Measure What Matters
by John Doerr
Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.
Why read it
In 1999, a legendary venture capitalist sat two young Google founders down and gave them a simple goal-setting tool he had learned at Intel, and it helped turn a startup into one of the most valuable companies on earth.
Doerr makes the case for Objectives and Key Results, the OKR system, as a discipline for focusing organizations on what truly matters and measuring progress toward it. Through stories from Google, the Gates Foundation, Bono's ONE campaign, and more, he shows how clear, ambitious goals drive extraordinary results.
Published in 2018, the book draws on Doerr's mentorship under Intel's Andy Grove, who created OKRs, and his early investment in Google. It became a New York Times bestseller and a standard reference for the OKR method.
- 01
Objectives and key results
The takeaway is to pair an ambitious qualitative objective with a few measurable key results.
- 02
Focus and commit
OKRs force organizations to choose what matters most and say no to the rest.
- 03
Stretch for amazing
Setting goals just beyond reach pushes teams toward breakthrough performance.
- 04
CFRs over annual reviews
Continuous conversations, feedback, and recognition replace stale yearly appraisals.
Andy Grove's introduction of OKRs at Intel and the Operation Crush campaign against a competitor.
How Google used OKRs to focus YouTube on a billion-hours-of-daily-watch-time goal.
