Measure What Matters

by John Doerr

Modern IT goes way beyond checking off boxes to process help tickets or change requests. It’s about adding value to the business—shedding redundant clone systems, creating new functionality, finding future-oriented solutions. To become the team Intuit needed, our EBS would need to change root and branch. Our leaders had to give people air cover to back-burner some day-to-day tasks and focus on more valuable, longer-term initiatives. Today, every employee in my department owns three to five business objectives per quarter, along with one or two personal ones. The system is powerful precisely because it is so simple—and so transparent. For our OKRs to be effective, I knew they’d have to be visible through all of Intuit, even if no one outside EBS used them. I wanted everyone in the company to know exactly what we were doing, and how, and why. When people understand your priorities and constraints, they’re more apt to trust you when something goes sideways.