Measure What Matters
Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr explains how the goal-setting method of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech behemoths ranging from Intel to Google achieve spectacular growth – and how it can help any firm succeed.
In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up for whom he had recently invested $12.5 million, his largest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin possessed incredible technology, entrepreneurial zeal, and lofty goals, but no solid business model. Page and Brin had to learn how to make difficult decisions on priorities while keeping their team on track if Google was to change the world (or even survive). They'd have to know when to abandon losing bets and fail quickly. And they required timely, relevant data to track their success - to quantify what was important.
Doerr educated them about a tried-and-true method for achieving operational excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He encountered OKRs as an engineer at Intel in the 1970s, where the renowned Andy Grove ("the finest manager of his or any era") led the best-run firm Doerr had ever seen. Doerr later shared Grove's idea with more than 50 companies as a venture capitalist. It worked whenever the approach was faithfully followed.
In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we want to achieve; key results indicate how those top priorities will be met with specific, measurable actions inside a defined time frame. Everyone's objectives, from entry-level to CEO, are visible to the entire organization.
The advantages are enormous. OKRs highlight the most important work of a company. They concentrate effort and promote coordination. They help staff stay on track. They connect objectives across silos in order to unite and strengthen the entire organization. OKRs improve workplace satisfaction and retention along the way.
Doerr provides a wide range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies in Measure What Matters, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to highlight the focus, agility, and rapid development that OKRs have spurred at so many great businesses. This book will assist a new generation of leaders in capturing the same enchantment.
Author: John Doerr
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Measure-What-Matters-Google-Foundation/dp/0525536221
