LeadershipStrategy
Measure What Matters
John Doerr
2018
Summary
John Doerr, the venture capitalist who brought OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) from Intel to Google, tells the story of how this deceptively simple framework transformed the world's fastest-growing companies. An OKR pairs an ambitious, qualitative objective with three to five measurable key results that define what success looks like. Done well, OKRs create alignment across every level of an organization, surface what matters versus what is merely urgent, and give teams the autonomy to pursue bold goals without losing coordination.
Key Takeaways
- 1OKRs separate the objective (the what and why) from key results (the measurable how)
- 2Goals should be ambitious — if you hit every OKR, they were not stretched enough
- 3Transparency is essential: everyone in the company should be able to see everyone else's OKRs
- 4OKRs are not performance reviews — decouple them from compensation to encourage bold goal-setting
- 5CFRs (conversations, feedback, recognition) are the human complement to OKRs that make them work
- 6The most important OKRs are set at the team level, not handed down from leadership