Why OKRs — and Why KnightLeap Exists

How strategy became disconnected from execution — and what we built to fix it.

The gap between strategy and execution

Most organizations have two very different systems:

Strategy lives in...

Decks, offsites, and documents

Execution lives in...

Project management tools

Somewhere in between, alignment is lost.

  • Objectives become aspirational.
  • Projects become busywork.
  • Leadership loses visibility into what actually moves the business.

The result is not a lack of effort — it's a lack of coherence.

A short history of OKRs

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a goal-setting framework designed to connect ambition to measurable outcomes.

1950s

Management by Objectives

Peter Drucker develops MBO, laying the groundwork for structured goal-setting.

1970s

OKRs at Intel

Andy Grove refines MBO into what we now call OKRs — pairing ambitious objectives with concrete, measurable key results.

2000s+

Widespread Adoption

High-growth organizations like Google and Facebook adopt OKRs to drive focus, alignment, and execution at scale.

In his book Measure What Matters, John Doerr documents how these organizations used OKRs to transform strategy into action.

HOM
High Output Management

Andy Grove

The foundational text on management systems and operational excellence.

MWM
Measure What Matters

John Doerr

How Intel, Google, and others used OKRs to achieve breakthrough results.

RF
Radical Focus

Christina Wodtke

A practical guide to achieving your most important goals with OKRs.

Further reading: Wikipedia · WhatMatters.com

From activity to outcomes

From

"What are we doing?"

To

"What are we achieving?"

OKRs force teams to articulate:

  • What success looks like
  • How it will be measured
  • What actually matters right now

They turn strategy from an idea into a system.

A personal note

RA

Rick Apichairuk

Founder, KnightLeap

I've spent my career designing and implementing systems for growing businesses — across operations, finance, data, automation, and strategy.

Over the years, I've worked as a consultant, program manager, project manager, and systems architect, helping organizations scale without losing control. A large part of that work has involved something surprisingly consistent:

Tying fragmented tools and systems together so leadership can see and run the business as a coherent whole.

CRMs ↔ Finance Operations ↔ Sales Strategy ↔ Execution

Most companies don't lack tools — they lack unity between tools.

I've used nearly every major project management and planning platform:

Asana
Monday.com
Trello
Wrike
Microsoft Project
OmniPlan
ClickUp
Jira
McKinsey Wave

Each of these tools is strong in its own way — but almost all of them focus on tracking work, not tying work directly to business value.

The only exception I found was McKinsey Wave — which explicitly links initiatives to business impact — but it's built for large enterprises with dedicated teams, heavy process, and large budgets.

KnightLeap was created to bring that same discipline of strategic value into a system that's usable, flexible, and practical for small to mid-sized organizations — without the overhead, bureaucracy, or implementation complexity.

KnightLeap is the synthesis of years spent stitching together:

  • Strategy decks
  • OKR spreadsheets
  • PM tools
  • CRMs
  • Finance systems
  • Reporting layers

...just to answer a simple question:

"Is the work we're doing actually moving the business forward?"

KnightLeap provides that unity out of the box.

Built to be your operating system

Most organizations assemble their operating system from five to ten disconnected tools.
KnightLeap was built to be that operating system.

Instead of integrating strategy, planning, execution, and visibility after the fact,
KnightLeap starts with alignment and builds execution on top of it.

1
No task exists without a project.
2
No project exists without a key result.
3
No key result exists without an objective.
4
No objective exists without strategy.

Focus

instead of overload

Alignment

instead of silos

Visibility

instead of guesswork

Execution

instead of theater

KnightLeap is not a prettier task list.

It's a discipline for running your business.

Built for operators, not administrators.

Founders and operators scaling past 20–30 people

When alignment stops being automatic and you need systems that scale.

Leadership teams who want clarity without bureaucracy

Signal, not noise. Decisions, not more dashboards.

Organizations who care about outcomes more than activity

What actually moved? What's stuck? What matters now?

Teams tired of OKRs becoming theater and PM tools becoming noise

Time to close the gap between strategy and execution.

If you want a nicer dashboard, there are many tools.
If you want a system that makes strategy operational — this is for you.

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Stop managing work.
Start managing outcomes.

It's not about more dashboards.
It's not about more process.
It's about making what matters visible and executable.

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