Turning an OKR page into a quarterly goals deck

Most teams write their quarterly goals in a page somewhere: objectives, key results, owners, maybe some context. That page is great for reference. It’s less great for the moment you need to stand up and explain the goals to the team, leadership or the rest of the company.

A goals deck has a different job from a goals page. The page records everything. The deck helps people understand and remember the few things that matter this quarter. Here’s how to get from one to the other.

Know what the deck needs to do

Before you touch the page, decide what the presentation is for. It’s usually one of three things:

• Launching the quarter. The team needs to understand the goals and why they were chosen.
• Getting sign-off. Leadership needs to agree the goals before work starts.
• Reviewing last quarter. People want to know how you did and what you learned.

You can cover more than one, but pick a main purpose. A sign-off deck spends more time on trade-offs. A launch deck spends more time on why and who.

Start with the story, not the list

OKR pages often open with a list of objectives. That’s efficient on a page, but on slides, a list of five objectives with no context makes everything feel equally important.

Open the deck with one or two slides of context instead:

• What we’re trying to achieve this year, in a sentence.
• What this quarter is about, in a sentence. “This quarter is about making onboarding reliable” is far easier to remember than five separate objectives.

Then introduce the objectives as parts of that story.

Give each objective its own slide

For each objective, one slide is usually enough. A simple layout that works:

• Title: the objective, written as an outcome. “New customers are set up within a day”, not “Onboarding”.
• Why it matters: one or two lines.
• Key results: two to four, each measurable.
• Owner: one name.

If your page has more than four key results under an objective, that’s often a sign the objective is really two. Splitting it on the page first will make the slides cleaner.

Make the key results readable

Key results tend to be written in a compressed shorthand that makes sense to the person who wrote them. On a slide, spell them out.

On the page	On the slide
KR2: TTV < 1d (p50)	Half of new customers see value within one day
KR3: CSAT onboarding ≥ 4.5	Onboarding rated 4.5 or higher by new customers
KR4: −50% setup tickets	Setup support tickets cut in half

These key results are illustrative.

Include the starting point where you have one. “From three days to one” tells people how ambitious the goal is. “One day” on its own doesn’t.

Show what you’re not doing

One of the most useful slides in a goals deck is the one people often skip: what’s not a goal this quarter. Pull from the parts of your page that discuss trade-offs, parked ideas or things you decided against.

This slide prevents a lot of confusion later. When someone asks why their request isn’t happening, the answer is already on record.

Connect goals to owners and teams

If several teams share the goals, add a slide that shows who’s working on what. A simple grid works: objectives down the side, teams across the top, a mark where a team contributes. Keep the detail of who does what on the page. The slide just needs to show that every objective has a home.

Reviewing last quarter

If the deck also reviews the previous quarter, keep that section short and honest. For each objective:

• what you aimed for
• where you landed
• one line on why
• what you’re carrying forward

A simple colour or label for each key result (met, partly met, missed) helps people scan. Avoid long explanations for every missed result. Pick the one or two most important lessons and talk about those.

Tidy the page first

The deck will be easier to make if the page is in good shape. A few quick edits:

• Write each objective as a heading, with its key results underneath as a list.
• Put the owner on the first line under each objective.
• Add a short summary at the top of the page.
• Move background reading, old discussions and long rationale to the bottom.

Now each heading maps to a slide, and the most important content is at the top of each section.

Running the session

Leave time for questions after each objective, not just at the end. People often only realise a goal affects them when it’s on the screen. If the session is a sign-off, end with a clear question for the room: do we agree these goals, and is anything missing?

After the meeting, update the page with anything that changed and share it as the reference. The deck was for the conversation; the page is what people will come back to. That split is the habit doc-first teams rely on. If the goals will be tracked in weekly check-ins, turning meeting notes into update slides covers how to report progress without rebuilding a deck each week.

A quick check

Before you present, ask:

• Does the deck open with what this quarter is about?
• Is each objective written as an outcome, on its own slide?
• Are the key results spelled out, with a starting point?
• Does every objective have one owner?
• Is there a slide on what you’re not doing?
• If you’re reviewing last quarter, is it short and honest?

A quarterly goals deck that passes these checks takes a few minutes to present, and people will still remember the goals a month later.