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

by John Doerr

In God we trust; all others must bring data.

Say you have some rocks, and a bunch of pebbles, and some sand, and your goal is to fit as much of everything as you can into a wide-mouth, one-gallon jar. If you start with the sand, and then the pebbles, the jar will run out of room for all the rocks. But when you start with the rocks, add the pebbles, and save the sand for last, the sand fills the spaces between the rocks—everything fits. In other words, the most important things need to get done first or they won’t get done at all.

As Jim Collins observes in Good to Great, first you need to get “the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.”