Measure What Matters

by John Doerr

“It’s not a key result unless it has a number.”)

“Goals Gone Wild.”

Goals may cause systematic problems in organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased motivation.” The dark side of goal setting could swamp any benefits, or so their argument went.

The higher the ratio of reports, the flatter the org chart—which means less top-down oversight, greater frontline autonomy, and more fertile soil for the next breakthrough. OKRs help make all of these good things possible.

There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little.

It almost doesn’t matter what you know. It’s what you can do with whatever you know or can acquire and actually accomplish [that] tends to be valued here.”

He wasn’t an immortal theorist like Gordon Moore or an iconic public figure like Bob Noyce.

Crush illustrates all four OKR superpowers: focus, alignment, tracking, and stretching.

We needed to convince our customers that the microprocessor they chose today would be their most important decision for the next decade.

With Intel design aids, your engineers work more efficiently.

(Wrong decisions can be corrected once results begin to roll in. Nondecisions—or hastily abandoned ones—teach us nothing.)

Don’t allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

Steve Jobs understood, “Innovation means saying no to one thousand things.”

… We must realize—and act on the realization—that if we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.

In my view, you can only do one big thing at a time really well, and so you better know what that one thing is.

what am I doing today to move the company forward?”

Doing too much too soon will definitely end in pain.

We don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

Micromanagement is mismanagement.

The higher the goals, the higher the performance.”

my doctor orders me to lower my blood pressure by training for the San Francisco Marathon, I might grudgingly take it under advisement. But if I decide of my own free will to run the race, I’m far more likely to reach the finish line—especially if I’m running with friends.

Modern IT goes way beyond checking off boxes to process help tickets or change requests.

When a new project comes up for discussion, they’ll ask one another how it fits into our OKR template.

Slack for persistent chat, Google Docs for collaborative editing, Box for content management, BlueJeans for next-wave video technology.

Studies have told us forever that frontline employees thrive when they can see how their work aligns to the company’s overall goals. I’ve

In God we trust; all others must bring data.

One underrated virtue of OKRs is that they can be tracked—and then revised or adapted as circumstances dictate. Unlike traditional, frozen, “set them and forget them” business goals, OKRs are living, breathing organisms.

They make everyone’s goals more visible.

They drive engagement.

They promote internal networking.

They save time, money, and frustration.

There are no judgments, only learnings.

Did I accomplish all of my objectives? If so, what contributed to my success? • If not, what obstacles did I encounter? • If I were to rewrite a goal achieved in full, what would I change? • What have I learned that might alter my approach to the next cycle’s OKRs?

The biggest risk of all is not taking one.

“[T]he harder the goal the higher the level of performance

I was especially excited when they launched a product called Deskbar, where you could search the web from Windows without opening the browser—it launched from a small window in the taskbar.

“We should make the web as fast as flipping through a magazine.”

Table 15.1: Annual Performance Management Versus Continuous Performance Management

As workplace conversations become integral, managers are evolving from taskmasters to teachers, coaches, and mentors.

On the long and demanding road to operating excellence, they help organizations improve each and every day.

HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything … in Business (and

We’re moving from hero culture to team culture.”