A check-in is the recurring moment, often weekly, when a goal owner updates progress on a Key Result or goal and records how confident they are it will land. Check-ins keep goals alive between planning and review. Their weakness is that they rely on self-reported judgment, which can lag or flatter the truth.
The discipline of a check-in is small and regular: a quick progress number, a confidence rating, and a sentence on what changed. Done weekly, it prevents the quarter-end surprise where a goal everyone assumed was fine turns out to have stalled in week three.
The honest limitation is that a check-in is an opinion. "I'm at 70% and confident" can be true, optimistic, or a guess. The fix is to ground the update in something observable: the actual work moving beneath the goal, so the number is derived rather than declared.
Friday check-in: Key Result at 0.5, confidence amber, note: "blocked on the data migration, expect to recover next week if the vendor responds."
Vindaris runs OKRs, KPIs, EOS, OGSM, SMART goals, the Balanced Scorecard, and Hoshin Kanri in one place, each goal linked to the traceable work moving it. Start free, no credit card.
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