Measure What Matters

How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

By: John Doerr, Larry Page - foreword

Narrated by: John Doerr, full cast, Julia Collins, Jini Kim, Mike Lee, Atticus Tysen, Patti Stonesifer, Susan Wojcicki, Cristos Goodrow, Alex Garden, Joseph Suzuki, Various

Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth - and how it can help any organization thrive.

In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress - to measure what mattered.

Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than 50 companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked.

In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to 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 keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention.

In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.

Read by John Doerr, William Davidow, Brett Kopf, Jini Kim, Mike Lee, Atticus Tysen, Patti Stonesifer, Susan Wojcicki, Cristos Goodrow, Julia Collins, Alex Garden, Joseph Suzuki, Andrew Cole, Bono, and others

©2018 John Doerr (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“I’d recommend John’s book for anyone interested in becoming a better manager.” (Bill Gates)

“Whether you're a seasoned CEO or a first-time entrepreneur, you'll find valuable lessons, tools, and inspiration in the pages of Measure What Matters. I'm glad John invested the time to share these ideas with the world.” (Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn and author of The Start-Up of You)

“Measure What Matters deserves to be fully embraced by every person responsible for performance, in any walk of life. John Doerr makes Andy Grove a mentor to us all. If every team, leader, and individual applied OKRs with rigor and imagination, all sectors of society could see an exponential increase in productivity and innovation.” (Jim Collins, author of Good to Great)

Great concept

Loved it. Definitely a must read and I will definitely revisit many times.

The only thing I did like was the narration cameos. Most of them were really bad.

Clarity

This book is an eye opener, people are using this highly complicated, huge company . It might be usable for personal service company, which is ourselves. Then we go larger which is Family, writing OKRs with the family is awesome!!!!

Immediate Application

Even when I was only halfway through this book, I was already applying the principles from John Doerr's masterpiece to my business. I never realized how unproductive my goal setting had been until reading this. The tools in Measure What Matters translate to any industry and can be applied immediately.

Simple and sensible management framework

The OKR framework John Doerr presents seems so obvious now. How else can we run our companies and teams, and achieve our goals, without a structure where we clearly identify the outcomes needed and measure progress toward them? well worth the listen for the framework itself, and for the guest interviews.

Very informative

I wanted to learn about OKRs and the book delivered. The many examples makes everything easy to understand.

Easily grasped, took action immediately.

I loved this book. It's simple to grasp the idea and impact of OKRs and continuous improvement. I listened to the audio version read by John Doerr and it's done well, with actual insights from Bill Gates, Bono, Andy Grove, and Larry Page. I felt immediately able to start implementing the OKR system with any team with which I'm currently working, whether non-profits or at work.

Answered all of my skeptical questions

This book answered and quenched all of my critical reproach for goal setting. I appreciate this substantiation as it gives me a refreshed insight on how to be more teachable and open to cutting all the noise and distilling my own personal commitment to less width, deeper contribution, and focused impact. It was fantastic.

The nitty, immaterial nuances from my reflection:
I appreciated all of the variety of examples, but also felt a tad classist (as it was written for the D&O, VC, executive, etc. and I get that). Get like you needed to be versed in the Valley/Echelons.
Would have liked to have seen some application for individual personal goal setting like a David Goggins etc. Everything was business.
I would love more information on how to navigate as an individual cultural issues addressed in this book. Meaning, how can we vet companies that have a non-judgmental stance on performance and a safety to fail organization. Also, tips on how to interview hiring managers etc to determine the safety etc needed to find that right fit.

In sum: Inspired, Need to make Hard Decisions to cut more film to the editing floor, and will be having harder conversations with those in my circles. I really appreciated this walkthrough.

Great insight for any managers

Super helpful tips for product manager :) love this book a lot. The stories are fun and engaging

Listen to the Resource 1st

Usefull guideline for our meetings (with our teams/ourselves )
Continuous Performance Management

OKRs-->> Objective (3-5, what) - Key (3-5, how) - Results
CFRs --->> • Conversations • Feedback • Recognition

Difference Commitment και Aspirational για τα OKRs

Prioritise
Alignment
Track
Stretch

great content, narration problematic

switching narrators throughout was really jarring and did not work well, especially for those of us who listening to audiobooks at high speed.