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

A few goal-setting ground rules: Key results should be succinct, specific, and measurable. A mix of outputs and inputs is helpful. Finally, completion of all key results must result in attainment of the objective. If not, it’s not an OKR.

five critical areas have emerged of conversation between manager and contributor:

Where an objective can be long-lived, rolled over for a year or longer, key results evolve as the work progresses. Once they are all completed, the objective is necessarily achieved. (And if it isn’t, the OKR was poorly designed in the first place.)

[T]heir paired counterparts should stress the quality of [the] work.

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.

Each quarter our department heads presented their goals and identified dependencies.

Hyatt House. Their directive to Intel’s management corps was simple and clear: “We’re going to win in 16-bit microprocessors. We’re committed to this.” Andy told us what

In evaluating OKR performance, objective data is enhanced by the goal setter’s thoughtful, subjective judgment.

But I underestimated what it took to introduce them, much less to execute them effectively. You need to build your goal muscle gradually, incrementally.