Measure What Matters

Fifty | Garden | Ninety | Twenty-Five

14 August 2022 - Barcelona

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John Doerr's Measure What Matters is a book that I've been looking forward to reading for a while. Google has evangelized the OKR method for years, but I really didn't understand what differentiates it from the terrible annual revenue process that many companies employ. I experienced that process personally a couple places and found it to be more demotivating than anything. On the other hand my own attempts to implement a quarterly goal process with good metrics have been less than successful in a startup environment because requirements just change too fast.

In his book Doerr outlines objectives and key results (OKRs) that he learned while working at Intel and has helped a number of Silicon Valley firms implement. According to Doerr objectives are the "what" of a goal and key results are the "how". He also thinks it's important to make them transparent, that is public internally to the company so everyone can see and comment on them. Doerr also says that ideally OKRs should, but then talks about how Google does them annually and devotes a whole chapter to a YouTube four year long OKR! I wasn't entirely sold on his method because I don't think the quarterly or annual cadence for goals really drives people in the trenches. A faster cadence like agile sprints has a shorter feedback loop that leads to more communication and better goal alignment.

At the end of the day, commmunication, transparency and measurability are what matter and, in that Doerr evangelizes all of these in his book, I think it's worth a read. And the sections of the book written by executives at companies he's invested in are real gems. Knowing how a success story goes doesn't necessarily mean you can replicate it, but stories and anecdotes are the real glue sometimes that holds ideas in our heads.