Book Review — Measure What Matters, By John Doerr
“A tool, not a weapon, is meant to pace a person — to put a stopwatch in his own hand so he can gauge his own performance”. — Andy Grove.
Have you ever been in an ocean of chaos. Have you felt trouble on getting your organisation working together. Are you confused on where to start and how to achieve a definite goal. “Measure what matters” takes you through the world’s best management tool which is easily applicable to any form of working being, from an individual to an organisation as big as Google.
The tool described in the book is simple and easy. We need a definite OBJECTIVE of what we want to achieve. Then we need to break them into KEY RESULTS through which we can get to the OBJECTIVE in defined time. This is acronym-ed as OKRs.
I thought about it a bit. Isn’t this how I usually do?
Yes, I do. But, Did I do it right? Lets see through an example.
I have an desire: to learn guitar. For better clarity I jot it down to my diary. Of course, giving your dream a tangible form. So here it is.
Now there is a dream, but no action plan, how to do it. So here is how OKR helps.
Now it is better conveyed. You know what to do. Now, assume that one of your friend started guitar classes exactly on the same day you did. After three months he went far beyond you. You came to know that he also used OKRs for action. So, here is how he did his OKRs.
He did more specific OKR. He included time, and specifications for better clarity. Now this is a better OKR.
OBJECTIVES point WHAT we want to achieve. They:
- express goals and intents;
- are aggressive yet realistic;
- must be tangible, objective, and unambiguous; should be obvious to a rational observer whether an objective has been achieved.
KEY RESULTS benchmark and monitor HOW we get to the objective. Effective KRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, they are measurable and verifiable.
- express measurable milestones which, if achieved, will advance objective in a useful manner to their constituents
- must describe outcomes, not activities. If your KRs include words like “consult,” “help,” “analyze,” or “participate,” they describe activities.
- must include evidence of completion.
To make the progress scalable, KRs must be quantifiable. Hence, the KRs must be converted into measurable form which gives clarity on quality, requisite time and value brought by the Objective.
These doesn’t seem to be super powerful! To the eyes of those who always fails to create a good plan of action can relate and will fall in love with OKRs in the first sight :)
OKRs in organisations
OKRs have well functioned in most of the top organisations around the world. If an individual can set his OKRs well enough, then it can be applied anywhere were a goal is the result of a group of individuals’ action.
OKRs have four super powers.
1.Focus and Commit to Priorities
A few extremely well-chosen objectives impart a clear message about what we say ‘yes’ to and what we say ‘no’ to. A limit of three to five OKRs per cycle leads companies, teams, and individuals to choose what matters most.
2. Align and Connect for Teamwork
To promote engagement, teams and individuals should be encouraged to create roughly half of their own OKRs, in consultation with managers. OKRs are set public so that, each contributor can see what he adds up to the organisation, who all are dependent on him, who all he should depend on to get his OKRs done.
3. Track for Accountability
If the climate has changed and an objective no longer seems practical or relevant as written, key results can be modified or even discarded mid-cycle. Failures are lessons. Failure, in an environment run through OKRs brings to light many variables that caused it. Iteration of modified OKRs will bring success. On success we have to set a higher OKR. This is how we improve capability.
4. Stretch for Amazing
Output will tend to be greater, when everybody strives for a level of achievement beyond their immediate grasp. Setting goals beyond the limit you think you have will be adventurous as well as inspirational. If you can complete the OKRs so easily, you haven’t set it good enough for you.
OKRs push us far beyond our comfort zones. They lead us to achievements on the border between abilities and dreams. They unearth fresh capacity, hatch more creative solutions,revolutionize business models. Harder the goal the higher the level of performance. Although subjects with very hard goals reached their goals far less often than subjects with very easy goals, the former consistently performed at a higher level than the latter.
Cross-team OKRs
Many important projects require contribution from different groups. Cross-team OKRs should include all the groups who must materially participate in the OKR, and OKRs committing to each group’s contribution should appear explicitly in each such group’s OKRs.
Continuous Performance Management
Annual review system, a conventional tool used to analyse the performance of an organisation will only increase the productivity in the last month of the year. This neither do justice to the company nor to the employee. Continuous performance management is done by three simple instruments acronymed as CFRs.
- Conversations: an authentic, richly textured exchange between manager and contributor, aimed at driving performance. This will bring the problems that bottom level to pop up and rectify them in a better formulated OKR.
- Feedback: bidirectional or networked communication among peers to evaluate progress and guide future improvement
- Recognition: expressions of appreciation to deserving individuals for contributions of all size
OKRs and CFRs are mutually reinforcing. CFRs are said to be human voice of OKRs.
Importance of Culture
Culture is a set of values and beliefs, as well as familiarity with the way things are done and should be done in a company. An OKR culture is an accountable culture. You don’t push toward a goal just because the boss gave you an order. You do it because every OKR is transparently important to the company, and to the colleagues who count on you. Nobody wants to be seen as the one holding back the team. Everybody takes pride in moving progress forward. It’s a social contract, but a self-governed one.
OKRs can be used to plan what people are going to produce, track their progress vs plan, and coordinate priorities and milestones between people and teams. It helps people stay focused on the most important goals, and help them avoid being distracted by urgent but less important goals. We grade them with a color scale to measure how well we did:
0.0–0.3 is red
0.4–0.6 is yellow
0.7–1.0 is green.
The author John Doerr, the Silicon Valley Legend have incorporated this tool to many of the succesful companies around the world including, Google, Intuit, MyFitnessPal etc. To all the fellow readers, the tool is very simple and will be effective for an individual too. Take a pen, jot down your objectives and key results. You can be a champ!
