Measure What Matters

Applicable, but not highly applicable, to small businesses with one or a few people. The takeaway can be established as: “Set realistic goals, measure them appropriately, and be diligent and public about it.”

Could've been a long article but useful.

Measure What Matters is a great book by John Doerr. This book is describing two powerful tools, OKRs (Objective Key Results) and CFRs (Conversation Feedback Recognition) which have been utilized in several organizations such as Intel, Google, Adobe, Tweeter, Samsung, BMW. Larry page wrote the forward for this book and he elaborated further their story, that how Google thrive using OKRs and CFRs. As John put it OKRs are a collaborative goal setting protocol. They're not silver bullet they cannot substitute for strong judgment, strong leadership, or creative workplace and culture, but if those fundamental are in place OKRs can guide you to the mountain top.

This is an excellent start for anyone considering starting to implement OKRs.
Most sane literature I have read on OKRs with excellent case studies.

Critical reading for modern, fast growing companies, probably for all companies really.

Could have been a ~10 page essay.

Inspirational reading on performance management effectively used by market leaders with real life examples and pieces of advice.

Some points / recommendations:
- approach brings transparency and alignment, clear priority and accountability, clear definition of done (achievement of (a balanced) key results means objective is achieved).
- less is more (you have to select what we are not doing)
- execution is everything
- don't put all objectives as committed (must be 100% committed), put some inspirational objectives, as soon as objective became not relevant anymore - drop it.

OKRs are interesting. This book shows how others use these goals company-wide to meet their markets. Great overview.

Much like other self-help/business books, this book is replete with repetition and self aggrandizement. It is bloated and about 250+ pages too long.

Essentially the book tells the story of OKRs (which stands for Objectives and Key Results) and how one can use them to prioritize tasks, promote teamwork, keep accountability, and stretch for new amazing goals and successes.

Teach me the ways of how to make OKRs, don't just tell me cool stories about different companies. This genre is not the right one for me.

This book is now my OKr go to book. If your org is considering that technique or are struggling with working in the same direction read this book.

One thing i finally understood, is the use of goals that is too large to be reached or feels that way. As reaching these goals at 75% is still a victory. They are used for direction and not estimation of where we can go. So looking at it as the direction to move towards, not an expectation to reach we can create alignment.
Storytime: When first introduced to such goal it was not explained to me the rest of the goal, the goal fell flat. It did not help that it was expressed in measurements, we had not access to, nor ever been shown to the department.

I always had problems with measured goals (SMART) with timelines as so many assumptions needed to be made. But setting the objective without measure ments then complement them with the key results that carries the target values, and assumptions but are not as set in stone.

I think using OKrs could be a way to create a shared direction in an organisation, without locking in to rigid and slow decision hirakis. I also see that it could be mimicked into a rigid decision hierarki if only the format is Copied but not the way to set the OKrs, losing a lot of the power of OKrs.