Measure What Matters

by John Doerr

Intel followed a similar formula. You may recall the OKR for Operation Crush, the company’s push to reclaim the microprocessor market. Here are Andy Grove’s actual marching orders from Q2 1980, as endorsed by his executive team (with end-of-quarter grades in brackets): CORPORATE OBJECTIVE Establish the 8086 as the highest-performance 16-bit microprocessor family, as measured by: KEY RESULTS (Q2 1980) 1. Develop and publish five benchmarks showing superior 8086 family performance [0.6]. 2. Repackage the entire 8086 family of products [1.0]. 3. Get the 8MHz part into production [0]. 4. Sample the arithmetic coprocessor no later than June 15 [0.9]. And here is how these scores were determined: • We completed three of five benchmarks for an 0.6, a borderline green. • We did indeed repackage the 8086 family, under a new product line called iAPX. So that’s a perfect 1.0. • Production of the 8MHz part, set for early May, was a fiasco.fn3 Because of problems with the polysilicon, the target had to be pushed to October. That’s a zero. • As for the arithmetic coprocessor, the goal was to ship 500 parts by June 15. We wound up shipping 470—which computes to 0.9, another green.