How to Set a Key Result Baseline Before You Pick a Target

How to set a key result baseline: read today's value from a source you agree on before the quarter starts, write it next to the target, and check you'd get the same figure on another day. Don't know the number? Finding it becomes your first key result.

How to set a key result baseline: find today's number first

Picture week thirteen. You open the document. The target says five hundred weekly users. You look at the dashboard and it says four hundred.

Did you fail? You can't say. You never wrote down where you started.

Maybe you were at fifty and climbed enormously. Maybe you were at four hundred and fifty and went backwards. The target is identical in both stories. The quarter is completely different. And with no baseline, you'll do what everyone does: quietly decide you succeeded.

That's why a key result with a target and no baseline isn't measurable, whatever it looks like. "Reach five hundred weekly users" means something entirely different at four hundred and fifty than at fifty. One is a nudge. The other is a transformation. You can't tell which goal you set.

So the rule for a key result baseline is blunt. Baseline before target. Every time.

What a baseline is, and what it isn't

A baseline is the value of the metric today, read from a named source, written beside the target.

It's not a guess. It's not "roughly where we are". It's not last quarter's best week because it looks better. It's the number, as it stands, from a place you can open again.

Three things make it a proper baseline:

• You know today's value, or finding it is itself a key result.
• You've agreed the source, and you can reach it, before the quarter starts.
• You'd report the same number from the same data on a different day.

That last one is the quiet killer. If the figure changes depending on who counts, when, or which export you use, then your target is a moving goalpost you built yourself.

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Where you stand: what to do in each case

Most solo operators land in one of three situations. Be honest about which.

The third row is not a failure. A missing key result baseline is a result.

When you do not know the number

This will happen more than you expect.

You want to grow something and realise you can't say what it is today. Not roughly. Not within a range you'd defend. Nobody's counted it. And "nobody" turns out to mean you.

Here is the rule: if you don't have the baseline, finding it is your first key result. That's a perfectly legitimate goal. It's frequently the most valuable one a young business sets, because it reveals that nobody actually knew.

Sit with how useful that is. You've been making decisions for months based on a number you couldn't produce. A quarter spent finding it, and trusting it, is a quarter well spent. Next quarter's target will mean something.

Resist the urge to fake it. Setting a target against an invented starting point is worse than having no goal. It gives you a number to feel good or bad about, and it isn't real.

Why people skip it

Because it's boring. Writing a target is exciting. It feels like ambition. Finding out where you actually stand is a chore, and sometimes it's a small humiliation. That's exactly why it matters. A baseline is the first moment the goal meets reality. Skip it and you get to keep a flattering story a little longer. Pay for it later, in the one place you can't afford it: the last week of the quarter, when you want to know whether any of it worked and the honest answer is "no idea".

There's a second reason people skip it. They assume they already know. You've been inside the business every day, so surely you know the number. Test that. Write today's value on a piece of paper without opening anything. Then open the source and compare. The gap is often the most useful thing you'll learn all week.

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Choose a source you can open again

The baseline is only as good as where it comes from.

Agree the source before the quarter begins, and make sure you can actually get at it. Not "I'll work it out later". A named place. A definition of how it's counted. Something you can open in week six without a debate about what the figure means.

Then test it. Would you report the same number from the same data on a different day? If you'd get a different answer tomorrow, the problem is the measurement, and no amount of effort on the metric will fix it.

This is the would-we-know test applied to the starting line. A specific number, with a baseline and a target, that you can read at the end of the quarter without an argument. See the difference between an objective and a key result for the other test it pairs with.

One trap to avoid while you choose. Don't pick the metric because it's available. Availability is not relevance. The easiest number to pull is rarely the most important one in your business. Start from the outcome you want, then find the number that proves it, then find its baseline. Not the other way round. The writing steps are in how to write OKRs.

What the baseline tells you about your target

Once the starting number is written down, the target stops being a feeling.

You can see the distance. You can tell whether it's ambitious or already nearly met. And you can catch the sandbagged target, the number you're confident of hitting. That confidence is itself a signal to check your own incentives. With nobody to impress, the only thing a goal you can't fail gives you is a comfortable quarter that taught you nothing.

The baseline also makes the committed or aspirational label meaningful. A committed goal is one you expect to deliver in full. An aspirational one is set beyond comfortable reach, where most of the way counts as a win. You can't tell which you've written unless you know the gap between where you start and where you aim.

It earns its keep again at the end. Scoring honestly means comparing what actually happened to where you began, without adjusting for how hard it felt. No baseline, no honest score. If that's your problem, how to score OKRs honestly picks up from here.

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A key result baseline you can set on Monday

You don't need a tool or a dashboard. You need a short, slightly annoying sitting.

1. List your key results. Next to each, write today's value.
2. Where you can't write it, stop. That's the finding.
3. Name the source for each number, and how it's counted.
4. Re-read each one on a different day. Does it match?
5. Where it doesn't match, fix the measurement before you set the target.
6. If you still lack a number, rewrite that key result as finding it.

Then set the targets, once each key result baseline is written down. In that order. Never before.

Skipping this is the fourth item on the list of OKR mistakes to avoid, and it's one of the quietest. You won't notice it going wrong. You'll just notice, in week thirteen, that you can't say whether the quarter worked.

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Frequently asked questions

What is a key result baseline?

It's the current value of the metric, read from an agreed source, written alongside the target. Without it, a target like five hundred weekly users means something different at four hundred and fifty than at fifty.

What if I don't know my baseline?

Make finding it your first key result. It's a legitimate goal and often the most valuable one a young business sets, because it exposes that nobody actually knew the number.

How do I know my baseline is reliable?

Check that you agreed the source before the quarter started, that you can access it, and that you'd report the same number from the same data on a different day.

Can I set a target first and measure later?

No. A target without a baseline isn't measurable, and at the end you'll quietly decide you succeeded. Get the starting number first, then choose how far you want to move it.

The full method, with the checklists, is in The OKR Playbook, a free 23-page playbook.