More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
John Doerr
Read between
November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there. —Yogi Berra
“organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
So I’d come to a philosophy, my mantra: Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.
OKRs: “A management methodology that helps to ensure that the company focuses efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization.” An 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
...more
“It’s not a key result unless it has a number.”)
time. KR #2: We’d create a sample set of
“clearly defined goals that are written down and shared freely. . . . Goals create alignment, clarity, and job satisfaction.”
There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little. —Andy Grove
“Intel delivers.” It almost doesn’t matter what you know. . . . To claim that knowledge was secondary and execution all-important—well,
Drucker codified this principle as “management by objectives and self-control.” It became Andy Grove’s foundation and the genesis of what we now call the OKR.
he believed, was through “creative confrontation”—by facing people “bluntly, directly, and unapologetically.”*
“John, venture capital, that’s not a real job. It’s like being a real estate agent.”
“We will achieve a certain OBJECTIVE as measured by the following KEY RESULTS. . . .”
When you’re really high up in management, you’re teaching—that’s
We were all taught that if you measured it, things got better.
“Bad companies,” Andy wrote, “are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.”
It is our choices . . . that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. —J. K. Rowling
Measuring what matters begins with the question: What is most important for the next three (or six, or twelve) months?
“When you are tired of saying it, people are starting to hear it.”
For the feedback to be effective, it must be received very soon after the activity it is measuring occurs.
Voltaire: Don’t allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.*
We learned the three watchwords for entrepreneurs: Solve a problem Build a simple product Talk to your users
We don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do. —Steve Jobs
What keeps me going is goals. —Muhammad Ali Ideas are easy; execution is everything.
“Be better every day.”
People are the most important thing that we do. We have to try to make them better.”
0.0–0.3 is red 0.4–0.6 is yellow 0.7–1.0 is green
If your objective doesn’t fit on one line, it probably isn’t crisp enough.
“Launch Foo 4.1 to improve sign-ups by 25 percent.” Or simply: “Improve sign-ups by 25 percent.”
“Improve daily sign-ups by 25 percent by May 1.”
What OKRs do you plan to focus on to drive the greatest value for your role, your team, and/or the company?
Which of these OKRs aligns to key initiatives in the organization?
How are your OKRs coming along? What critical capabilities do you need to be successful? Is there anything stopping you from attaining your objectives? What OKRs need to be adjusted—or added, or eliminated—in light of shifting priorities?
RESOURCE
Straight Talk for Startups: 100 Insider Rules for Beating the Odds,
