %. What went wrong?"

Claude will:

• Run a diagnostic framework (ambition, alignment, ownership, cadence, data)
• Identify root causes (too many goals? wrong metrics? no check-ins?)
• Compare leading vs. lagging indicators to find where things broke down
• Suggest corrective actions for Q2
• Redesign review cadences to catch issues earlier
• Recommend training or coaching for managers

Deliverable Templates

The skill can generate:

• 📋 OKR templates (company, department, team, individual)
• 📊 KPI definition sheets (name, formula, target, owner, data source)
• 🎯 Goal cascade maps (visual tree from company to individual)
• 📈 Dashboard blueprints (layout, metrics, RAG thresholds)
• 📅 Review agendas (weekly, monthly, quarterly)
• 🏆 Scoring rubrics (OKR 0-1 scale, SMART completion %)
• 🔄 Retrospective guides (what worked, what didn't, what changes)
• 📝 Workshop facilitation plans (agendas, exercises, templates)
• ⚠️ Risk registers (goals at risk, mitigation plans)
• 🗂️ RACI matrices (for cross-functional goals)
• 📑 QBR presentation templates
• 💼 Board reporting templates (KPI summary, narrative, outlook)

Key Frameworks & References

OKR (Objectives & Key Results)

• Originated at Intel (Andy Grove), popularised by Google (John Doerr)
• Objective: Qualitative, inspiring, time-bound
• Key Result: Quantitative, measurable, achievable but stretchy
• Grading: 0.0 – 1.0 scale; 0.7 is "good"
• Cadence: Quarterly with weekly check-ins

SMART Goals

• Specific — clear and unambiguous
• Measurable — quantifiable outcomes
• Achievable — realistic given resources
• Relevant — aligned to business priorities
• Time-bound — clear deadline

Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

• 4 perspectives: Financial, Customer, Internal Processes, Learning & Growth
• Cause-and-effect linkage between perspectives
• Strategy maps to visualise connections

V2MOM (Salesforce)

• Vision — what do you want?
• Values — what's important about it?
• Methods — how do you get it?
• Obstacles — what's in the way?
• Measures — how do you know you have it?

4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX)

• Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important Goal (WIG)
• Discipline 2: Act on Lead Measures
• Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
• Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

EOS Rocks

• 90-day priorities (3-7 per person)
• Binary: done or not done
• Reviewed weekly in L10 meetings

Goal Map

• A single-page strategic alignment tool used across all functions
• Functional View: Purpose, BIG Goals, Measurable Goals, Key Questions, Critical Success Factors, Assumptions, Risks, Mitigations, Open Questions — one column per function
• Metrics Map: Detailed KPI registry per function with targets, data sources, measurement frequency, and next steps
• Combines strategic (qualitative) and operational (quantitative) planning
• Works alongside any of the above frameworks as the strategic umbrella

Integration with Other Skills

This skill works alongside:

Getting Started

When you invoke this skill, you don't need to prepare everything upfront. This skill uses a consultative approach — Claude will ask you questions to understand your context first.

However, if you want to be prepared, consider these areas:

1. Company context — Stage, size, industry, business model
2. Current state — Do you have goals today? What's working/not working?
3. Why now — What's prompting you to set up or improve goals?
4. Constraints — Time, budget, tools, resources available
5. Success criteria — How will you know this is working?

But don't worry if you don't have all the answers — Claude will ask discovery questions to understand your situation and recommend what fits.

Example Commands

• "Set Q2 OKRs for my 30-person B2B SaaS startup"
• "Design a KPI dashboard for our marketing team"
• "Help me cascade our $10M ARR goal into team objectives"
• "Create a weekly goal check-in agenda for managers"
• "Build a balanced scorecard for our company"
• "What KPIs should our customer success team track?"
• "Run a goal-setting workshop for our leadership offsite"
• "Score our Q1 OKRs and recommend improvements"
• "Define leading indicators for our revenue goal"
• "Help me diagnose why our goals keep failing"

How to Use This Skill

Invoke the skill with your specific goal-setting or KPI need, and Claude will guide you through the process — from framework selection to goal drafting, cascade design, dashboard creation, and review cadences.

This skill ensures your organisation doesn't just set goals but achieves them through disciplined measurement, regular review, and data-driven course correction.