Google uses a scale of 0 to 1.0: 0.7 to 1.0 = green.* (We delivered.) 0.4 to 0.6 = yellow. (We made progress, but fell short of completion.) 0.0 to 0.3 = red. (We failed to make real progress.)

That was our biggest advantage: We aimed higher.

With hindsight, I would have started with our leadership team of five.

“People in the trenches are usually in touch with impending changes early. Salespeople understand shifting customer demands before management does; financial analysts are the earliest to know when the fundamentals of a business change.”

At Google, in line with Andy Grove’s old standard, aspirational OKRs are set at 60 to 70 percent attainment. In other words, performance is expected to fall short at least 30 percent of the time. And that’s considered success!

To safeguard quality while pushing for quantitative deliverables, one solution is to pair key results—to measure “both effect and counter-effect,”

the son of a computer science pioneer. He was a soft-spoken nonconformist, a rebel with a 10x cause:

In Google’s OKR climate, it was understood that 70 percent achievement (on average) was considered a success. You weren’t supposed to strive for greens on every OKR you wrote—that wouldn’t stretch the team. But there was an intrinsic tension because you didn’t get hired at Google unless you were driven to succeed. As a leader, you didn’t want to

The SVP’s key results are a mess. Unlike the head coach’s KRs, they’re unmeasurable. They’re not specific or time bound.