Hit a Growth Ceiling? How OKRs and EOS® Can Help You Break Through

"Nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

Benjamin Franklin

While I respect Ben’s sentiment, I would add one more certainty for businesses: growth ceilings. Some call it a plateau. Others call it a step function. Whatever you call it, the pattern is predictable. Growth surges, then stalls. We romanticize hockey stick curves and unicorn valuations, but the reality is every business grows until it doesn’t. 

In my experience, ceilings don’t mean failure. They’re just inflection points. The best leadership teams don’t panic. They prepare, anticipate, and most importantly, they break through.

The fact is, as companies grow, complexity tends to outpace clarity. What once felt aligned and effective begins to feel tangled, and even the strongest teams struggle to move forward with confidence.

As complexity increases, gaps in structure, clarity, and decision-making become more visible. These gaps are an early sign you’ve hit a growth ceiling. The business isn’t stuck because the opportunity has disappeared. It’s stuck because the current way of operating can’t support the next stage of growth. EOS gives you the tools to solve this, but it also requires stronger discipline, tighter focus, and more consistent follow-through as the business scales.

This is often when leadership teams start reaching for new tools, like OKRs. A leader reads a book or swaps ideas with a peer, and when they’re staring down a ceiling, they’re finally ready to listen. OKR’s aren’t a replacement for EOS, but they can help sharpen priorities and bring greater alignment to the work that moves the organization forward.

When used alongside the EOS Toolbox™, OKRs can give teams a clearer line of sight, bringing the focus and momentum required to drive real growth. I don’t like to think of EOS and OKRs as an either/or but rather a potential yes/and.

OKRs Help You Focus on the Right Goals

OKRs aren’t magic. But when done right, they help to align your team around the right priorities. Before anyone dives into the work, everyone has to agree on what they’re trying to achieve and how they’ll know they hit the mark. That discipline alone improves execution.

When used with EOS, OKRs sharpen your Rocks and strengthen your Scorecard by creating forward-looking measurables the team can track weekly. They also help departments align their work so efforts throughout the organization support the 1-Year Plan, 3–Year Picture, and 10-Year Target. When used well, OKRs turn vision into specific outcomes the team can actually deliver.

Take a Rock like “Improve Customer Onboarding.” On its own, it’s too broad and lacks any clear direction. But it becomes more useful when framed as an objective with a small set of key results such as “95% of new users activated within 14 days,” “Onboarding NPS of 9 or higher,” and “All onboarding steps documented in Ninety.” Once those key results are set, the team can break them into milestones so progress is visible and issues surface early. This is how OKRs turn a high-level Rock into a clear, manageable path the team can actually execute.

This level of clarity matters because teams often hit growth ceilings when priorities are vague and outcomes aren’t defined. OKRs remove that ambiguity so the work actually moves the business forward. With OKRs in place, your team isn’t just pushing activity for the sake of staying busy. They’re working toward a clear result that supports the goal.

How EOS Helps Your Team Execute Better

OKRs help your team align on goals, but they can’t run your business. They don’t solve accountability issues, establish cross-functional visibility, or create the structure and discipline a growing business requires. That’s the job of your business operating system.

Here are just a few things EOS brings that OKRs alone can’t provide:

• A clear Accountability Chart so ownership isn’t in question
• Weekly Scorecards that track the measurables tied to the key results
• Level 10 Meetings that reinforce weekly focus and real problem-solving
• The V/TO® to connect your goals back to the long-term vision
• A shared language and structure that keeps the whole team aligned

When you run EOS and layer OKRs inside it, you create a system where outcomes are clearly defined, progress is visible, and everyone knows who owns what. OKRs support the work by getting your team aligned and focused. EOS gives them the system to execute effectively and efficiently.

How to Bring OKRs Into Your EOS System Using Ninety

If you treat OKRs as something extra, they won’t stick. Their real value comes when you let EOS provide the structure to execute on them and use Ninety to keep everything connected, visible, and actionable.

Here’s a simple, step-by-step plan to make that happen:

1. Start in quarterly or annual planning: In your planning sessions, set your company Rocks first. Once those are clear, identify where OKRs will help create stronger outcomes. In Ninety, build 3–5 objectives and attach 2–4 key results to each. This helps your team know what success looks like for each of your goals.
2. Tie OKRs to Seats: Each objective needs a single owner. In Ninety, connect your OKRs directly to a Seat on The Accountability Chart®. This makes ownership clear and prevents objectives from becoming “team projects” with no real accountability.
3. Align Departmental OKRs to the V/TO®: Departments can create their own supporting OKRs in Ninety once company-level OKRs are set. The check is simple. Every objective should tie back to something on the V/TO: the 1-Year Plan, the 3-Year Picture, or the 10-Year Target. If it doesn’t link, it probably shouldn’t be a company priority.
4. Put key results on the Scorecard: Choose the key results that matter most, and add them to your Scorecard in Ninety. The owner of the measurable should review it weekly and discuss updates in the L10. If a key result is off track, that status becomes visible long before the quarter is over, giving the team time to troubleshoot before it’s too late.
5. Use Level 10 Meetings to remove obstacles: When something is off track, drop it into the issues list. Use IDS® to identify the real problem and solve it. Ninety keeps the issue tied to the specific key result or objective so you never lose sight of what you’re trying to achieve.
6. Review OKRs in Your Quarterly Session: At the end of each quarter, each objective and key result should be evaluated at the end of the quarter. What moved? What stalled? What did the team learn? Use that insight to set even better Rocks and OKRs for the next 90 days.
7. Document everything in Ninety: Ninety brings your V/TO, Accountability Chart, Scorecard, Rocks, Issues, To-Dos, and OKRs into a single system. Leaders aren’t hunting for spreadsheets or working from disconnected tools. The team sees the same information, updates the same information, and stays aligned on the work that matters.

When you use Ninety to bring your EOS tools and OKRs into one place, the work gets simpler. Everyone sees the same information, updates the same platform, and stays aligned on what matters. EOS provides the structure to drive real growth. Ninety helps you run it consistently.

Use the Ceiling as Your Springboard

If your team feels like it’s working hard but not gaining ground, you’re likely hitting a growth ceiling. That’s not a setback. It’s the natural point where the business needs a sharper structure, clearer priorities, and stronger follow-through to keep growing.

EOS gives you that structure. OKRs give you the focus to define what great looks like. Ninety pulls the work into one place so everyone can see progress, own outcomes, and solve issues before they slow the business down.

The ceiling isn’t where growth stops. It’s where your next stage starts. Break through it by tightening your system, aligning your team, and raising the standard for how you execute.

If you need a cleaner way to organize your EOS tools and track OKRs, try Ninety and experience how one system helps your team execute at a higher level.