The SatisWAY: How we build our OKRs

January 29, 2026

How do you turn a mountain of executive ideas into a single, unified roadmap? At Satispay, we’ve learned that the secret to growth isn't doing more: it’s the art of narrowing down.

We sat down with Magdalena, Senior Legal Program & Innovation Manager, to pull back the curtain on how we transform high-level strategy into the "scary-exciting" goals that drive our teams forward. From stripping away corporate jargon to finding the "click" moment where individual silos vanish, this is the story of how we built an OKR framework that doesn't just sit in a spreadsheet, but lives in our DNA.

The challenging part is keeping up the pace of the discussion. The truth is, conversations in that room are incredibly valuable. Executives don’t have much time to spend together in open discussion, so the topics that come up are important. But as a facilitator, my role is to manage the pace and turn that strategic discussion into concrete, measurable priorities.

That translation of strategy into a measurable outcome is where the challenge (and the value) lies. Narrowing down is actually the easier part. Once we are more concrete about results, we see that many ideas on what needs to be done point to the same few results that matter.

The "click" for me was seeing executives support ideas they had originally challenged, even when it meant a significant amount of work for their own teams. That’s how you know they are leaving the room with a fresh perspective.

First, it needs to be simple. If it's simple, we can remember it and act on it. If we leave the room and the OKRs read like a bunch of corporate buzzwords, we have failed. OKRs should express value so clearly that your next-door neighbor could understand them. I often ask people to express them in fifth-grade language—no corporate jargon.

Second, the value needs to be about our merchants, employers, and users. We work for them. When we express what we want to improve for them, all of Satispay rallies.

Third, I have the executives write the Objective title as the very last step in the process. Only after we have narrowed down the specific Key Results can we clearly express why something matters now. It is a bit unorthodox, but it works.

This is a matter of focus and time. First, we write quarterly OKRs. Twelve weeks is a short time frame, and we generally have a good idea of what we want to change in that window.

Second, we ground them in the ideas the team already has. Many OKRs are about focusing on and improving existing projects, narrowing them down to the most meaningful changes we want to keep top of mind.

Third, it is about how you write them. If you write a milestone, it may become stale after a month if you realize it wasn't the right project. But if you write an actual Key Result, then you have a challenge on your hands, and you have twelve weeks to figure out how to move the needle. Challenges that have clear value don’t get stale. On the contrary, the challenge is that twelve weeks feels like such a short time!