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

Superpower #1—Focus and Commit to Priorities (chapters 4, 5, and 6): High-performance organizations home in on work that’s important, and are equally clear on what doesn’t matter. OKRs impel leaders to make hard choices. They’re a precision communication tool for departments, teams, and individual contributors. By dispelling confusion, OKRs give us

OKRs gave us a way to move forward that wasn’t all top-down. After voting on the quarter’s top objectives, the leadership team would go to our contributors and say, “Here’s what we think is important and why.” And the contributors would say, “Okay, how do we get there?” Since it was all written down, everybody knew what everyone else was doing. The

yardstick for success: We’re going to build this product, and we’ve proven the market by talking to twenty-five customers, and here’s how much they’re willing to pay. At medium-size, rapidly scaling organizations, OKRs are a shared language for execution. They clarify expectations: What do we need to get done (and fast), and who’s working on it? Th

Along our journey, we’ll rove behind the scenes to observe OKRs and CFRs in a dozen very different organizations, from Bono’s ONE Campaign in Africa to YouTube and its quest for 10x growth. Collectively these stories demonstrate the range and potential of structured goal setting and continuous performance management, and how they are transforming

Leaders must get across the why as well as the what. Their people need more than milestones for motivation. They are thirsting for meaning, to understand how their goals relate to the mission.

OKRs surface your primary goals. They channel efforts and coordination. They link diverse operations, lending purpose and unity to the entire organization.