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Measure What Matters

John E. Doerr

4.02 · Rating details · 9,182 ratings · 970 reviews

The revolutionary movement behind the explosive growth of Intel, Google, Amazon and Uber.
With a foreword by Larry Page, and contributions from Bono and Bill Gates.

Measure What Matters is about using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), a revolutionary approach to goal-setting, to make tough choices in business.

In 1999, legendary venture capitalist John Doerr

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Kindle Edition, 320 pages

Published April 24th 2018 by Penguin (first published 2018)

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May 03, 2018 Martin Brochhaus rated it it was ok

Shelves: business-technology, self-help

This book is bad.

The first 18% of the book is simply silicon valley hero worshipping, basically the author bragging about all the cool people he has worked with and why they are so important and genius and surely everything that follows must be of importance because he has worked with important people.

This book is nothing more than a bunch of case studies. As always with these case studies, they are extremely specific to the companies under observation and you will not learn anything from this This book is bad.

The first 18% of the book is simply silicon valley hero worshipping, basically the author bragging about all the cool people he has worked with and why they are so important and genius and surely everything that follows must be of importance because he has worked with important people.

This book is nothing more than a bunch of case studies. As always with these case studies, they are extremely specific to the companies under observation and you will not learn anything from this that you can repeat in your own company.

Most importantly, the book fails to provide any proof that OKRs were what actually drove the companies to success. These were all companies that were faced with some existential threat and therefore the management decided what is the most important new metric and then made everyone work long hours in order to meet that metric. You can achieve that with any management technique.

Furthermore, there is not a single chapter that defines in detail what OKRs are, how they are implemented in a company, what software should be used to guide the implementation, what should be done when someone fails their objectives, and so on and so forth. Instead, in each case study you will find one orange box that shows a sample OKR that was presumably taken from that company at the time. I assume these are all bullshit and made up by the author, but even if not, they are so glaringly obvious, and simple, you don't need to be a manager or expert to make them up. These can't be what drove those companies to success, no way, the secret sauce lies somewhere else and is not revealed in this book.

By the way, if you are in the tough spot of trying to find that magic thing that matters the most for your business to measure, don't read this book - despite the clickbait title - this book isn't about that. Sure you can use OKRs to measure things and be transparent about it - but WHAT TO MEASURE is still up to you to figure out.

As far as I can tell, the entire OKR idea fits on one DIN A4 page, so I would say, this book isn't at all about how to use OKRs, instead it is to celebrate a few lucky silicon valley success stories.

And granted: that alone can be quite inspiring. I will try to implement this in my own companies, but I'll need some other reading material to succeed with that. This book is merely here to kindle the flame. ...more

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May 20, 2018 Keith Martin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Solid methodology that could be adequately summarized in two pages, padded to 300+ pages with self-aggrandizement and surface-level case studies.

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Apr 24, 2018 Rick rated it it was amazing

I've worked on the Google campus for 11 years, and have seen first-hand the impact OKRs have had on the company. John Doerr is single-handedly responsible for bringing OKRs to Google. He saw before anyone else the transformative power Andy Grove's system from Intel could have at Google, and this book is a great window into those early days. John does a great job showing how that early presentation at Google set the stage for so much of the growth and success that came later.

Some of the best ...more

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Aug 09, 2018 Romans Karpelcevs rated it it was ok

Shelves: leadership, non-fiction

Did I learn how to set OKRs? No.
Did I find out what's the difference between Os and KRs when you choose them? No.
Do I know how to align departments with non-trivial objectives? No.
Did I understand what to do when things go wrong? No.
Do I feel confident about doing OKRs now? No.
Am I inspired about OKRs more than I was when I started the book? No.
Did I at least heard about how to measure what matters? No.

Did I learn anything at all from this book?! Hm... I heard empty case studies where people, ...more

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Dec 12, 2018 Peter Tillman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: at-bg-pa, sci-tech, bios-memoirs, california

In 1999, John Doerr got his VC firm Kleiner Perkins to invest $11.8 million for 12% of the infant Google Corp. Current market cap (Dec 2018) for Google is around $743 billion, so Kleiner Perkins' 12% would be worth (say) $89 billion. Doerr himself has a personal net worth of around $7 billion. So, if he's writing a book on how to achieve those sorts of results, he has earned our respectful attention. Plus the book is clearly written, and short. There are caveats, as you can see in nearby In 1999, John Doerr got his VC firm Kleiner Perkins to invest $11.8 million for 12% of the infant Google Corp. Current market cap (Dec 2018) for Google is around $743 billion, so Kleiner Perkins' 12% would be worth (say) $89 billion. Doerr himself has a personal net worth of around $7 billion. So, if he's writing a book on how to achieve those sorts of results, he has earned our respectful attention. Plus the book is clearly written, and short. There are caveats, as you can see in nearby reviews, such as https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Doerr started working at Intel in 1974. He’d come to California for the summer hoping to reconnect with an old girlfriend — who he found was also working at Intel. She wasn’t pleased to see him. But Doerr was persistent, and he married Ann Howland, another Rice electrical engineer, in 1978. They're still married, 40 years on....

At Intel, Doerr became one of the firm’s most successful sales engineers. He grew to admire Andy Grove, who he considers to be the father of the OKR idea, although Doerr traces the origins of the idea back to Peter Drucker, in the 1950s. Old-timers will recall MBO, Managemeent by Objectives, which was the foundation for the HP Way, https://www.hpalumni.org/hp_way.htm

By 1975, Grove’s OKR system was fully developed, and was put to a severe test in 1979, when Motorola released its 68000 chip, a direct competitor to Intel’s 16-bit microprocessor, the 8086. Many thought the Motorola chip was superior. Groves found the Motorola chip a mortal threat to Intel’s very existence — a fight he wrote about in detail in his 1988 book “Only the Paranoid Survive". Intel won that battle through use of Groves’ OKR technique, in Doerr’s opinion, which he relates in detail. And I loved that Andy Groves kept a big red “BULLSHIT!” rubber stamp on his desk!

In 1980, Doerr was offered a VC job with Kleiner Perkins. Andy Grove told him, "John, venture capital, that's not a real job. It's like being a real estate agent."

Doerr continues as an apostle for the Andy Groves-style OKR system, and says Grove’s Intel was the best-run company he’d ever seen. By the time he pitched Google on the OKR system, he’d given his OKR pitch to at least 50 start-ups. He had the Google engineers sold at the metrics. Early Googler Marissa Myer would say, “It’s not a key result unless it has a number.”

OKRs clearly work, but the book gets disjointed about how to actually implement them — one size doesn’t fit all, and clearly each company or org will have to experiment to get the method to work for them. The case studies are scattershot, but so what? If you’re not getting anything out of one, skip to the next (I skipped Bono!). The culture stuff: OK, company culture is important, and you want your company to have a good one -- but I don't think you will learn how to fix a bad culture here. This is probably the weakest part of the book. Somehow, I think there are consultants available to help you....

It's an uneven book, but these are good people, who've walked the walk. I learned interesting stuff, and Valley lore that was new to me. Such as, Susan Wojcicki's garage is where Google got its start, in 1998. I think she is employee #17, runs YouTube, and devised AdSense that supplies most of Google's revenue. "Only" a half-billionaire!

Overall rating, 3.5 stars, rounded up. Best review I saw here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... And here's a good review, by an insider: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Website for the book: https://www.whatmatters.com/ ...more

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Jun 12, 2018 Romanas rated it liked it

I am a big proponent of written goals with systematic follow-ups. Otherwise, they are just the dreams in the sky, which might accidentally realize, but, most often, they will not. John Doerr presents his approach to goal-setting and ways for following them up. His system is called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

The author’s system is solid and, apparently, has been implemented with great success at several outstanding companies like Google.

I can’t agree with the proclamation that the method ...more

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May 13, 2018 Martin rated it it was ok

Very disappointing that someone like John Doerr wrote such a shallow book.

*It's extremely vague. Never gotten into the details of OKR or the shortcomings of this goal setting system. The most detail this book offered is the football analogy
*90% of this book is brief case studies
*Tons of plugs into companies Kleiner Perkins invested
*Lots of reference to Intel and Andy Grove so if you are looking for solid mgmt advise read "High Output Management" instead

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May 01, 2018 Piotr Pisarz rated it it was amazing

As an ex-Googler, I’m quite familiar with OKRs -
They are a key management tool in the company. While they sometime frustrate you, they are your key northstar. Having left a few years ago, i do have to say i miss them, and I encourage all companies and founders to instill them.

John’s book is a great intro to the OKR system, used by all leading companies worldwide. It provides clear examples and use cases. If you’re a founder, this should be a new position on your must read list.

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Mar 02, 2019 Yevgeniy Brikman rated it liked it

This book should've been a long blog post. At its core, it contains valuable advice about the power of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) as a mechanism to help get everyone in a company moving in the same direction. Unfortunately, this nugget of wisdom is wrapped in loads of generic business book jargon, scattered through chapters that seem to be organized randomly, and padded out with lots of case studies, which while sometimes interesting, are not terribly useful, and often written in an ...more

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Oct 18, 2018 ScienceOfSuccess rated it really liked it

Shelves: waiting

I hate to grade this kind of books. Any grade from 2 to 5 would be explainable.

There is a clear message so simple you can't miss it...
'The OKRs system is better than goals because goals can measure anything and everything, and OKR's focus on measuring what matters.'
...and then there are 20 examples of how it works.

For me, this book could be a blog post. I don't need quotes from Bono to believe this system works, but when I think more about it, I'd probably forget OKR's and just move one ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Herve rated it it was amazing

Kleiner Perkins is a, not to say the VC brand name – but there is also Sequoia. When their partners write something, it is often worth reading. And this month two of them publish a book! I begin here with John Doerr and his Measure What Matters - www.whatmatters.com (though this is the paperback publication – the hardcover was published in 2017). In my next review I will write about Komisar’s Straight Talk for Startups

Ideas are Easy. Implementation is Everything.

Doerr is a Silicon Valley legend. Kleiner Perkins is a, not to say the VC brand name – but there is also Sequoia. When their partners write something, it is often worth reading. And this month two of them publish a book! I begin here with John Doerr and his Measure What Matters - www.whatmatters.com (though this is the paperback publication – the hardcover was published in 2017). In my next review I will write about Komisar’s Straight Talk for Startups

Ideas are Easy. Implementation is Everything.

Doerr is a Silicon Valley legend. He owes a lot to the pioneers of Silicon Valley, such as Noyce and Moore and particularly to Andy Grove, whom he mentions a lot: he calls him one of the father of OKRs. Chapter 2 is about Grove who said “there are so many people working so hard and achieving so little”. It reminds me of The Innovation Illusion: How So Little is Created by So Many Working So Hard. And many owe to him, beginning with the Google founders. Indeed Larry Page is the author of a short, 2-page and powerful foreword about OKRs: “OKRs are a simple process that helps drive varied organizations forward… OKRs have helped lead us to 10x growth, many times over.”

And Doerr begins with a tribute to Google and its two founders (page 4):
Sergey was exuberant, mercurial, strongly opinionated, and able to leap intellectual chasms in a single bound. A Soviet-born immigrant, he was a canny, creative negotiator and a principled leader. Sergey was restless, always pushing for more; he might drop to the floor in the middle of a meeting for a set of push-ups.
Larry was an engineer’s engineer, the son of a computer science pioneer. He was a soft-spoken nonconformist, a rebel with a 10x cause: to make the internet exponentially relevant. While Sergey crafted the commerce of technology, Larry toiled on the product and imagined the impossible. He was a blue-sky thinker with his feet on the ground.

So what are these OKRs? It’s an acronym for Objective and Key Results. “An objective is simply WHAT is to be achieved. Key Results benchmark and monitor HOW to get to the objective.” (Page 7) But there is no recipe. Each company or organization should have its own. “By definition, start-ups wrestle with ambiguity… You’re not going to get the system just right the first time around. It’s not going to be perfect the second or third time, either. But don’t get discouraged. Persevere. You need to adapt it and make it your own.” (Page 75)

Now if you need that kind of advice, read Doerr’s book…

But I need to add more: I was impressed by the last chapter dedicated to “Coach” Bill Campbell. It is a very moving portrait of one of the least known celebrities of Silicon Valley. The Coach, the coach of Steve Jobs and the Google triumvirate, Page, Brin and Schmidt and of so many others.

I was also impressed by the subtlety of the message about OKRs. So difficult to explain as it may take a life to digest them. But the book is really enlightening. OKRs have four ingredients, focus, transparency, accountability and ambition (the BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal). It is scary and at the same time generous. I think any leader should read that book… ...more

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Jun 06, 2018 Vishwanath rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Excellent read on implementing OKRs by the master of them. The google/intel/bono case studies are all detailed and provide a lot of examples on how you can implement these in your own organizations. John Doerr built on the method he learnt at Intel under the great Andy Grove and then helped more than 50 companies implement those OKRs with a lot of success. The system obviously works but the true challenge is influencing the leadership in organization to follow such a methodical approach. This ...more

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Feb 19, 2019 Mindaugas Mozūras rated it liked it

If we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.

OKRs, as a tool, seems solid.

The book itself is just ok. It's filled with a collection of stories of companies using OKRs. While some stories were fun to read, they fail to convince that OKRs were the catalyst for success.

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Jun 23, 2018 Thomas rated it really liked it

Shelves: read_2018, business

I truly don't get the negative reviews. I suspect some of them must have read a different book than I did. Anyway, this is a solid introduction to OKRs. If you want to learn how various companies have put them into practice, you'll get that and more. The resources at the end are especially helpful and I suspect I'll be referring to them repeatedly.

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Nov 05, 2018 Ali Sattari rated it it was ok

Shelves: business

Could have been a ~10 page essay.

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May 28, 2019 Sumit Singla rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, 2019, business, 5-stars

I've always been keenly interested in figuring out how to unlock high performance in an organization. Traditional models like MBO and the Balanced Scorecard have survived so far, but in the fast-changing digital age with shorter business cycles, a new approach is needed.

And that's where OKRs are like a breath of fresh air. Cut the crap. Stop creating complex goal sheets that no one has the time or patience to fill and review. Keep it simple, and focus only on the top priorities for your business ...more

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Nov 04, 2018 Eugene rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-golden-greatest-hits, 2018, startups

The book about OKR (objectives - key results) goals management system invented by Peter Drucker and popularized by long time Intel CEO Andy Groove. Though the OKR system is well known now (see www.withgoogle.com) but this book provides the instruction and the details and nuances on the proper implementation along with interviews from managers and founders who are using OKR for the projects, including Bill Gates (Gates Foundation), Bono (U2), Sundar Pichai (Alphabet), Susan Wojcicki (YouTube) and ...more

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Apr 19, 2019 Annie rated it liked it · review of another edition

I give this book 3.5 stars. The title suggests that it will guide you in defining objectives and key results. However, it's more of a memoir of how this method had worked for the many companies that the author was involved with (hence, the negative reviews for self-aggrandizing). The few important lessons from the book are select 3-5 objectives every quarter (specifically 'what' has to happen to increase business value), identify the key results needed ('how' to reach the goal - what are the ...more

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Oct 08, 2019 Simon Eskildsen rated it really liked it

The right book at the right time for me. The central premise (backed up by numerous studies) is that hard goals drive performance more than easy or no goals. If the vectors or where people are going point in different directions, they add up to zero. But if you get everybody pointing in the same direction, you maximize the results. OKRs are a good way to get there, and the book goes into numerous examples. Don't get too focused on the results, or you end up placing the gas tank six inches from ...more

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Oct 24, 2018 Geoff rated it it was ok

I read a lot of these kind of books because I'm assuming that they'll be read by someone in the senior leadership of my company and then I'll need to respond to the new exciting fad they want to have the company embrace without critical thinking.

This book demonstrated without fail that Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) can produce microprocessors, save people from malaria and HIV/AIDS and deliver HOT pizzas made by robots!

If I bought into the silicon valley/startup hero worship echo chamber that ...more

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Sep 03, 2018 Julia rated it really liked it

Dear past, present and future manager: please read this book. If you can, get a hard copy. Unless listening is the only way you will read it[1]. In particular, please pay attention to Chapters 15 and 17 about 1:1s. These are the best parts of the book. I wish I had read these pages when I was a manager, and I'll be referring to them again in the future.

[1]: Yes, I listened to it and just bought the hardcover version so I did put my money where my mouth is thankyouverymuch.

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May 06, 2018 Neil S W Murray rated it really liked it

I read this in two sittings as it was easy and enjoyable to read. Hardly groundbreaking stuff but a good reminder of the power of structured goals as well as the history of OKRs. The best part are the case studies/stories interwoven throughout the book. Useful resource section at the end too to help you set your own OKRs.

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Nov 19, 2018 Phil Calçado rated it liked it · review of another edition

Repetitive but useful

The first chapters are great, it gets quite repetitive after that. Too many case studies that repeat the message that OKRs are great, not enough interesting corner cases or other interesting tips.

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Apr 29, 2018 Vlad rated it liked it

The best book on OKRs. Not the best book on measuring what matters. An indispensable guide for anyone implementing OKRs in an org, or working to succeed in an org where OKRs rule.

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Jun 03, 2019 Matias Myllyrinne rated it it was amazing

Great book, took loads away from it and has helped me and our team.

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Nov 05, 2018 Jeremy Zhang rated it really liked it

Good concepts that will positively impact the company. Could have been a lot more concise.

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Jun 07, 2018 Graeme Roberts rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Humans evolved a much bigger brain to support collaboration across larger groups. The bigger brain needed much more energy, so the whole human digestive tract, mouth to anus, had to evolve the capability of processing animals not just plants. For all of that, we are still not very good at working together. It's difficult, even in a small team, but big organizations have greater difficulty in staying aligned, effective, and efficient. Many fail, and people are hurt.

Andy Grove, the legendary CEO ...more

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Nov 11, 2018 Tõnu Vahtra rated it really liked it

Thought this is the WHY OKR's book but it's more the WHERE OKR's book as most of it is case studies description of various organizations using OKR's (Intel, Nuna, MyFitnessPal, Intuit, Youtube, Gates Foundation, Google, Adobe, Zume Pizza, Lumeris, Bono's ONE Campaign). Got interested more in the Intel topics and will add "High Performance Management" by Andy Grove to the reading list.

At the beginning of each cycle, distinguish between goals that must be attained 100% (committed OKR's), other are ...more

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Oct 12, 2018 Robert Lintzen rated it really liked it

This book really opened my eyes into the world of good goal setting! Lots of good resources in the book that you can immediately put to practical use.
I gave the book only 4 starts as in my opinion, at the end of the book the examples start to be too many with little added value. It is portrayed like every business became a huge success just because of OKRs which lacks some depth sometimes.

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Aug 27, 2018 Bjoern Rochel rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018, eng-mgmt

For me (without prior exposure to OKRs) the book was perfect and gave me everything I needed in order to understand OKRs and CFRs. It's written by one of the guys who experienced OKRs at Intel and subsequently introduced them at many other companies (Google being one of the most prominent examples). The case studies are pretty engaging (for instance that pizza robot was pure nerd-porn). Overall I felt though that there were too many of them and the book could have been much shorter. The book ...more

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