How to Track Goals, OKRs, and KPIs in ClickUp

Tracking OKRs, goals and KPIs is extremely important to keep your business moving forward. But how can we actually track all this in ClickUp and tie it to the actual work that's happening to achieve those goals? Well, in this video, I'm going to walk you through the exact setup that we use to track our goals in ClickUp. And please, you might want to stick to the end because I'm going to have a free gift for you that you don't want to miss. Okay, let's jump in. So there's a few ways of doing this. I'm going to go over my recommendation, but before I do that, I want to talk about what you may be more familiar with if you used ClickUp for some time now. So obviously ClickUp does have the option or the feature here to store goals in their native goals feature. So I can come up here to goals, I can actually go ahead and add a new goal just like this, provide some more details and descriptions there. I can store these in folders to stay organized, and then I can also just keep track of progress like this. I can add targets based off of the type of goal, that is, whether it's a number or done or not done, or currency or tasks, just to kind of be able to say, hey, when is this actually completed? And obviously not every goal or target is going to be exactly the same. Some might be revenue targets, it might be percentages or just done or not done as we saw there. But you can provide more detail on your goals like that. Then you can actually tie tasks here directly to these goals to track progress. So this is all great. However, I would say if you're actually trying to store a lot of your goals and provide clarity for the team overall and just have a better experience with goals, I would recommend that you actually build all of your goals inside of your ClickUp workspace as tasks. So as we'll see here, I'll walk you through how our team actually builds out goals inside of ClickUp and how we've helped thousands of other different teams here as well. And so really for this, the beauty of ClickUp is the customizable options and the things that you can really do with ClickUp because it is so sort of a blank canvas when you come into ClickUp. And so cool things that you can do are like build CRM systems or lead trackers, things like that, but you can also build out your goals here as well. So in terms of how I set this up, as you can see, I have a separate space for goals and this could be labeled really whatever you want, whether it's KPIs, OKRs, just have a good terminology for your team there and just keep it standard so everyone knows what it is overall. And then as you can see here, I also have my other spaces. Your hierarchy might not look exactly the same as mine, which is okay, but as you can see here, operations, growth and delivery, this is where my actionable work is taking place. So obviously in the project management system, you often have your projects or your actual tasks, those to dos for people that are assigned to and they have to complete them. So that's where all of that work would live. But then I also have this separate place for me to actually store my goals. And so the reason I break it up from all of these is because these again are my actionable to dos. They're going to have some custom fields and things like that on these that I don't necessarily need on my goals because again, these are more records or just kind of ways for me to store my goals. So it's a little bit different. And that's why I like to break it up. It's also just a way to keep this organized here as well. So overall you could have your space just like that. And then this is very simple. Essentially all I have here is a folder I call this goal tracker. And then within that I have a goals list and a company vision document. So a couple other ways of doing this is I could if you instead of having just one list for all of my goals. So this is really going to depend on how large your organization is. And if you want to just keep tabs on goals for a specific department or team, what I could do, as you can see right here, this is goals for my entire company. They're all in this list. So everyone across the organization, maybe if you have 50 people are going to know what everyone's goals are. However, if you don't want that, maybe you wanted to break it up. What I could do is I could take this folder either at the folder level or at the list and I could take this and I could duplicate it just like that. And that way then I can just have a goal tracker for the marketing team or the sales team or the delivery team and I can divvy up and organize it that way. In addition, if you don't want everyone to see everyone else's goals, I could, after I duplicate those, I can also go to the sharing and permissions and just say, hey, this only needs to be shared with the marketing team. So I could just invite certain people to it, but based off of whose goals those actually are. So again, you can increase or decrease the amount of permissions on this. But again, if you want to just have a one list for all the goals across the company right here, again that's going to make it so that you don't really have as much permission settings and everyone's going to see all these goals in here. But if you wanted to organize it up, you could either duplicate this list and just have them all in one folder, or I could take this folder and duplicate it as well. Really depends. I like to have a company Vision document here, but this could also be turned into marketing vision or sales vision. I just like to keep those closely aligned with our goals. So that's why you could duplicate the folder. That way every department or team has their own folder versus just the list. But again, I'll leave that up to you. If you're a smaller organization or you like to keep all of your goals in one list just like this, I find it very helpful to hold everyone accountable and just be able to sort of. There might be people across different departments that are going to be included in those goals and we need them to kind of hold each other accountable. Then it's helpful to have all of these in one place. And then you can use things like custom fields to divvy that up and sort of create views to just see delivery view delivery goals or growth goals and operations goals. I could use that. But we'll get into custom fields in just a moment anyway. So that's kind of how you can organize and structure it. Now I want to transition into more of what this company vision document is and why I have it here. In terms of this, the reason I love this so much is that this is right next to our goals. And so our goals are essentially sort of what are those quarterly things we need to accomplish? Maybe you do it by month, maybe do it by year. Oftentimes it might be quarter here, but what are those things every quarter that we need to achieve to get to our vision of where we're trying to get to as a company? So it's super helpful to provide clarity to the team directly next to those goals. So right here in this document I can provide things like our core values, our company scorecard. It could be an accountability chart or mission and vision statement, 10 year, 3 year, 1 year goals, or whatever that might be for your team. A lot of this is actually pulled from us, the entrepreneurial operating system, which I actually have A video on that and how you can run that inside of ClickUp which I'll put in the top right so you can go directly there if you want to find more about what that is. I find it very helpful. Their goals are kind of like rocks or what are those quarterly initiatives or things that you need to accomplish to get us to reach our 1 year, 3 year, 10 year goals and our vision overall as a company. But overall, I just recommend you have a document like this directly next to your goals. That way it's all in one place providing clarity for all. And then everyone, when they get a goal assigned to them of what they're trying to achieve, they know how that is going to directly impact your company getting to its vision. So I like to keep those two pieces closely aligned. So I find it very helpful to have a document like this directly next to our goals. So that's why I have this here. Again, you can build something out just like this, Just document it here, put it here for the team. That way it's always in front of them when they're actually going to keep progress on their goals and see their goals overall. Now moving on into our goals list, this is very simple. We're basically just the process here is to every quarter or how often you're setting goals, you're just going to create your goals as tasks here inside of this list. So the very simple part of it is just creating the task name essentially is that goal that okr, that KPI, that's the task name. From there you would then assign it to whoever the owner of that is or whoever has to accomplish that or whoever's hold accountable to that. And then you can also use the due date for when is this due? And in addition we're also going to have custom fields here as well. But that's the first step again, just getting all those in here, the second step. And again this is also pulled from the EOS methodology. The entrepreneurial operating system is your smart goal planner or an eos. It's actually the Smart Rock planner. So within this we're just getting more detail and more clarity on that goal or that rock overall. So as you can see here, I just put this into the parent task. So this is something I would leverage. You can also use a document like this for this as well. So whether it's a document or putting it directly into that task, just make sure it is filled out overall. That way we get more clarity on these goals. But as you can see here, what's the due date? What's the short title of this, that should already be here in the task. But the first thing is going to be describing that goal. So providing more detail on what the goal is, how do we know it's actually finished? And just providing detail on that overall is very helpful to provide clarity to the person that is in charge of this goal as well as management, maybe they're also other people on the team. Just so we all know what this goal actually is. After that you also want to have the smart goal checker. So we want to make sure that this goal is specific, that it's measurable, that it's attainable, realistic and timely overall. Because that's going to be super important. Because if it's not, if it doesn't meet that criteria, then that's probably not a good goal and we should check on it to make it actually smart. So you can go ahead and check all of these off there as you go and evaluate your goal overall. The next piece of this, which is super important is actually going to be the major steps. So you want to spend some time actually laying out those milestones overall. So if Our goal is 110 plus FTAs, which is those first time appointments from the sales team here, we need to make sure that we have sort of this laid out so that I'm knowing if I'm on track or off track for this goal. So I need to figure out sort of what are those milestones within this like as you can see here, it's just basic 40, 50, 60, 70, all the way to 110 FTAs that might be different based off your goal that you have set, but make sure those are all laid out in here with due dates so we can kind of close those milestones overall. And again, as you can see here, essentially I lay that out in here with all of those milestones and then those then become subtasks underneath this so that I can track progress across the quarter. So that's going to be super important because that's going to help hold the team accountable and let us know how we're progressing on this goal overall. So make sure you do those major steps and then after that the requirements and resources very important here as well, because are there going to be other people, some tools or other resources that need to be brought in for you to help accomplish this goal? Make sure you're clear on that because maybe there's someone, maybe you're on the marketing team, but you need someone on the delivery team's help with something. Just Maybe more clarity on whatever process it may be. You might need to pull other people in it for you to accomplish that goal. So it's good if everyone knows exactly who's going to be included in this process or in this goal overall. So you can come here and you can actually mention that person. That way they become sort of a watcher on this task and they can kind of help you there. So just make sure that's all out to everyone and clarity is provided before you even start trying to accomplish this goal. But again, that's just kind of a great way to make sure all this is documented in, in here, inside of ClickUp. So after we get all that out, we all have the milestones on these assigned out with due dates. Then we're going to go to start adding some additional custom fields. And so custom fields in this are going to be super important because there's what's going to be helping us create views and provide more clarity on these goals overall. So a couple that I like to include in here are like goal quarter. Again, depending on your timeline, this might be year, this might be month. However often you kind of put in these goals. Just make sure you go and add these in. As you can see here, as a new quarter comes along, I'm just going to go ahead and add an option. You kind of color code this the way that you want, but make sure you have that kind of what goal or what quarter is this goal a part of? Make sure all of that's labeled, which will be super important for historical information. But we'll get into that in just a moment. You also have the goal type, so if you want to label both personal and company goals, or maybe there's different goal types that you have as an organization, but this is just helpful to kind of see what are those company goals that we have overall and then how do those personal goals also go into that company? Goal departments is another great one, especially if you're leveraging this format where it's just one goals list. Because then I can kind of use these to labels as a growth goal, delivery goal, operations goal, and then I can use that to create views to just filter down by delivery goals. So if I wanted to come here and go to goal department is delivery and I can just see delivery, if that's what we want to be able to see, then I could do that and I can add in that filter. So that's why it's super important to have those custom fields in here overall. In addition, another important one is going to Be goal status. So whether it's on track or off track, that's going to be great if you have a goal progress tracker just like this. So this is just another view for you to have a progress custom field in here that allows me to track the progress of those milestones. So that's why it's super important to have these milestones because I can have a progress custom field that allows me to kind of see how far along these subtests are. So you'll see as I go ahead and complete this, that's actually going to fill up the progress bar. And then I can see based off of those milestones, is this goal status actually on track or off track? So very simple. If this is off track, I'm going to label it that way and then I'll make sure the whole team is aligned on that. But, but overall you're here to track progress just like this. That way it's all clear for the team. Everyone knows sort of how far along this goal is and there's no unknown in this process overall. In addition, another thing that you can do with this if you want is as I go and sort of fill that out and check off those milestones. If something is off track, I can also give this weekly goal update here. So is this, I can just basically answer a few questions. Is this goal on track? What progress has been made on this goal? And if this goal is not on track, what or who do you need to get this goal back on track? So I can go ahead and I can answer those questions every week. If you want to build that into your process again, that's just going to give good clarity to the team overall. Because now as I come in here, as we'll see as I leave these comments, this is going to provide sort of every single week we're going to have that. And then I can look back to sort of see when did a goal start going right or maybe when did it start going wrong and sort of the. That I call the right people in. So it's a great way to hold everyone accountable and get good clarity and visibility to management or the team overall and how we're progressing on certain goals. So I'd highly recommend have some sort of whether this is a weekly update, whether this is bi weekly, it's great to get all of this into the system and just have people going and creating good habits out of keeping tabs and keeping track of that goal to keep them moving forward with these. If they are falling behind, do they need to call someone out, do they need to bring someone in to get some extra help? Just make sure you have a process just like that. So then another beauty of this with actually tracking goals inside of tasks in ClickUp is if I want to, I can actually take tasks. So let's say for our new website launch, I can take the tasks that I'm working on that website launch and I can actually link them to this task right here. So I can link them to the goal. As you'll see here, I can see all the link tasks. Right now I don't have any, but if I wanted to link any tasks, I could either just come right in here and link tasks, I could add a task just like that, or I could actually go directly into, let's say my growth space. Let's say we had some tasks in here, I could actually grab all of these just like this. And then I can come up here to the top of my multi select toolbar and I can come to task linking just like this. And I want to do many to one. And then what I'm able to do is either search for it or if I just clicked on this, as you can see, it pulls up the recent. So I'd highly recommend that you do that. You pull up the task before you actually go to link anything to it. Because it's going to come up here now. And as you'll see, new website launch, I want to link all of these tasks because these are part of my website launch. I want to link them to that so that I can pull in those statuses and see all of them sort of in one place. So that's how you directly tie those tasks that you're working on in these different spaces to the goal of sort of where those apply. And sort of, if I'm working on the website launch, I want to make sure I'm able to see, okay, how am I actually working on that website launch? That's how you would do it. So as you can see now, if I come over to link tasks just like this, scroll over, we're going to see all those tasks here. In addition, if I click into the task, I will also see them linked just like this. So we'll be able to track statuses on these and sort of see how far along we are overall on this website launch. So that's kind of another great way to see that information. Again, that's not going to be what fills up your goal progress bar. That's all going to be tied to these milestones because again, it's based off of this parent task, what's the progress? But this is a great way to get all those tasks linked out so that I can see them here overall. So great way to provide more visibility and clarity to your team by linking those tasks. And then lastly, overall, I know we've gone through a couple of these views, but there's just a lot of great views that you can use those custom fields to really personalize this and just kind of see information the way that you would want to, depending on your personality type, whether it's a board view. Just like this, I can start to see goals by quarter because then I can group by that goal quarter custom field. As you can see here, our goals for Q1, 2023, Q2, Q3, Q4, all the way into 2024. Here we'll be able to see all those goals in one place. I can pull in all those custom fields and sort of see it like this. In addition, I can also just do it goals by goal type if I wanted to sort of have a smaller view like this where I'm just seeing based off of the the company goals versus personal goals. Here I can also get into close goals by status, which is where I'm going to be able to pull that historical information as I was talking about. So I can just show me the close goals here. So essentially what you would do is either you actually finish this goal, so when I actually get 110 plus FDA's I can close this out. However, if I never close it out when the due date hits, I'm still going to hit close, but I'm going to leave the goal status as off track. So then over time what I'm able to do is I can sort of see what goals were not finished and what goals were finished and really what have all those goals been. So we're gonna be able to see this and we'll be able to sort of group it by goal quarter here as well if we want to. But it's just kind of a great way to keep track of all of that historical information, all of those goals in one place. If I wanted to click into this, if I had put all of those comments on here for keeping tabs on this and I had all the milestones, I would be able to see sort of what happened across me and maybe why I didn't hit these FTAs, we'd have all the information directly inside of ClickUp. So that's a great view to have. In addition, we just have some other ones in here. You can do it personally for just your specific goals. And I can create a board view like that to see which goals are on track or off track and also looking at the goal quarters here as well. And this can be filtered down by Assignee is me mode. That way anyone who logs in will see this view tied to them and sort of their goals overall. And I can also build out other things like a Goals Updates which essentially is an activity view that just pulls in comments that allows me to sort of see all those weekly goal updates. So there's a lot of great views and a lot of great ways that you can provide visibility to leadership or whoever needs to see this overall and just hold each other accountable. Because again, the reason I love creating views here inside of a ClickUp list overall and making these as tasks is because a I can directly tie those tasks through the task linking feature as we saw. In addition, I can also leverage these views to see these goals the way that I would want. Then I can leverage comments and things like that that allow me to really build some good historical and good data into this to keep everyone aligned, keep everyone on top of things and keep every everyone progressing and moving forward overall towards our vision as a company. Hopefully that helped you get a grasp for the ways that you can set up your goals and track progress on them inside of ClickUp and if you have any questions or recommendations or comments in general, please leave them in the comment section below. And if you like this video and you found it helpful, please hit the like button and subscribe so that you don't miss our next ClickUp tutorial and obviously the moment that you've been waiting for. I told you that there would be a gift at the end of this video. So if you want this exact template that I just walked through, it's going to be available for purchase on on our website. Go to zenpilot.com goal tracker. The link will be in the description below. And because you watch to the end of this video, you can use the code YOUTUBE30 which will also be in the description below to get 30% off. And with that I'll see you again next time. Can I make no more I can't replace it's about time.