Measure What Matters: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth Paperback – January 1, 2018

I just finished "Measure What Matters" by John Doerr. Such a great book full of advice for companies struggling with #execution.My favorite #quotes from this book:"Good ideas with great execution are how you make magic." @Larry Page"Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.""I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again." @Gordon Moore"Specific hard goals produce a higher level of output than vaguely worded ones.""Set goals from bottom up.""Dare to fail.""... four OKR superpowers: focus, alignment, tracking, and stretching.""Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them." @Andy Grove"When you are tired of saying it, people are starting to hear it." Jeff Weiner"Done is better than perfect." Sheryl Sandberg"... if we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.""Growth costs money.""... you can only do one big thing at a time really well, and so you better know what that one is.""Doing too much too soon will definitely end in pain.""To inspire true commitment, leaders must practice what they teach""Transparency seeds collaboration.""Having a good mission is not enough. You need a concrete objective, and to need to know how you're going to get there.""... my favorite definition of entrepreneurs: Those who do more than anyone thinks possible ... with less than anyone thinks possible.""If you set a crazy, ambitious goal and miss it, you'll still achieve something remarkable." @Larry Page"Stretch goals can be crushing if people do not believe they're achievable. That's where the art of framing comes in.""Feedback is an opinion, grounded in observations and experiences, which allows us to know what impression we make on others." Sheryl Sandberg"Feedback can be highly constructive- but only if it is specific.""Continuous recognition is a powerful driver of engagement.""... a really good company values different opinions.""... behavior defines a company more meaningfully than product lines or market share.""Vision-based leadership beats command-and-control.""People watch what you do more than what you say.""Time is the enemy of transformation.""... there was no shame in trying your hardest and failing, not when OKRs help you fail smart and fail fast.""Goal setting is more art than science."

"Measure What Matters" by John Doerr is an insightful exploration of the power of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) in driving organizational success.The book proves to be immensely helpful in understanding the practical application of OKRs, particularly through the compelling showcase of how notable companies like Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation have harnessed this goal-setting framework to achieve remarkable results.Doerr's narrative skillfully intertwines real-world examples and case studies, offering valuable insights into the transformative impact of OKRs on focus, alignment, and overall performance within diverse business settings.Whether you're a business leader, entrepreneur, or anyone interested in effective goal-setting strategies, "Measure What Matters" serves as an inspirational and instructive guide, demonstrating the tangible benefits of adopting OKRs in driving success and innovation.

I am a fan of business process books, and this book Measure What Matters, comes highly recommended.Any process that leads to transparent, cohesive goals for an organization is useful, and Objectives+Key-Results (OKR) as described in this book are a fine way of working towards that goal.The process is relatively simple, pick an objective and then key-results that will contribute to that objective.One of the nice aspects of OKR is that recent Microsoft (MS) Office releases have an OKR tracker embedded in the package that makes implementation easier if you are using MS Office.The book was good, but a few nits ... it has a lot of "marketing" material in the book, and some of the examples seem over-stated. When Intel decided to go after Motorola, the book says that everyone in the company worked on the objective, but Intel was a large company with a lot of support personnel. It is hard to believe that the janitorial staff, the admin sections, etc. all chipped in on that one objective. I understand that general idea, but it detracts from the book's credibility.The book does not spend a lot of time on giving examples of how to develop OKRs. It has a lot of illustrative examples of businesses that used OKRs and had miraculous turn-arounds, but the book spends little time on how to actually find and instantiate. A chapter or three that talked through the process with some simple examples would have been welcomed.Finally, I'm at a start-up now that is using the OKR methodology, and the book implies that you need to be "all in" on OKRs. We are finding that you need to find a way to work into OKR. The everywhere all at once approach the book advocates can be wildly impractical.All in all, this is a good idea, but the book would have benefitted from some additional how-to chapters and a little less marketing.