Those are my personal notes on John Doerr’s book “Measure What Matters — OKRs: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth”.

Nota: OKR = Objective & Key Results: a clear impact-focussed goal with a deadline, along with measurable steps necessary to reach it.

Core values, mission statement

  • A company’s mission statement, vision, and core values are a general guideline for behaviour and decision-making.
    • Examples of mission statements:
      • “We envision a world where anyone, anywhere, can transform their lives by accessing the world’s best learning experience.”
      • “Every American has a right to delicious, affordable, healthy food.”
    • Examples of core values (Coursera):
      • “Students first.”
      • “Great partners: Be a great partner to universities.”
      • “Think big and advance pedagogy.”
      • “Care for teammates and be human, be humble.”
      • “Do good, do well: Experiment and develop a sustainable business model.”

Culture

  • OKRs might need a culture change before being implemented. “We didn’t want bureaucratic compliance. We wanted enthusiastic compliance.”
    • Culture makes unnecessary the bureaucratic enforcing of standards. Culture replace rules with shared principles.
    • A great culture yields great results. By providing a culture of trust, risk-taking is not judged, but instead encouraged, which yields to more engagement and exceptional results.
  • Shape the culture as early as possible, at its inception. Later is harder (cost of change).
  • Deliberately create a culture where the CEO can be challenged in their decisions by the employees.
    • Feedback needs to be immediate to be helpful. Favour direct feedback (over delayed feedback, e.g. annual review). Delayed feedback can make it too late to adjust. (× Sex Talks ; Improvise!)

OKRs & benefits

  • Objectives and key results (goals and action plan) are yin & yang (and one needing the other.) Goals come from a place of inspiration, are “passive”; while the action plan is an “effecting onto the world”, aggressive.
  • Vision needs to be followed by execution. “If the heart doesn’t find a perfect rhyme with the head, then your passion means nothing.”
    • “The OKR framework cultivates the madness [(the genius)], the chemistry [in the band].”
  • Top-level OKRs are based on the company’s mission statement, vision.
    • Letting everybody know: “There were close to one hundred people at the meeting. The message penetrated two levels of managers off the bat, and to a third level within twenty-four hours.”
  • Day-to-day activities (and OKRs) should be aligned with, contributing towards top-level OKRs (alignment).
    • OKRs are a cooperative social contract to establish priorities.
      • Concentrate efforts: agree on a shared objective and way of reaching it.
    • Clear top-level OKRs enable voluntary, aligned initiatives among frontline workers.
    • Clear top-level OKRs simplify deciding if a new project or initiative fits into the big picture or not.
    • Clear OKRs help coordinate teams.
    • Meaning arises when you know what your work is for.
  • OKRs train everyone to think like managers (before they become one).
  • OKRs clarify what you need to be doing, at any given moment, by providing clear priorities.
    • OKRs let you “default to what matters” when things get hectic or when faced with difficult decisions.
    • OKRs make things objective, therefore easier to reason about and discuss.
      • OKRs simplify and expedite decision making, both individual and collaborative.

Open OKRs

  • OKR platforms are a knowledge platform. Akin to books, open-access OKR platforms let employees draw from the wisdom and experience of other teams having faced similar objectives — and discover which key results they set, and with which outcome. (x The Toyota Way: recording experiments, expected outcomes and ultimate results for future reference; with protocol.)
  • Transparency and openness facilitate mutual support. By transparently sharing our goals, we can understand and support each other better; we can love better (× “nurturing people’s (spiritual) growth”, All About Love)
    • Imagine a world where people walk around with their current goals printed on their face.
    • Every person manages the business of themselves.
    • An open OKR culture requires others’ OKRs to be viewed and used, not just accessible. “If you share a goal that nobody sees, is the system truly transparent?” Theoretical vs practical open OKR.
    • It is easier to communicate a “no” when people know your priorities.
      • Open OKRs facilitate “nos” by having a person’s priorities laid out in public.
    • Open OKRs facilitate communication and understanding between teams. Open OKRs are the shared language between different teams each speaking a different “language”.
    • Open OKRs encourage (spontaneous) collaboration. OKRs create networks. Vertically, horizontally, diagonally. “Connected goal-setting.”
      • “People cannot connect with what they cannot see. Networks cannot blossom in silos.” And networks are more resilient!
      • Collaboration is an engine of growth and innovation.
    • Open OKR platforms promote internal networking.
    • Open OKRs prevent wasteful redundancy; prevents different teams from unwittingly doing the same thing.
    • Open OKRs remove suspicion as to what other people are working on (if on anything at all).

Goal setting

  • Goals should be set with “rigor and imagination”.
  • Decisiveness / Clear, structured goal-setting
    • “If we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.”
    • Any decision is better than no decision. “Wrong decisions can be corrected once results begin to roll in. Nondecisions — or hastily abandoned ones — teach us nothing.”
    • There are often several right answers. The leader’s job is to pick one.
      • “Just make a decision.” “Are you moving forward? Are you breaking ties? Let’s keep rolling.”
    • “The biggest risk of all is not taking one.”
  • Make time to brainstorm on what matters most; what the OKRs should be for the next period.
    • Start brainstorming on the next OKRs way ahead of time.
  • Deciding ahead gives room to adjust. Make the OKR official ahead of the kick-off, so you have time to already prepare and fine-tune it.
  • Different OKRs can have different priorities.
  • Dual-tracking: have both long-term and short-term OKRs.
    • Actual work is driven by short-term goals, even in the context of annual OKRs and long-term plans.
  • OKRs should focus on impact, not activity; OKRs should focus on direct economic or end-user benefits.
    • Not “Launch X” but “Double fleet-wide Y by launching X to 90+ percent of borg cells.”
    • Not “Launch X” but “Launch X to improve sign-ups by 25 percent” (or “Improve sign-ups by 25 percent.”)
  • To maximize productivity, focus on output instead of activity, Busy-ness does not equate efficiency (“the activity trap”). “There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little.” Don’t work hard, work smart. Focus on the value steam instead of surface processes (The Toyota Way). The Toyota Way: (excessive) busy-ness can lead to over-burdening and other wastes (e.g. over-production).
    • “Work “on” the business, not “in” the business. (× Trying Not to Try (Bible) “Being in the world, but not of it.”)
    • “As you move up the hierarchy, you get paid not for the amount of work you do, but for the quality of the decisions you make.” When faced with a problem — pause.
  • Cross-team objectives should have different KRs for the different teams.
    • Each team can then turn the KRs into objectives in their own right with their own KRs.
    • Make all lateral, cross-functional dependencies explicit. (Visually!)
  • When OKRs are collaborative, assign key results to individuals — and hold them accountable.
  • Give people autonomy on how to solve problems. “Micromanagement is mismanagement.”
    • Insight into the way to reach an objective often stems from the gemba (frontline workers) (× The Toyota Way).
    • Contributors should write their own key results to achieve the objective.
  • Roughly half the OKRs should come from frontline workers.
    • “Autonomy”, as setting your own goals.
    • “Every employee in my department owns three to five business objectives per quarter, along with one or two personal ones.”
  • Choose the right metric. What you measure defines what you value.
    • Make your metrics unambiguous (precise).
    • Adjust which metrics you are tracking (for your objectives) over time, as your priorities change.
  • Metrics have to be tied to a goal. KPIs by themselves have no value.
  • Pair quantity KRs with quality KRs. Setting quality KRs adjacent to quantity KRs safeguards against reaching a KR for the sake of reaching the KR without heeding quality, effectively defeating the initial purpose of the KR.
  • Ask for the resources needed to accomplish your OKR. (Time, money, experts, guidance, information, etc.)

Stretch goals

  • Stretch goals are about testing our limits. Stretch goals are about checking if our limits are where we think they are.
    • Stretch goals yield greater output, compared to more comfortable goals.
    • Stretch objectives call for stretch KRs.
  • At times, a company needs stretch, “10x” goals; at other times committed goals (for consolidating).
    • Visions inspire stretch goals.
    • Stretch goals: raising one’s game “by orders of magnitude”.
    • Stretch goals are a good way to prioritize a certain product needing a push.
    • “10x” (stretch) goals require radical, not incremental innovation. They require thinking about the problem differently (× The Design of Everyday Things; × re-imagining the future state (The Toyota Way)). “If you want your car to get fifty miles per gallon, fine. You can retool your car a little bit. But if I tell you it has to run on a gallon of gas for five hundred miles, you have to start over.”
    • By going for very ambitious goals, a failure still means an amazing result. “If you set a crazy, ambitious goal and miss it, you’ll still achieve something remarkable.” “When you aim for the stars, you may come up short but still reach the moon.”
    • “Picture Everest, then describe how difficult the climb is. Then describe how we’re going to reach the summit.”
    • Put very ambitious goals in perspective, in context, to make it seem less crazy (e.g. by changing the reference point: +500% vs 50% of competitor’s performance).
  • Chunking makes ambitious goals doable. “By chunking a problem, quarter by quarter, moonshots become more doable.”
  • When you know the stretch goal in advance, you can prepare for it in all its aspects (you can prepare all areas.) (× set OKRs ahead of kickoff)
  • Massive turnarounds in a short time, are very much possible.
    • “Within three months of launch, Zune had achieved 10 percent market share in its local trade area.”

Continuous performance management

  • Transfer an OKR to a different person or team if they can do it more efficiently; if they have the expertise and bandwidth.
  • Have regular one-on-ones with the employees, for exchanging information and providing support. (CFRs.) The meeting should aim at exchanging information, understanding, coaching and feedback.
    • The meeting’s agenda should be set by the employee.
    • Ones-on-ones are a place to discuss individual OKRs and ask for guidance or support.
  • Regular OKR check-ins allow for extra support and possible escalation (of the goal). They make possible providing extra support to teams struggling with their OKRs, or OKRs lagging behind (“escalation”: putting more attention, effort and emphasis on an OKR at risk, enlisting lateral support).
    • Regular check-ins let you adjust to meet a goal before it’s too late.
    • “Selling and buying OKRs”: taking turns to ask for help for OKRs at risk, almost competing with the other teams.
      • “Little time is spent on people’s greens. Instead, they “sell” their reds. The team votes on the most important at-risk OKRs for the company as a whole, then brainstorms together as long as it takes to get the objectives back on track. In the spirit of cross-departmental solidarity, individuals volunteer to “buy” their colleagues’ reds.”
  • Elevate KRs to objectives if they require extra attention (for the next period).
  • Fails require a post-mortem.
    • For example, failed OKRs require a post-mortem (and a new action plan).
    • “We do not learn from our mistakes, but from reflecting on our mistakes.”

Reviewing

  • Score objectives and KRs first objectively, then subjectively through self-assessment (was the goal too easy?)
  • Reflect on your meta-learnings about goal setting.
  • “And then after ten milliseconds of celebration we have to set ourselves another set of highly difficult-to-reach objectives and we have to meet them. And the reward or having met one of these challenging goals is that you get to play again.”

People

  • OKRs bring insight into who you need to hire — which necessary skills for the OKRs you are missing in the company. OKRs also give greater clarity to the future hire as to what their mission will be.
    • “We hire smart people not to tell them what to do, but so they can tell us what to do.” (Steve Jobs)
  • Don’t lay off; relocate. if somebody is not managing at their job, find a better fit for them, within the company (human-first). × The Toyota Way: job safety; humans are the most flexible resource you have. (Internal turnover)
  • “Bono, do you know the Senegalese proverb “If you want to cut a man’s hair, it is better if he is in the room”?”
  • A winning business needs both OKRs and CFRs; the goal-setting and the human.
    • CFRs: Conversations, Feedback (bi-directional), Recognition.
  • “A manager’s first role is the personal one. It’s the relationship with people, the development of mutual confidence, the creation of a community.”
    • “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” (Albert Einstein) (× Broadcast: “We’ve got what numbers cannot count.”)
    • Have regular, deep conversations with people, “not talking about work” (e.g. assisting them in, or learning about, their life goals).
      • “In talking about people’s pursuit of personal goals, you end up learning a lot about what moves them forward — or holds them back — in their careers.”
        • “What makes you very happy? What saps your energy? How would you describe your dream job?”
        • Know why the people are here, what they want.
          • “What coaching can I provide to help the report fully realize his or her potential?” (× All About Love)
          • “What types of learning experience might benefit this contributor?”
        • Ask people about their (personal) priorities — and it’s ok.
    • Work-related questions:
      • “What part of your job most excites you?”
      • “What (if any) aspect of your role would you like to change?”
  • Encourage peer-to-peer feedback.
  • Institute recognition. Create a culture of openly recognizing and giving (specific) shout-outs to people.
    • Make the recognition specific. Share the context around it. Publish in newsletters or company blogs.
  • Conferring a name on a process or project bolsters its existence, makes it something tangible and that people can reason about.
  • Intelligence is more valuable than knowledge. By being intelligent, you can learn what you don’t know yet. (× The Toyota Way: Recruiting people with the potential to learn, who can learn the necessary skills on the job.)

Marketing

  • Marketing (e.g. offline ads) are a way to ingrain a certain conceptual model (view) (× The Design of Everyday Things) of the product.
    • “In March, we embarked on a “Chrome Fast” marketing campaign.”

Quotes and unquotes

  • “Entrepreneurs do more than anyone thinks possible, with less than anyone thinks possible. (By contrast with bureaucrats, who do less than anyone thinks possible with more than anyone thinks possible.)”
  • At the end of the day, relationships are what matters the most.
    • “Finally, I offer my undying gratitude to my wife, Ann, and daughters, Mary and Esther, whose patience, encouragement, and love kept me going through this long and challenging project. Each and every day, they remind me of what matters the most.”