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

by John Doerr

Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.

An OBJECTIVE, I explained, is simply WHAT is to be achieved, no more and no less.

KEY RESULTS benchmark and monitor HOW we get to the objective.

“It’s not a key result unless it has a number.”)

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

But exactly how do you build engagement? A two-year Deloitte study found that no single factor has more impact than “clearly defined goals that are written down and shared freely. . . . Goals create alignment, clarity, and job satisfaction.”

In larger enterprises, OKRs are neon-lit road signs. They demolish silos and cultivate connections among far-flung contributors. By enabling frontline autonomy, they give rise to fresh solutions. And they keep even the most successful organizations stretching for more.

There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little.

If the vectors point in different directions, they add up to zero.

“Bad companies,” Andy wrote, “are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.”

Leaders must get across the why as well as the what. Their people need more than milestones for motivation. They are thirsting for meaning, to understand how their goals relate to the mission. And the process can’t stop with unveiling top-line OKRs at a quarterly all-hands meeting. As LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner likes to say, “When you are tired of saying it, people are starting to hear it.”

Besides, each key result should be a challenge in its own right. If you’re certain you’re going to nail it, you’re probably not pushing hard enough.

Clear-cut time frames intensify our focus and commitment; nothing moves us forward like a deadline.

“The specific, challenging goals were met (speed to market, fuel efficiency, and cost) at the expense of other important features that were not specified (safety, ethical behavior, and company reputation).”

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.

We don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

“some significant percentage of people are working on the wrong things. The challenge is knowing which ones.”

When people write down “This is what I’m working on,” it’s easier to see where the best ideas are coming from.

Transparency seeds collaboration.

But when all objectives are cascaded, the process can degrade into a mechanical, color-by-numbers exercise, with four adverse effects:

Innovation tends to dwell less at the center of an organization than at its edges.

The biggest risk of all is not taking one.

Talking can transform minds, which can transform behaviors, which can transform institutions.

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Today’s workers “want to be ‘empowered’ and ‘inspired,’ not told what to do.

You need a culture that high-fives small and innovative ideas.

Culture, as the saying goes, eats strategy for breakfast.