"Measure What Matters" by John Doerr

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"Measure What Matters" by John Doerr by Mind Map: "Measure What Matters" by John Doerr

1. Problems we're hoping to solve with OKRs

1.1. Create focus for the individual contributor

1.2. Organizational alignment (runway and direction to move faster)

1.2.1. One idea: in a quarter or a month, two or more departments works on the same O with different KRs (e.g. MAU in CX and Product)

1.3. OKRs as a contract. Freeing up management to be more strategic and not tactical.

1.4. Defining what measures success. (The process of selecting OKRs)

2. Examples of companies that use them well or not-so-well & lessons learned

2.1. LinkedIn - implemented OKRs well

2.1.1. Did it well because there was a lot of honest and hard discussion (OKRs wouldn't have gone well otherwise). e.g. if there were hard blockers (if something is achievable)

2.2. Google

2.3. Facebook

2.4. CX @ Degreed

2.4.1. Need to start early (a couple weeks before the quarter starts); start the conversation 1 month before the quarter starts

2.4.2. Os must be balanced with KRs. (If you meet the KRs, the O has been achieved.)

2.4.3. Takes a few quarters to get into the flow

2.5. Nuna

2.5.1. Iterate when you don't succeed

2.5.2. Review OKRs for success or failure and adjust accordingly. don't expect to get it right the first time.

2.5.3. Be persistent in encouraging employees to create their OKRs

2.6. Remind

2.7. Ford

2.7.1. Pinto: OKRs led them to make easily-explodable gas tanks

2.8. Wells Fargo

2.8.1. Many unnecessary bank accounts created because account creation was a metric

3. Challenges with setting OKRs

3.1. Institutionalizing OKRs across culture (everyone has to be all-in)

3.2. How to write good OKRs (especially framing KRs)

3.3. Sizing (quarterly v monthly v weekly)

3.4. How cascading works effectively. (Ideally, higher up KRs become your Os? Or their Os become your Os?)

3.5. How do OKRs tie to one another? (dependencies - how to reference/track?)

3.6. If OKRs are tied to the current implementation (e.g. # of clicks v # of new users)

3.7. Competing OKRs between departments

3.8. When OKRs are used for performance management/metrics

3.9. Balance between top-down and bottom-up

3.10. Goals that work for a startup can be too nebulous for a larger company

3.10.1. MAU

4. Open questions

4.1. How have CX's OKRs evolved over time?

4.2. What does management need to define in terms of OKRs?

4.2.1. Paired results for balance (quantity vs quality)

4.2.2. Clarity around how KRs support Objectives support company strategy

4.3. What's the deliberation process?

4.4. How do you coordinate inter-dependent goals/cross-department work on the same objective?

5. Degreed Product Os & KR ideas

5.1. Increase our ability to embed in the HCM suite

5.1.1. (Skills?)

5.1.2. GAT - maximize revenue by connecting users

5.2. Increase the quality of our monthly releases

5.2.1. # of VSTS bugs created

5.2.2. # of customer reported bugs

5.3. Better understand the behavior of our most engaged users

5.3.1. Launch Amplitude

5.3.2. User test with 15 clients

5.4. Make our releases more data informed

5.4.1. Launch Amplitude

6. What makes a good O?

6.1. Alignment.

6.2. Identify your key stakeholders/key players. (may be derivative from their Os, but not directly cascading)

6.3. "Roof-shots" (Google) - smaller than a moonshot, still allows you to feel/see progress.

6.4. Should be qualitative

6.5. Defined scope (quarterly? for the year?)

7. What makes a good KR?

7.1. Tangible.

7.2. Measurable - on a spectrum, not just binary.

7.3. Something you personally have control over.

7.4. KRs can be checks and balances against each other (quality v quantity)

7.5. Should feel like a moonshot (hard to do, but possible). Something you have to push towards. (at FB they say if you achieved 70% that's a success they need to be a stretch)

8. Effects of OKRs

8.1. Clarity on what's important. Focus.

8.2. How my work matters.

8.3. How my work connects to that of others'

8.4. Allows you to say no easier to unaligned requests

9. Setting OKRs

9.1. Quarterly cadence (even monthly - MBOs)

9.2. Forum/discussions about how each person's work ties into objectives