Measure What Matters: OKRs: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth

The objective is the direction: “We want to dominate the mid-range microcomputer component business.” That’s an objective. That’s where we’re going to go. Key results for this quarter: “Win ten new designs for the 8085” is one key result. It’s a milestone. The two are not the same …. The key result has to be measurable. But at the end you can look,

To succeed, a stretch goal cannot seem like a long march to nowhere. Nor can it be imposed from on high without regard to realities on the ground. Stretch your team too fast and too far, and it may snap. In pursuing high-effort, high-risk goals, employee commitment is essential. Leaders must convey two things: the importance of the outcome, and the

Alongside focus, commitment is a core element of our first superpower. In implementing OKRs, leaders must publicly commit to their objectives and stay steadfast.

At Intel, he went on, “we tend to be exactly the opposite. It almost doesn’t matter what you know. It’s what you can do with whatever you know or can acquire and actually accomplish [that] tends to be valued here.” Hence the company’s slogan: “Intel delivers.”

Stay flexible. If the climate has changed and an objective no longer seems practical or relevant as written, key results can be modified or even discarded mid-cycle. (See chapter 10, “Superpower #3: Track for Accountability.”)

OKRs: “A management methodology that helps to ensure that the company focuses efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization.”

Then come the four OKR “superpowers”: focus, align, track, and stretch.

“The art of management,” Grove wrote, “lies in the capacity to select from the many activities of seemingly comparable significance the one or two or three that provide leverage well beyond the others and concentrate on them.”

A key point about a one-on-one: It should be regarded as the subordinate’s meeting, with its agenda and tone set by him …. The supervisor is there to learn and coach.fn1

Measuring what matters begins with the question: What is most important for the next three (or six, or twelve) months?