The Hidden Metric That Drives SaaS Growth: Why 70% of Roles Need OKRs Now

gandhinath0
May 22
4 min read

If you run a SaaS startup, you've probably seen it: two teams with similar resources and talent, but only one breaks through. Why?

It's almost never about working harder or raising more money. The difference is in alignment of Roles and Objectives & Key Results (OKRs). Often, it comes down to whether teams are truly working toward the same goals or just assuming they are. One way to spot this is by checking how many roles in your company actually use OKRs, not just managers or founders.

In 2023, only 46.7% of organizations used OKRs across their teams which is a slight improvement, but most startups still have major gaps (Source: Synergita). For many, the challenge isn't setting goals; it's making sure everyone's work connects to them.

To understand how Roles and OKRs can together be used for effective goal-setting as well as leadership across teams, let's start by exploring "% of Roles with OKRs".

SaaS startup team reviewing printed dashboard metrics to align roles with OKRs and drive accountability. — Photo by RDNE Stock project: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-looking-at-the-ideas-on-white-papers-7413879/

The Magic Number: What "% of Roles with OKRs" Really Means

Definition:

"% of Roles with OKRs" measures how many job functions in your company have clear Objectives and Key Results that connect to your core strategy. It's a simple way to see if OKRs are just a leadership exercise or part of daily work across all teams.

Here, "roles" means job functions( e.g., product managers, engineers, or customer success) and not individual employees. 

For OKR adoption to count, each role should own at least one objective and two measurable key results, all linked to your company’s main goals.

Formula:

% of Roles with OKRs = [ Number of Roles with Defined OKRs
						     ➗
                         Total Roles in Organization ] ✖️ 100

For example, a B2B2C EdTech startup has 120 employees, 80 roles (engineering, sales, content, support etc.).

Organization	Roles with OKRs	Total Roles
Engineering	12	15
Product Management	8	10
Customer Success	10	12
Marketing	6	8
Executives	4	4

% of Roles with OKRs = [ 12 + 8 + 10 + 6 + 4 
                             ➗ 
                         15 + 10 + 12 + 8 + 4 ] ✖️ 100 = 81.6%

Five Things That Happen When You Ignore This Metric

When you don't track and improve the percentage of roles with OKRs, your startup pays the price:

Strategic Confusion: Without OKRs, only 37% of employees understand the company’s strategy compared to 60% when OKRs are in place. (Source: Mooncamp, Haufe Talent)
Wasted Resources: Startups with less than half of roles covered by OKRs see operational redundancies triple. (Source: Perdoo)
Lower Engagement: Job satisfaction drops from 78% with OKRs to 65% without them. (Source: Mooncamp)
Decision Paralysis: Teams without role-specific OKRs take 2.8x longer to resolve cross-functional issues. (Source: LinkedIn, YOW)
Missed Growth: Startups in validation stages with low OKR adoption miss their ARR targets by up to 22%. (Source: Perdoo)

Three Critical Mistakes That Skew Your Numbers (with fixes)

Counting People, Not Roles: Don't assume 50 employees means 50 roles. Many team members wear multiple hats. Use RACI matrices to map out actual functions.
Vague OKRs: Broad goals like "Improve customer satisfaction" don't relate to role specificity. Make objectives specific to each role. For example, "Reduce support ticket resolution time by 30%" for customer experience teams.
Top-Down Only: When executives set every OKR themselves, buy-in drops by up to 40%. Aim for a mix: 70% top-down, 30% input from the team.

The Growth Matrix - Your Stage-Specific Benchmarks

Sources: Benchmarks synthesized from data sources including Synergita's 2023 OKR adoption survey, OKR Mentors' overachiever analysis, and Perdoo's startup implementation case studies.

SaaS startups succeed or stall based on how well their teams align around real growth drivers. The more roles covered by OKRs, the closer you get to hitting your ARR milestones. What follows isn't theory - it's a practical playbook for driving growth.

Growth Stage	Target % Roles with OKRs	What Happens When You Miss
Validation Seekers ($1M-$2M ARR)	30-50%	40% slower product-market fit
Traction Builders ($2M-$4M ARR)	50-70%	25% higher customer churn
Scale Preparers ($4M-$7M ARR)	70-85%	35% longer fundraising cycles
Growth Accelerators ($7M-$10M ARR)	85-100%	50% reduced expansion revenue

From OKR Chaos to EBITDA Carnage: The Startup Mistake You Can't Afford

When investors pushed back on our burn rate, our CEO, an engineer at heart, rushed out OKRs across the company. Teams scrambled to draft objectives, but there was no real alignment. Within a week, we had company-wide OKRs on paper and little else. The board soon replaced him with a finance-driven CEO who dismissed OKRs as "theater" and demanded one thing: EBITDA. His answer was to cut roles to improve the numbers. We lost top engineers almost immediately.

This kind of reactive OKR approach destroys value - 2.6 times more, by some measures. EBITDA, a lagging metric, became our executioner because we lacked three things:

A North Star Metric: No shared vision of customer value.
Strategic OKRs: No innovation-focused objectives at the role level.
Operational KPIs: Our engineering team tracked deployments, not customer outcomes.

Here's what I'd do differently now, based on that experience:

Adopt the Metric Stack Framework:

North Star: One company-wide value metric (e.g., "Weekly active teams")
OKRs: 3 to 5 strategic bets per quarter, owned by 70% or more of roles
KPIs: Daily operational health metrics (e.g., "Support ticket resolution <4h")

Startups using this adopted approach recover EBITDA 83% faster. (Source: Mooncamp)

Five Ways to Realign Roles and Get OKRs Working

Audit Roles Quarterly: Use RACI charts to map all positions. Exclude contractors and anyone in a role for less than 30 days.
Limit Key Results: Assign just 1-2 key results per role. Engineers tracking five or more metrics are 63% more likely to miss deadlines.
Train Managers Regularly: Teams with biweekly OKR check-ins hit 81% more of their quarterly targets.
Hybrid Cascading: Set 70% of goals at the company level, and let teams own the other 30%. This approach drives 92% employee buy-in.
Automate Tracking: Use tools like Datalligence or Vistally to automate OKR tracking. Startups see 18 - 25% better coverage in under six weeks. (Source: Tability)

Key Takeaways:Your Cheat Sheet to a Happier, More Productive Team

The Magic Number: Aim for at least 70% role coverage - startups that reach this see 2.4x ARR growth (Source: Synergita)
Stage Matters: Your ideal coverage grows with your company. Early-stage: 30%. Growth-stage: 85% or more. Add 15-20% per funding round
Quality Over Quantity: Each role should have at least one objective and two measurable key results. Start with customer-facing roles
Automate for Speed: Using OKR software leads to 2.1x faster adoption (Source: OKR Mentors)