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

Looking back, Ford didn’t lack for objectives or key results. But its goal-setting process was fatally flawed: “The specific, challenging goals were met (speed to market, fuel efficiency, and cost) at the expense of other important features that were not specified (safety, ethical behavior, and company reputation).”

Each morning, I’d say to myself, “These are my three buckets, and what am I doing today to move the company forward?” That’s a great question for any leader, with or without a learning issue.

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.fn3

Google CEO Sundar Pichai once told me that his team often “agonized” over their goal-setting process: “There are single OKR lines on which you can spend an hour and a half thinking, to make sure we are focused on doing something better for the user.” That’s part of the territory. But to paraphrase Voltaire: Don’t allow the perfect to be the enemy o

How does the new goal stack up against my existing ones? Should something be dropped to make room for the new commitment? In a high-functioning OKR system, top-down mandates to “just do more” are obsolete. Orders give way to questions, and to one question in particular: What matters most?

The one thing an [OKR] system should provide par excellence is focus. This can only happen if we keep the number of objectives small …. Each time you make a commitment, you forfeit your chance to commit to something else.

exactly how do you build engagement? A two-year Deloitte study found that no single factor has more impact than “clearly defined goals that are written down and shared freely …. Goals create alignment, clarity, and job satisfaction.”

But make no mistake. For anyone striving for high performance in the workplace, goals are very necessary things.

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.” It almost doesn’t matter what you know ….