Strategy & Planning

How to set quarterly okrs as Chief of Staff and Founder's Office

Strategy & PlanningFor Chief of Staff and Founder's Office3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You own the OKR process but you're not an OKR owner yourself — you're the person who chases every functional lead for their draft objectives, reconciles five different formats from engineering, sales, finance, and product, finds the gaps where nobody owns a company-level priority, and then builds the all-hands deck to present what the exec team agreed to last Tuesday. It currently takes you ten days of Slack threads, stale Notion docs, and a master Google Sheet nobody keeps current. By the time you've consolidated, the numbers from HubSpot and QuickBooks are already two weeks old and the CEO wants to see it on Friday.

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Strategy & PlanningFor Chief of Staff and Founder's Office3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A connected OKR dashboard that pulls live deal data from HubSpot, financial actuals from QuickBooks, and prior-quarter context from Notion into one place — so you're not rebuilding the spreadsheet every quarter

An automated quarterly kickoff workflow that prompts each functional lead, collects their draft OKRs, flags company-level coverage gaps, and surfaces the last quarter's missed key results before the planning session starts

A board-ready OKR status view you can update in minutes before every exec review — not the morning of, scrambling

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Knowledge Management Task Manager CRM

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your HubSpot data on a schedule (contacts, companies, deals, owners) and your QuickBooks data on a schedule (invoices, payments, journal entries). Notion pages and databases sync on a schedule so prior-quarter OKR docs and strategy pages are always available. Slack and Gmail are also synced on a schedule for owner communication. Google Calendar syncs on a schedule to coordinate planning session timing.

Prompts to copy

Build me a quarterly OKR tracker that shows company-level objectives, each linked to 3-5 key results with owners, current status, and a confidence score from 1-5. Pull in open deals and pipeline from HubSpot and quarterly revenue actuals from QuickBooks. Add a section at the top that shows which company priorities have no functional owner yet.

Create a recurring quarterly planning workflow: two weeks before quarter end, send each functional lead a Slack message with their prior quarter OKR results and a prompt to submit their draft objectives for next quarter. Aggregate the responses and flag any company-level priorities from our strategy doc in Notion that have no coverage.

Build me a weekly OKR pulse view: for each key result, show owner, last update, current metric vs target, and a red/yellow/green status. Pull revenue and pipeline numbers automatically; let owners type in updates for qualitative KRs. Slack me a digest every Monday at 8am.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect HubSpot, QuickBooks, Notion, Slack, Gmail, and Google Calendar — Starch syncs each on a schedule so your OKR dashboard is always pulling from live data, not a snapshot you exported two weeks ago.

2 Open the Knowledge Management app and tell Starch: 'Ingest our Q3 OKR document and our annual strategy doc from Notion so the agent can reference them when building the quarterly planning workflow.' This gives Starch the strategic context it needs to flag coverage gaps.

3 Tell Starch: 'Build me a company OKR dashboard with company-level objectives across Finance, GTM, Product, and Engineering. For each objective, show 3-5 key results with owner, target metric, current metric pulled from HubSpot or QuickBooks where available, and a confidence score.' Starch assembles the app from your description.

4 Add the cross-functional coverage check: 'Add a panel that compares our active OKRs against the priorities in the strategy doc and highlights any company priorities with no current key result assigned to them.'

5 Set up the quarterly kickoff automation: 'Two weeks before the end of each quarter, pull each functional lead's name and prior-quarter OKR results from Notion, send them a Slack message asking for their draft objectives for next quarter, and collect responses into a consolidated draft OKR table for my review.'

6 Build the gap-detection layer: 'After collecting functional lead responses, compare the submitted draft OKRs against our annual strategy priorities and Slack me a summary of any top-company priorities that no team has claimed ownership of for next quarter.'

7 Wire the financial actuals automatically: 'For every key result that has a revenue or spend target, pull the current figure from QuickBooks or HubSpot each Monday and update the metric field automatically — I shouldn't have to ask finance for a number I could just pull.'

8 Create the exec-review surface: 'Build a clean OKR status view I can open on a laptop during a board or exec review — objectives grouped by function, each KR showing owner, status (red/yellow/green), and a one-line latest update. No charts I don't need.'

9 Set up the weekly pulse digest: 'Every Monday at 8am, post a Slack message to #leadership with a summary of OKR status: how many KRs are on track, how many are at risk, and which ones changed status since last week.'

10 Use the Task Manager to track the process itself: 'Create tasks for each functional lead's OKR submission deadline, each exec review date this quarter, and the all-hands presentation date. Alert me 48 hours before anything is due.'

11 Before the all-hands, tell Starch: 'Draft a 10-slide quarterly OKR kickoff deck: company priorities for next quarter, each function's objectives, how last quarter's results connect to this quarter's priorities, and three things we're explicitly not doing this quarter.' Use the Presentation Agent (currently in development — request beta access) or export to your preferred slides tool.

12 After the quarter closes, run the retrospective: 'Pull all KRs from last quarter, calculate final achievement rate by function, and show me which key results we missed by more than 20% so I can flag them in the next planning session.'

See this running on Starch

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Worked example

Q3 2026 OKR Planning Cycle — 150-person growth-stage SaaS

Sample numbers from a real run

New ARR target (GTM OKR)	1,200,000
Current pipeline coverage (HubSpot, pulled automatically)	3,400,000
Engineering: infra cost target (AWS, quarterly budget)	180,000
Finance: OpEx target vs prior quarter (QuickBooks actuals)	2,750,000
Missed Q2 KRs surfaced in planning session	4

Coming into Q3 planning, you had four Q2 key results that missed by more than 20% — Starch pulled them automatically from last quarter's Notion OKR doc before the planning session, so functional leads walked in already knowing which ones needed a root-cause conversation rather than just a reforecast. The GTM team's draft objective included a $1.2M new ARR target; Starch cross-referenced it against HubSpot pipeline and surfaced that current pipeline coverage was $3.4M, meaning 2.8x — but 60% of that pipeline was in deals over 90 days old with no activity. That one callout changed the conversation from 'what's the number' to 'what's wrong with late-stage conversion.' Engineering submitted an infra cost reduction KR; Starch flagged it against the annual strategy doc and confirmed it mapped to the 'profitable growth' pillar. Finance's OpEx target of $2.75M for the quarter was validated against QuickBooks actuals in seconds rather than waiting for the finance team to pull a report. By the time the exec team sat down, the coverage gap analysis was already done — the only company-level priority with no functional owner was 'expand partner channel,' which nobody had claimed. That surfaced in the pre-read, not as a surprise in the room.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

OKR coverage ratio: percentage of company-level strategic priorities mapped to at least one key result

Functional lead submission rate and time-to-submission for quarterly OKR drafts

Key result achievement rate by function, quarter over quarter

Number of KRs with auto-updating metrics vs. manually updated (proxy for how much of the refresh is still on you)

Days from quarter-end to exec-approved OKRs (planning cycle duration)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Notion OKR template + manual HubSpot/QuickBooks exports

Works fine for drafting, but the numbers are always stale and you are the integration layer — pulling exports, pasting into tables, and chasing updates yourself every week.

Lattice or Ally.io (dedicated OKR platforms)

Purpose-built for OKR tracking with good UI, but they don't connect to your financial and pipeline data sources, so you still have to manually enter the metrics that actually matter to your exec team.

Google Sheets + Zapier automations

Flexible and cheap, but every new data connection requires a new Zap, the sheet breaks when someone changes a column header, and there's no AI to surface gaps or generate the planning workflow.

Linear or Asana OKR workflows

Good if your OKRs are primarily engineering or project-based, but they don't pull financial actuals or CRM pipeline data, so company-level OKR reviews still need a separate financial view.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — knowledge management, task manager, crm all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch actually keep the HubSpot and QuickBooks numbers current, or do I still have to trigger a manual refresh before an exec meeting?

Both HubSpot and QuickBooks sync on a schedule — you don't trigger them manually. The exact frequency depends on your setup, but the intent is that when you open your OKR dashboard on a Monday morning, the pipeline and revenue figures are already current. You are not the one refreshing the data.

What if our strategy docs and prior-quarter OKRs are in Notion but structured inconsistently across functions?

Starch syncs your Notion pages and databases on a schedule and can read across inconsistently structured documents. You can describe to Starch what to look for — 'find all documents tagged OKR or Objectives from the last two quarters' — and it will surface what it finds. You may need to do a one-time cleanup of your most important strategy docs, but Starch handles the inconsistency better than a rigid import tool.

Can Starch send the OKR submission requests to functional leads directly in Slack?

Yes. Starch syncs your Slack data on a schedule and can post messages as part of an automation. You'd describe the trigger ('two weeks before quarter end'), the message content, and who receives it, and Starch builds the automation. Responses won't auto-parse from Slack threads into a table without some structure — you may want to route submissions through a form or a structured Slack workflow for cleaner aggregation.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? We have board members who will ask about data security before we connect QuickBooks and HubSpot.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. That is an honest answer. If your board or security team requires SOC 2 Type II as a prerequisite for connecting financial data, that's a real constraint to weigh. It's on the roadmap.

Can I use this for more than just OKRs — like tracking strategic projects or exec team commitments in the same surface?

Yes, and that's actually the stronger use case for a chief of staff. You'd describe the surface you want — 'a strategic priorities tracker that shows OKRs alongside active initiatives, each with an owner, status, and last update' — and Starch builds it. You're not limited to a pre-built OKR template. The App Store has starter templates for CRM, project management, and knowledge management, but your actual use case is probably a custom combination of all three, and Starch builds that from a description.

What if a functional lead's OKR metric lives in a tool Starch doesn't have a direct sync for — like a custom data warehouse or an industry-specific SaaS?

Starch connects to 3,000+ apps through its integration catalog, plus any website through browser automation. If the tool has a web interface your lead logs into, Starch can automate reading data from it through your browser — no API needed. If it's a custom internal system or data warehouse, that's a case where you'd need to think about whether an export or API endpoint is available; Starch doesn't have a direct data warehouse connector today.