Takeaways from The book — Measure What Matters
This book by John Doerr is the culmination of all the experience he has about build great products, making great teams, and turning an organization into a great organization. He has helped many big companies like Google, Intuit, Adobe, etc., multiple startups like Myfitnesspal, Zume Pizza and various NGOs. He says in the book that he has learned the techniques and the strategies from his boss in Intel, Andy Groove, and his mentor Bill Campbell. This book stresses on multiple aspects of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and how they can help build great companies.
As per the book, if you are not measuring your performance correctly, you cannot reach your goal efficiently. John has listed four superpowers OKRs bring and they can be exercised and enjoyed by setting up the culture of OKRs and abiding the rules to continue to measure it.
1. Focus and Commit to Priorities: Successful organizations focus on the handful of initiatives that can make a real difference, deferring less important ones. Their leaders commit to those in words and deeds. By standing firmly behind a few top-line OKRs, they give their teams a compass and a baseline for assessment. OKRs also help in detailing the what, how, and when of the project and goal.
2. Align and Connect for work: Research shows that public goals are more likely to be attained than goals held in private. In the OKR system, everybody can see anybody’s objective and key results they want to work upon, this way even a junior engineer can see goals of all managers up his ladder and how his work contributes to the overall company objective. This really inspires all people in the organization as their work now looks more aligned, more tangible and impactful to the company objectives.
3. Track for Accountability: Writing down the goals to be achieved help us to move towards it and hold one accountable for the action he is taking at every point. Given the goals and constraint, one is empowered to make the decision right for organization objectives. Setting up OKRs and proper review system help individual to measure their impact and expectation from them. This also helps in bringing clarity in career development and promotions.
4. Stretch for Amazing: OKRs push us far beyond our comfort zones. They lead us to achievements on the border between abilities and dreams. When one wants to make the incremental improvements, he can iterate to achieve it but when he wants to reach the 10X goal, writing it helps in revisiting the problem and allow the platform to innovate. It is possible that you may not be able to achieve that 10X goal, but stretching to get it and failing helps us to reach closer to the target and allows us to grow and outperform most people. You may end up achieving 5X which is much better than setting and delivering a 2X goal for a business. This may raise the question on compensation and bonus as we are not able to reach the goal, but then company culture plays a vital role in identifying the effort and impact instead of just the goal percentage achieved.
Culture is one of the most important aspects of a company and without instilling good culture an organization cannot grow as fast as they want to. To inculcate transparency, accountability, empowerment, and teamwork, Continuous Performance Management is essential. It is implemented with an instrument called CFRs:
• Conversations: an authentic, richly textured exchange between manager and contributor, aimed at driving performance
• Feedback: bidirectional or networked communication among peers to evaluate progress and guide future improvement
• Recognition: expressions of appreciation to deserving individuals for the contribution of all sizes
The book has chapters on above superpowers and has many stories about different companies. The narratives illustrate how OKRs and CFRs have helped them to grow, align, and be disruptive in the fast-moving technology world.
