[2 MIN REVIEW] Measure what matters by John Doerr
Full title: Measure What Matters: OKRs: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth
Like Lyssa Adkins “Coaching agile teams” is to coaching, Jez Humble’s book on Continuous Delivery is to DevOps and David Rock’s “Quiet Leadership” is to Servant Leadership, John Doerr’s book on Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is the bible on company and team alignment and measuring success and failure.
Don’t not let the simplicity of this framework fool you, OKRs are a simple concept but difficult to get “right” (whatever that actually means). Whilst researching ways to help my department get better aligned to the company vision and success metrics one of my staff introduced me to OKRs. After a pilot in my department (the first quarter was a disaster but we learnt a lot) we were able to demonstrate its value and now we are rolling it out to the entire business.
A few key takeaways for me:
- Only set 3–5 things in a quarter to truly focus on, if everything is a priority then nothing is
- Ensure your success measures are exactly that, measurable, we discovered very quickly what a “bad” measure looks like which are of no value
- Ensure goal setting and measures of success are shared both horizontally and vertically (in a bi-directional way) within the business to ensure maximum focus and collaboration, most of the team departments share a goal, so why not get them both to focus on the same thing
- Ownership of the goal and the measures need to be with the teams, the lower down the hierarchy these are created, the more buy in and focus you will get, “handing down” goals does not work
Think of this as a manual. I listened to this on audible first, then bought the kindle version for reference, then bought a hard copy to scribble in (with pencil of course!). If you read no other book this year, make this one it.
Audible/Kinder/Physical versions:
