Measure What Matters
“Measure What Matters” by John Doerr
My Notes
Intro
- terms
- objective: what to achieve
- key results: how to achieve the objective
- example
- objective: prove our value to customers FAST!
- key results: (1) reduce the time to “commit and purchase” by 50% (2) 90% of new users purchase within the first 24 hours
- life always gives you plenty to do, don’t forget the things that matter
- alignment: does this activity align to reach our company goal?
- focus, align, track, and stretch
- ideas are easy; execution is everything
- “put more wood behind fewer arrows”
- “micro management is mismanagement”
OKRs
- OKRs are intended to give us direction as individuals and teams
- OKRs are meant to inspire ideas, stretch what we think is possible, and quantify what it will take to get us there - OKRs at the top-level can inspire your personal work and goals; they give you alignment with company goals
- OKRs help you know how your role contributes to our overall mission
- OKRs should be outcome focused: to measure what really matters, we need to focus on the outcomes we want to achieve.
- OKR’s should list results that drive towards an outcome; for example, “Increase video watch time from X to Y.” is a good, quantifiable KR that could map to the objective “Users prefer watching videos on our platform more than any competitor.”
- Top-level OKRs should be supported by department-level ones
- OKRs should be challenged, metrics should be challenged
OKR Implementation
- possible implementation
- 2 weeks before a quarter starts, the company-level OKRs should be defined, challenged, set, and sent out to the company
- once a quarter starts, the department-level OKRs should be defined, challenged, set, and sent out to the company
- 2 weeks after a quarter starts, individual OKRs should be defined, challenged, set, and shared with your direct report
OKR Pitfalls
- you don’t commit or use them
- OKRs are “business as usual” goals, but not focused around providing more value to customers/company
- OKRs are eventual, way-out-there goals vs being something that can help provide value in the next quarter
- sandbagging OKRs that really don’t challenge anyone
- insufficient KR’s to track progress
- the transition into an OKR-driven company isn’t night and day