Measure What Matters

by John Doerr

Andrew Cole: When I came to Lumeris, they had been working with OKRs for three quarterly cycles—on paper. They had an outstanding employee participation rate, or so I was told. But after a deep-dive analysis, I realized the process was superficial. At the end of the quarter, a lone HR person ran around like a Jack Russell, nipping at managers’ heels to get updated numbers before the board meeting. People dropped into the software platform, conveniently adjusted an objective’s metrics, and said, “Oh yeah, I got that done.” They’d slap on a date and check off a box. It looked great on PowerPoint, but it wasn’t real. Few of our people understood the business rationale behind OKRs. We were missing explicit buy-in from executive leadership. Most of all, nobody held anybody accountable for getting the system right. When I examined people’s objectives, they weren’t connected to the actual work. I’d go to managers and ask, “Why does this show up in your OKRs?” In many cases, they had no idea how their objectives linked up to what we were working to achieve. It was so much window dressing.