Measure What Matters

“Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” — Einstein

I first heard of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) a few years ago when reading Eric Schmidt’s book How Google Works. More recently, I became interested in how I can help my organization evolve our current system of annual objectives and immediately thought back to OKRs. In Measure What Matters, venture Capitalist John Doerr relates how he brought what he learned early in his career at Intel to Google, Intuit and other many other companies.

Objectives are more aspirational whereas Key Results are more grounded and metric-driven. Everyone’s OKRs are transparent to the entire organization. This creates alignment and potential for collaboration. Further,

OKRs Service your primary goals. they channel efforts and coordination. they link diverse operations, leading purpose and unity to the entire organization.

I’m eager to become the guinea pig for OKRs and see what we learn.