Writing Quality OKRs and Goals

Brev's Goal Coach uses AI to review your OKRs as you write them — catching vague targets, missing owners, and weak phrasing before they become a problem. This article explains how it works and how to get the most out of it.

Bad OKRs are worse than no OKRs. Vague goals produce vague conversations, missed check-ins, and end-of-quarter score debates ("does 70% count as a win?"). The goal-setting moment is the highest-leverage point in the whole system — getting it right here saves everyone time later.

Brev's Goal Coach is designed to catch quality issues at creation time, not after the quarter is over.

When you create or edit a Goal, Goal Coach automatically evaluates:

1. Specificity — Is the goal concrete enough to measure? "Improve customer satisfaction" fails. "Increase NPS from 28 to 40" passes.

2. Measurability — Does the goal have a clear success state? Milestones need a binary outcome; Metrics need a start and target value.

3. Ownership — Is there one clear owner? Goals without owners don't get done.

4. Time-boundedness — Is there a deadline? Open-ended goals drift.

5. Ambition level — Is the target too easy (below 80% of current trajectory) or likely impossible (would require 5x historical growth)? Goal Coach flags both.

6. Outcome vs. activity — Is the goal describing a result or just a task? "Launch the feature" is activity. "Increase feature adoption from 12% to 30%" is outcome.

Goal Coach activates automatically when you create or edit a goal. Here's the workflow:

1. Open + New Goal and start filling in fields.

2. As you type the title and set values, Goal Coach surfaces suggestions in the right panel.

3. Review the feedback — it appears as a score (0–100) and specific callouts.

4. Edit your goal based on the suggestions.

5. Re-evaluate. Goal Coach updates in real time as you make changes.

6. Once satisfied, click Create (or Save).

You don't have to hit a perfect score before saving. Goal Coach is a guide, not a gatekeeper. But consistently ignoring low scores means your OKR system will decay over time.

Pro tip: Run a Goal Coach review session at the start of each quarter. Pull up all your goals, filter by low Quality Score, and spend 30 minutes tightening the weak ones. Your end-of-quarter retrospectives will be much cleaner.

"Goal lacks a measurable target" → Add a start value and target value, or convert to a Milestone with a clear completion state.

"Goal appears activity-based" → Reframe from "do X" to "achieve Y result by doing X." Ask: what changes in the world if this goal succeeds?

"Target may be too easy" → Challenge your assumption. Is this stretch enough? OKRs should be slightly uncomfortable.

"No owner assigned" → Assign one person. If multiple people are responsible, pick the accountable one and list others as contributors.

"Time period is missing or too long" → Add a deadline. Multi-year goals should break into quarterly milestones.

If Goal Coach isn't right for a particular goal (e.g., a long-running strategic priority that resists quarterly framing), you can dismiss individual suggestions or disable coaching for that goal from the options menu.

​⚠️ Note: Admins can configure whether Goal Coach is required or optional for their workspace. If you're getting blocked by Goal Coach requirements, check with your workspace admin.

The Goals view shows a Quality Score badge next to each goal. Filter by "Low quality" to find goals that need attention before your next cadence review.

This makes it easy to run a quarterly "OKR health check" without opening every goal individually.