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

by John Doerr

Then he said something that left a lasting impression on me. He referenced his previous company, Fairchild, where he’d first met Noyce and Moore and went on to blaze a trail in silicon wafer research. Fairchild was the industry’s gold standard, but it had one great flaw: a lack of “achievement orientation.” “Expertise was very much valued there,” Andy explained. “That is why people got hired. That’s why people got promoted. Their effectiveness at translating that knowledge into actual results was kind of shrugged off.” At Intel, he went on, “we tend to be exactly the opposite. It almost doesn’t matter what you know. It’s what you can do with whatever you know or can acquire and actually accomplish [that] tends to be valued here.” Hence the company’s slogan: “Intel delivers.” It almost doesn’t matter what you know. . . . To claim that knowledge was secondary and execution all-important—well, I wouldn’t learn that at Harvard. I found the proposition thrilling, a real-world affirmation of accomplishment over credentials.