« Great Goal Setting

I recently read the book Measure What Matters by John Doerr. Doerr goes over the system that he used at Intel and then brought to Google (when they were just about 30 people), to help the companies align their goals and measure their success. That system is called OKRs, which stands for Objectives and Key Results.

The TLDR of the book:

The OKR system is the most promising system around success I have seen up to this point. The book goes into detail about how to get departments and teams at all levels aligned, focused, and how to measure whether you are on track or not or need to change sooner rather than later.

A good CEO, without a good system around setting goals, can get most teams aligned around a mission statement or grand idea, but how does that goal bleed throughout the rest of the company to keep all departments aligned? Two departments might interpret the CEO differently, they might have different ideas around how to accomplish the vision, or you might be doing redundant work on the same project. It seems to me that OKRs set forth a way for everyone to see what everyone is doing and stay aligned with each other more effectively.

I have not implemented OKRs in my life in any capacity at this point, but I am excited about getting started. I am going to start with my personal goals for home and work and implement a weekly update meeting, one for work and one for home. I will write about how things are going with some results as I go.

I am going to use these four pillars to measure success:

• Quarterly Objectives
• Weekly Planning
• 1:1s
• Feedback & Recognition

Read the book or at least watch the video, and let me know what you think.