ChecklistStrategic Planning10 min to complete
Q4 OKR readiness checklist
A 12-item readiness check you can run in ten minutes before committing to a new OKR cycle. Built from the patterns that separate OKRs that survive Q4 from the ones that quietly disappear.
Vizually Team·
Run through these twelve checks before publishing the next OKR tree. Anything you can't tick today is a leading indicator that the OKR built on top of it will be quietly dropped by November.
State is saved locally — close the tab and come back, your ticks survive.
Owners and accountability
0 / 4- Every OKR has exactly one named owner — not a team
- The owner has the authority to make tradeoffs against this OKR
- Sub-key-results have separate owners where they cross teams
- Owners have agreed to be on the weekly check-in cadence
Measurement
0 / 4- Every key result has a numeric target with a unit
- The leading indicator is identified separately from the lagging one
- Where the data lives is documented (URL, sheet name, query)
- Someone has actually run the measurement once already
Cadence
0 / 4- The weekly check-in slot is on every owner's calendar
- The mid-quarter recommit date is locked
- The post-mortem template exists and the date is on the calendar
- Leadership has committed to attending the recommit
If you ticked fewer than nine boxes, hold the cycle. Spend the week before lock-in fixing the gaps — it's cheaper than a quarter of zombie OKRs.
Ready to set the tree? Open the Annual OKR Planning Workbook for the artifact half of the story.