Measure What Matters by John Doerr

“Measure what matters” presents us the world of Objectives and Key Results (OKR). OKR is not about process, or a process improvement tool. OKR is a framework that takes ambitious goals to great execution, producing exponential growth (10x). If you would like to know more about Goal setting fundamentals, here is book summary of Goals.

OBJECTIVE, is simply WHAT is to be achieved, are significant yet simple, and action oriented.

KEY RESULTS are the indicators of HOW we’ve gotten to the objective along with measure of success. Effective KRs are specific, time-bound, mostly quantifiable and measurable. For an example, consider below objective and key results.

Objective: Boost physical health to enhance overall well-being

KR1: Limit calorie intake to XXX Kcal.

KR2: Daily water intake of 4 liters.

KR3: Workout 5 times a week resulting 10% weight loss in 3 months.

Key results, when all of them are achieved, the objective is necessarily accomplished.

Committed OKR vs Aspirational OKR: Committed OKRs are OKRs that we agree will be achieved, and schedules and resources are adjusted in order to ensure that they are delivered.

By contrast, aspirational OKRs express how we’d like the world to look, even though we have no clear idea how to get there and/or the resources necessary to deliver the OKR. They are designed to challenge a team’s capability, resources, beliefs.

There are four elements of OKR, called four superpowers- Focus and commit to Priorities, Align & connect for Teamwork, Track for Accountability, Stretch for Amazing. All these superpowers are explained through chapter 4-14 with help of case studies.

Introduction: Chapter 1-3 presents success stories of Google and Intel of how adoption of OKR is fundamental to their success. While Google, despite of being 18^th search engine to arrive on the web, made it to be best search engine, and eventually as 700-billion-dollar revenue company by January 2018. However, OKR is a brainchild of Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel Corp. who built on the concept of Management by objective by Peter Drucker. OKR helped Intel build their chip business on four core pursuit-

• Profit margin twice the industry norm
• Market leadership in any product line it entered
• Creation of “challenging jobs” and “growth opportunities” for employees
• Knowledge is secondary, Execution is all that matters

Follows that, the launch of Operation Crush to re-establish Intel as microprocessor market leader, from the stiff challenge from Motorola through right objective.

Superpower#1: Focus and commit to priorities

Begin with the question, “What is most important for next three months?”. Framing the objective with precision is the first step. This is explained through case study of “The Remind” in order to make texting secure, practical communication system for principals, teachers, students, parents. And then, commitment is about doing what you said, and staying on course.

Superpower#2: Align and connect for Teamwork

There are two approaches to design an OKR framework- The Top-down cascading approach and bottom-up approach. There are pros and cons to each of them. The Top-down approach brings more alignment across the organization, whereas the bottom-up approach provides more autonomy. A healthy OKR has to do with the balancing task between these two. As the organization got more and more layered, different teams were working on different priorities. If there are shared team among them, they get caught in the middle. This was the case of MyFitnessPal, who leveraged the OKR framework in order to scale up rapidly, while keeping the teams highly aligned.

Superpower#3: Track for Accountability

OKR’s are living document. They can be tracked, revised, adapted as needed. In an OKR cycle, there are four options that can be exercised-

Continue: When the KR is still valid

Update: Modify the KR or objective to respond to external changes

Start: Launch a new OKR mid-cycle, whenever the need arises

Stop: KR has achieved its usefulness.

Objectives are always tied to purpose, not the other way around i.e you don’t need to create a purpose to satisfy an objective. Whenever a key result or objective becomes obsolete, irrelevant, impractical, end it right there. The Gates Foundation story is used as a case, how they use global health metrics to track their objectives.

Superpower#4: Stretch for Amazing

The Google Chrome story and The YouTube story fits best to describe the theme. Google, known for its pursuit of being fast, launched its ambitious project of establishing Chrome as best next generation web application platform in 2008. They set abysmally high standards for themselves, from 20 million 7-day active users to 50 million to 111 million.

Launched in 2015, Google had its own free video-sharing platform called Google videos. YouTube, being better placed over Google videos, thanks to their flaws, was finally acquired by Google. That’s where Google’s culture of OKR transformed YouTube. They measured what matters from them, switching from Nos. of views to total watch time, being laser focused on this until they gained 1 billion hours of daily user watch time.

In Part Two: The New World of Work, author introduces Continuous Performance Management. Contrary to Annual performance management, the continuous performance management is continuous feedback mechanism backed by coaching, supported by facts. Both OKR and CFR (Conversation, Recognition, Feedback) are the building blocks. OKR is all about setting audacious goals & achieving them. CFRs brings in human element to Performance Management through transparency, accountability, empowerment, teamwork. And finally, the organization culture plays an integral role. Culture is about the shared beliefs and core values that are reflected throughout the organizations in the way they work. This is explained through case studies of The Zume Pizza Story.

At the concluding end, author supplies ample resources, useful tips and traps, to refer from. This book is not meant to be one time read, rather as guide to building a great OKRs for exponential achievement.

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