Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
- 7h 56m 18s
- John Doerr
- Random House
- 2018
In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress - to measure what mattered.
Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than 50 companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked.
In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization.
The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention.
In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.
In this Audiobook
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Chapter 1 - Google, Meet OKRs
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Chapter 2 - The Father of OKRs
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Chapter 3 - Operation Crush: An Intel Story
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Chapter 4 - Superpower #1: Focusing and Committing to Priorities
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Chapter 5 - Focus: The Remind Story
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Chapter 6 - Commit: The Nuna Story
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Chapter 7 - Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork
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Chapter 8 - Align: The MyFitnessPal Story
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Chapter 9 - Connecting: The Intuit Story
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Chapter 10 - Superpower #3: Track for Accountability
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Chapter 11 - Track: The Gates Foundation Story
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Chapter 12 - Superpower #4: Stretch for Amazing
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Chapter 13 - Stretch: The Google Chrome Story
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Chapter 14 - Stretch: The YouTube Story
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Chapter 15 - Continuous Performance Management: OKRs and CFRs
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Chapter 16 - Ditching Annual Performance Reviews: The Adobe Story
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Chapter 17 - Baking Better Every Day: The Zume Pizza Story
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Chapter 18 - Culture
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Chapter 19 - Culture Change: The Lumeris Story
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Chapter 20 - Culture Change: Bono's ONE Campaign Story
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Chapter 21 - The Goals to Come
