Author: John Doerr
Short Summary |
Measure What Matters (2017) narrates how John Doerr has helped many companies to strategize their success and implement their vision. In this Measure What Matters Summary, you will learn how to implement and achieve OKRs (objectives and Key Results). |
Detailed Summary
Measure What Matters Summary explains a crucial point that is often overlooked by the people who are running firms and businesses. You ask what is wrong with the growth and why your company is not growing exponentially and start by analyzing the results. However, according to John Doerr, you need to analyze the goal setting. Companies including google have achieved great success by transforming the way they set company goals. Mostly, companies have so many goals that there seems to be no goal at all. In this scenario, the people who work there have no sense of direction, which decreases the quality of work which decreases well, the chances of growth and success.
To remedy this situation, the author advises the use of OKRs. By implementing this, you will learn to form only a few, realistic, flexible and reachable goals. So if you are an entrepreneur and need to see continuous growth in your business dig in and find out more in the Measure What Matters Summary key points.
Measure What Matters Summary Key Points
How to Set OKRs for Your Company
Well, it is not hard at all. Let us say you are aiming for huge success in your industry. For this, you need to produce a product. For the production of this product, there are certain things that you need to do. Now for setting the Objective you need to be precise and clear. You can set more than one objective but you need to be clear and precise about them all. It should explain what you really want to do.
Your objective is to be number one in the market and how are you going to achieve will be understood by your KRs. Key Results or KRs can be mostly measured by a simple yes or no. Did you get investors on board? Yes or no. Now getting investors on board is a huge key result you want to obtain. It can be time taking and daunting but every contributor to the task in hand can answer if your KR’s have been achieved or not. This makes it easier to track progress as we will learn below.
Set Clarity in the OKRs
To let your team focus and avoid chaos at the workplace you need to bring clarity to your OKRs. At one point in time, make sure there are not a lot of OKRs running. Everyone from the boss to the team members needs to focus on a few tasks so that they can work together. Instead of everyone working on different things. For every objective make sure there are only three to five KRs and not more. If you increase the amount of KRs you will be diverting the attention from what is important to achieve towards what can wait for a while.
Instead of setting yearly OKRs, set quarterly OKRs. In this way, your company will be ahead in the market and the team will not fall back too. After every three months gather your team, and analyze which KRs have been achieved and which are the ones that need more time. This will also show you if you need to build upon existing progress or if you need a totally new direction. For achieving KRs setting time frames and deadlines is extremely important. It will help you to ensure a continuous pattern of growth.
OKRs Concern Everyone at Your Workplace
Never make the mistake of thinking that a worker and team member can be left out of this. Everyone in your company needs to understand your objectives as well as your key results. Keep everyone up to date about the progress and setbacks.
The daily work of all of your employees is directly or indirectly related to the OKRs of that quarter. Letting everyone know and understand will ensure transparency and collaboration.
Track Your Progress
Keeping a track of the company’s progress will allow you to improve just like checking a To-do list motivates you to achieve your minor and major goals. Use lead indicators and lag indicators to keep track. This will show you are tracking and what is your end goal. Take the example of Google. The company has sit-downs every month to track its quarterly goals. The employees share their progress with the OKRs and they discuss what is working and what needs improvement.
If you have meetings you must think of this as useless. Because if anyone had a concern or feedback they would have raised or shared it. The thing to remember here is that the meetings held for feedback and tracking progress are not useless. They will allow you to understand what to continue, update, start or stop before you hit the quarterly time frame.
Measure What Matters Quotes
“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.” -John Doerr
“Acute focus, open sharing, exacting measurement, a license to shoot for the moon—these are the hallmarks of modern goal science.” -John Doerr
Measure What Matters Summary Review
Measure What Matters Summary is filled with great advice for entrepreneurs and executives. If you want to take your venture to the heights of growth and success you will find it very informative and helpful.
To Whom I Would Recommend Measure What Matters Summary
- To the forty-two-year-old Executive who wants to bring everyone in his office together for his next big goal.
- To the twenty-two-year-old who is aspiring to become an entrepreneur and wants to learn from the best.
- And to anyone who is trying to become more effective in their office.
