Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

by John Doerr

OBJECTIVE, I explained, is simply WHAT is to be achieved, no more and no less. By definition, objectives are significant, concrete, action oriented, and (ideally) inspirational. When properly designed and deployed, they’re a vaccine against fuzzy thinking—and fuzzy execution.

KEY RESULTS benchmark and monitor HOW we get to the objective. Effective KRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, they are measurable and verifiable.

My objective that day, I told the band of young Googlers, was to build a planning model for their company, as measured by three key results: KR #1: I would finish my presentation on time. KR #2: We’d create a sample set of quarterly Google OKRs. KR #3: I’d gain management agreement for a three-month OKR trial.

“hard goals” drive performance more effectively than easy goals. Second, specific hard goals “produce a higher level of output” than vaguely worded ones.

When people came to me mid-quarter with requests to draft new data sheets, I felt I could say no without fear of repercussion. My OKRs backed me. They spelled out my priorities for all to see.

Less is more. “A few extremely well-chosen objectives,” Grove wrote, “impart a clear message about what we say ‘yes’ to and what we say ‘no’ to.” A limit of three to five OKRs per cycle leads companies, teams, and individuals to choose what matters most. In general, each objective should be tied to five or fewer key results. (See chapter 4, “Superpower #1: Focus and Commit to Priorities.”) Set goals from the bottom up. To promote engagement, teams and individuals should be encouraged to create roughly half of their own OKRs, in consultation with managers. When all goals are set top-down, motivation is corroded. (See chapter 7, “Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork.”) No dictating. OKRs are a cooperative social contract to establish priorities and define how progress will be measured. Even after company objectives are closed to debate, their key results continue to be negotiated. Collective agreement is essential to maximum goal achievement. (See chapter 7, “Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork.”) Stay flexible. If the climate has changed and an objective no longer seems practical or relevant as written, key results can be modified or even discarded mid-cycle. (See chapter 10, “Superpower #3: Track for Accountability.”) Dare to fail. “Output will tend to be greater,” Grove wrote, “when everybody strives for a level of achievement beyond [their] immediate grasp. . . . Such goal-setting is extremely important if what you want is peak performance from yoursel...

Crush illustrates all four OKR superpowers: focus, alignment, tracking, and stretching.

INTEL CORPORATE OBJECTIVE Establish the 8086 as the highest performance 16-bit microprocessor family, as measured by: KEY RESULTS (Q2 1980) Develop and publish five benchmarks showing superior 8086 family performance (Applications). Repackage the entire 8086 family of products (Marketing). Get the 8MHz part into production (Engineering, Manufacturing). Sample the arithmetic coprocessor no later than June 15 (Engineering).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people walk out of meetings saying, “I’m going to conquer the world” . . . and three months later, nothing has happened. You get people whipped up with enthusiasm, but they don’t know what to do with it. In a crisis, you need a system that can drive transformation—quickly. That’s what the key result system did for Intel. It gave management a tool for rapid implementation. And when people reported on what they’d gotten done, we had black-and-white criteria for assessment.

Measuring what matters begins with the question: What is most important for the next three (or six, or twelve) months? Successful organizations focus on the handful of initiatives that can make a real difference, deferring less urgent ones. Their leaders commit to those choices in word and deed. By standing firmly behind a few top-line OKRs, they give their teams a compass and a baseline for assessment.

Objectives and key results are the yin and yang of goal setting—principle and practice, vision and execution. Objectives are the stuff of inspiration and far horizons. Key results are more earthbound and metric-driven.

In other words: Key results are the levers you pull, the marks you hit to achieve the goal. If an objective is well framed, three to five KRs will usually be adequate to reach it. Too many can dilute focus and obscure progress.

Key results should be succinct, specific, and measurable. A mix of outputs and inputs is helpful. Finally, completion of all key results must result in attainment of the objective. If not, it’s not an OKR.*

Table 4.2: An OKR Quality Continuum Weak Average Strong Objective: Win the Indy 500. Key result: Increase lap speed. Key result: Reduce pit stop time.. Objective: Win the Indy 500. Key result: Increase average lap speed by 2 percent. Key result: Reduce average pit stop time by one second. Objective: Win the Indy 500. Key result: Increase average lap speed by 2 percent. Key result: Test at wind tunnel ten times. Key result: Reduce average pit stop time by one second. Key result: Reduce pit stop errors by 50 percent. Key result: Practice pit stops one hour per day.

Without an action plan, the executive becomes a prisoner of events. And without check-ins to reexamine the plan as events unfold, the executive has no way of knowing which events really matter and which are only noise.”

For best results, OKRs are scrutinized several times per quarter by contributors and their managers. Progress is reported, obstacles identified, key results refined. On top of these one-on-ones, teams and departments hold regular meetings to evaluate progress toward shared objectives. Whenever a committed OKR is failing, a rescue plan is devised.

Or say you’re a public relations manager, and your team’s key result is to place three national articles about your company. Though you get only two pieces published, one is a cover story in The Wall Street Journal. Your raw score is 67 percent, but you say, “I’m giving us a 9 out of 10, because we hit that one out of the park.”

Here are some reflections for closing out an OKR cycle: Did I accomplish all of my objectives? If so, what contributed to my success? If not, what obstacles did I encounter? If I were to rewrite a goal achieved in full, what would I change? What have I learned that might alter my approach to the next cycle’s OKRs?

In philanthropy, I see people confusing objectives with missions all the time. A mission is directional. An objective has a set of concrete steps that you’re intentionally engaged in and actually trying to go for. It’s fine to have an ambitious objective, but how do you scale it? How do you measure it?

When measurable key results revealed a lack of progress or showed that an objective was unachievable, we reallocated the capital. If the goal was to eliminate Guinea worm disease, a very ambitious top-line goal, it was important to know whether the dollars and resources were making progress against it. With OKRs, we could set both quarterly and annual beats for substantial key results against such a huge objective.

Ideas are easy; execution is everything.