Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

“Measure What Matters shows how any organization or team can aim high, move fast, and excel.”
—Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and founder of LeanIn.org and OptionB.org
 

“Measure What Matters deserves to be fully embraced by every person responsible for performance, in any walk of life.” —Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
 

“In this indispensable book, the most important venture capitalist of our era reveals a key to business innovation and success. This crisp and colorful book combines fascinating case studies with insightful personal stories to show how OKRs can add magic to organizations of any size.”
—Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and The Innovators

In his new book legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how a powerful goal-setting system has helped tech giants such as Google and Intel exceed all expectations—and how it can help any organization thrive. Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs (Portfolio, $27.00, on sale 4/24) details how the discipline of OKRs, Objectives and Key Results, will galvanize leaders in any industry to set and achieve audacious goals to drive change.

According to Doerr, success in solving any major challenge hinges on the ability to execute.  “Ideas are important, but they are easy compared to execution that requires the discipline of OKRs — focus, alignment, transparency and accountability.” Pulled from his experiences with some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and fearless innovators, he provides a handful of lessons—along with a dozen behind-the-scenes stories, from Google to the Gates Foundation—that can transform any organization that follows them faithfully. Scattering anecdotes about his own career throughout, the book includes first person accounts from practitioners including Bill Gates, Bono, Susan Wojcicki of YouTube, Sundar Pichai at Google, Atticus Tyan at Intuit, Jini Kim of Nuna and Brett Kopf at Remind.

Doerr first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where Andy Grove (“the greatest manager of his or any era”) drove the best-run company he had ever seen.  Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove’s brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked.

 
In the OKR model, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions and within a set time frame. Everyone’s goals, from entry-level contributors to the CEO, are transparent to the entire organization.  

The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization’s most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They link objectives across departments to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost performance and retention. Truly transformational teams tie their OKRs to purpose and passion.

Clear, compelling goals are needed more today than ever before. In Measure What Matters, Doerr includes a broad range of case studies, from big companies, small startups and non-profits. OKRs have proven to be a powerful tool for companies with goals to shorten time to market, increase sales targets or improve employee morale but OKRs can be deployed by any organization in any industry, in schools, government and even in families. Doerr hopes all readers will be inspired to deploy OKRs to achieve big audacious goals and measure what really matters – to them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Doerr is an engineer, acclaimed venture capitalist, and the chairman of Kleiner Perkins. For 37 years, John has served entrepreneurs with ingenuity and optimism, helping them build disruptive companies and bold teams.  John was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon, helping to create more than half a million jobs and the world’s second and third most valuable companies. He’s passionate about encouraging leaders to reimagine the future, from transforming healthcare to advancing applications of machine learning. Outside of Kleiner Perkins, John works with social entrepreneurs for change in public education, the climate crisis, and global poverty. John serves on the board of the Obama Center and ONE.org.