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

A limit of three to five OKRs per cycle leads companies, teams, and individuals to choose what matters most. In general, each objective should be tied to five or fewer key results.

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. And the process can’t stop with unveiling top-line OKRs at a quarterly all-hands meeting.

One proviso: When an objective gets dropped before the end of the OKR interval, it’s important to notify everyone depending on it. Then comes reflection: What did I learn that I didn’t foresee at the beginning of the quarter? And: How will I apply this lesson in the future?

We knew we needed a multiprocess architecture to make each tab its own process and protect a user’s Gmail if another application crashed. And we knew we had to get JavaScript working a lot faster. But we were up for the task of building the best browser possible.

span of four years, the mission was to reach a billion hours of people watching YouTube every day—to

really. Our job was to keep people engaged and hanging out with us.

raw material for top-line OKRs in the organization’s mission statement, strategic

welcome give-and-take on key results from frontline contributors.

healthy proportion of bottom-up OKRs—roughly

Did I accomplish all of my objectives? If so, what contributed to my success? If not, what obstacles did I encounter? If I were to rewrite a goal achieved in full, what would I change? What have I learned that might alter my approach to the next cycle’s OKRs?