Case Study · OKR CONSULTING AND HR ADVISORY
PNAC’s OKR Consulting and HR Advisory services helped a fast-scaling New York professional services firm close the gap between individual role ownership and company ambition, turning a fragmented performance culture into a unified, measurable operating model through an active, ongoing engagement.
Client Brief
This New York professional services firm had grown from eight to thirty employees in under two years, delivering management consulting, process optimization, and change management to mid-market clients across financial services, healthcare technology, and retail.
Senior leadership had adopted OKRs fourteen months prior but implemented the framework without external OKR consulting guidance and without a methodology for cascading company objectives into individual role definitions. KRAs remained anchored to founding-era job descriptions. OKRs were shared in all-hands meetings with no structured link to what each person actually owned.
The result was a performance architecture that appeared rigorous on a shared dashboard but was functionally disconnected at the team level. Every quarter, the firm ran hard. Every quarter, the destination shifted without anyone formally recalibrating the map. Three signals made the cost undeniable:
The Chief Operating Officer engaged PNAC as the firm’s dedicated OKR Consulting and HR Advisory partner to redesign the performance architecture from first principles and build an OKR and KRA alignment model that could scale through every growth phase ahead. The engagement remains active.
DIAGNOSTIC
OKRs Set Without KRA Mapping
Quarterly OKRs were set at the company level with no process for translating them into individual KRAs. No visible line of sight existed between a person’s daily ownership and the firm’s quarterly priorities.
KRAs Anchored to Roles That No Longer Existed
As the firm grew from eight to thirty people, roles evolved, but KRAs did not. Senior consultants were assessed against accountabilities written for a company a fraction of its current size.
No Cascading OKR Methodology
OKRs were presented in all-hands meetings with no structured cascade to the team or individual level. Self-alignment to company objectives had not held as the team scaled beyond a founding core.
Duplicate Accountabilities Across Functions
Client retention, a critical Key Result in two consecutive quarters, was partially owned by three functions and fully owned by none. Diffused responsibility produced missed targets and inter-team friction.
Manager Capability Gap on OKR Methodology
No manager had received structured training on writing measurable Key Results traceable to role accountabilities. OKR quality varied so dramatically by team that board reporting was unreliable.
Performance Reviews Disconnected from Strategy
Annual reviews assessed employees against KRAs unconnected to the OKRs the firm had prioritized that year. High performers working in the wrong direction received identical ratings to those driving strategic outcomes.
FRAMEWORK
KRAs define what a role must permanently own. OKRs define what the team must achieve in a defined period. KRAs are stable. OKRs are dynamic. When designed together and connected deliberately, every employee can trace a direct line from their daily work to the company’s most important outcomes. PNAC established this foundation before any redesign began.
| FUNCTION | KRA: What the Role Permanently Owns | OKR: What the Team Must Achieve This Quarter |
| Consulting Delivery | Quality of deliverables and on-time completion | Objective: Become the most recommended firm in our category. Key Result: 90% plus client satisfaction across all engagements by Q3 |
| Business Development | Pipeline generation and proposal conversion | Objective: Expand revenue from existing clients. Key Result: Account expansion revenue reaches 35% of total by year-end |
| Client Success | Retention and relationship continuity post-delivery | Objective: Reduce client churn to zero. Key Result: 100% contract renewal among first-engagement clients |
| Operations | Resource utilization and delivery margin management | Objective: Improve efficiency without compromising quality. Key Result: Billable utilisation at 78% by Q4 with eNPS above 85 |
PNAC's Approach
PNAC deployed a five-phase methodology: Diagnose, Define, Design, Deploy, and Sustain, calibrated to a 30-person service firm that could not pause client delivery while a new performance architecture was being built around it.
Performance Architecture Diagnostic
Structured interviews with all people managers, an anonymous employee survey on goal clarity and role ownership, a complete audit of KRA documents and four quarters of OKR records, and a cross-analysis of performance review outcomes against achievement data. The diagnostic produced a definitive gap map: 27 specific misalignment points between individual KRAs and company OKRs, 11 instances of duplicate accountability, and 4 critical ownership voids where no role held a Key Result it was designed to move.
KRA Redesign Across All Functions
Every KRA in the firm was rewritten to four non-negotiable standards: role-specific and non-duplicable across the organisation; containing at least one measurable performance indicator directly traceable to a company Key Result; explicitly distinguishing operational accountability from strategic contribution; and signed off jointly by the role holder and their direct manager. All 11 duplicate accountability instances were eliminated. All 4 ownership voids were closed.
Cascaded OKR Architecture
A structured two-day leadership alignment session produced three company-level Objectives, each supported by four to five measurable Key Results. PNAC then facilitated a full cascading process in which each function-built team's OKRs aligned to the company's Key Results, and every individual KRA was cross-referenced against the team OKRs the role was accountable for contributing to. The result was a three-tier architecture: company, team, and individual, with no layer operating in isolation from the others.
Manager OKR Capability Programme
Four structured sessions for all six people managers covering output versus outcome distinction, writing measurable Key Results, conducting OKR and KRA alignment conversations, and using OKR data for real-time decisions. Post-programme confidence: 88%.
Review Integration and Ongoing Retainer
Performance reviews now score each employee on three weighted dimensions: KRA delivery, OKR contribution, and capability growth. The active quarterly retainer updates KRAs as roles evolve, runs new hire OKR inductions, and ensures every quarter is set with a full cascade before it begins.
PNAC built a performance architecture with us, for us, and then made sure every manager understood it well enough to run it without a consultant in the room. For the first time, I can trace every quarterly result back to a person and a decision.
Chief Operating Officer, Professional Services Startup, New York
Outcomes Delivered
The firm moved from a performance system that appeared rigorous on a dashboard but produced no strategic accountability to a fully aligned OKR and KRA operating model that every employee understands, and every manager can run. It changed how the business makes decisions, allocates resources, and hires for growth.
ALIGNMENT
94% OKR and KRA Alignment Score
An independent post-phase audit assessed every individual KRA against the company's OKR architecture and recorded a 94% alignment score across all functions. At the time of PNAC’s initial diagnostic, the equivalent score was 31%. The firm now holds a fully documented and auditable performance architecture with no unowned Key Results and no duplicated accountabilities.
PERFORMANCE
Goal Completion Rate Doubled in Two Cycles
In the two quarters following full OKR and KRA deployment, the firm’s quarterly Key Result completion rate rose from 38% to 76%. The improvement was directly attributable to clearer ownership, stronger manager capability, and the elimination of the accountability voids that had allowed high-priority outcomes to go unowned through two prior years.
CLARITY
41% Reduction in Role Ambiguity
The employee engagement survey run six months into the engagement showed that employees reporting high role clarity rose from 33% to 74%, a 41% point improvement. The proportion reporting that their daily work was visibly connected to company objectives rose from 33% to 81%. Role ambiguity, one of the leading drivers of attrition in small professional services firms, was structurally removed.
CAPABILITY
88% Manager Confidence in OKR Setting
All six people managers rated themselves confident in independently writing, cascading, and evaluating OKRs. Every new hire since completes the embedded OKR induction as standard onboarding.
REVENUE
Quarterly Revenue Target Hit for the First Time in Three Years
With client retention accountability unambiguously assigned, the firm achieved its quarterly revenue target for the first time in three consecutive fiscal years.
ONGOING
Active Retainer Evolving the Architecture Each Quarter
PNAC’s ongoing retainer ensures the performance architecture scales with the firm, not behind it. Every quarter: OKR cascade facilitation, KRA updates, new hire inductions, and a board-ready health report.
Work With PNAC
Join founders and COOs across New York and beyond who have built accountable, scalable performance cultures with PNAC’s OKR Consulting, KRA Design, and HR Advisory. Whether your team is 10, 30, or 300, PNAC builds the performance architecture your ambition requires.
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