Measure What Matters by John Doerr

I first read Measure What Matters in hardback in August 2018 and I've since returned to it via audiobook. Doerr's thesis - that to be great, you must be deliberate, definitive and measure the essential steps - is repeated again and again. But the telling and retelling is reinforced with powerful examples and testimonials that assure you of this system's power. I returned to the book this morning because I was eyeing my own OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) over my first cup of coffee.

Put simply, Doerr is arguing for setting ambitious (very ambitious) objectives and doing the hard work of outlining the key results that can help you achieve that objective.

"The objective is the direction... That's where we're going to go," he explains,

And key results? "It's a milestone. The key result has to be measurable." Those should be succinct, specific and measurable.

I used the OKR approach with a previous team that rallied hard to help set a new high water mark in terms of attendance and applications at a recruitment event. The discipline forced by the OKR model meant everything. I expected the team to blanch at being asked to aim higher than we thought possible. Instead, the fact that we dared believe we could stick the landing seemed to give all involved permission to push beyond their comfort zones. With key results written as a group, the team left a 90 minute planning session and attacked the objective with written and rewritten key results in hand-- and met and then exceeded an audacious goal. That's the strongest recommendation I can give this book.

Quotable:

• "Innovation means saying 'no' to one thousand things." - Steve Jobs
• "If we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing." - Andy Grove, former Intel CEO and chairman

Head to the print edition for: 
1. The basics of Doerr's philosophy, which is built on lessons learned at Intel and lived experiences at Google and elsewhere. It all begins to be outlined on page 33. Insights include: Less is more; set goals from the bottom up; no dictating; stay flexible, and dare to fail. Out of context, these may seem thin and even obvious if you routinely read the click bait postings on Forbes, Fortune, etc. But for anyone trying to build a culture of high performance and accountability, they are worth a closer look.
2. Scoring - Doerr outlines how Google scores OKRs across the organization. You'll be surprised to see what Google sees as too high a success rate.
3. Bono - I was surprised to hear Bono on the audio version. I shouldn't have been. He jumps in to talk about how the Red campaign was able to make real change by daring to believe it could do the impossible.

Last thought:  I found Doerr's TedTalk on this topic a little underwhelming. Don't be deterred if you start there. Give the book a look and plenty of time.