In 1999, legendary venture capitalist John Doerr invested nearly $12 million in a small 40-person startup that had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. Doerr introduced the founders to his system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and, with those principles at the foundation of their management, the startup grew at an exponential rate. Today, that same startup – Google – has more than 70,000 employees with a market cap exceeding $600 billion.
Doerr has introduced OKRs to more than fifty companies, helping tech giants and charities exceed all expectations. In the OKR model, objectives define what we seek to achieve and key results are how those top priority goals will be attained. They focus effort, foster coordination and enhance workplace satisfaction. For the first time 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 agility and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations.
With a foreword by Larry Page, and contributions from Bono and Bill Gates, this book will show you how to collect timely, relevant data to track progress – to measure what matters. It will help any organization or team aim high, move fast, and excel.
About the Author
John Doerr is an engineer, industry-leading venture capitalist, the chair of Kleiner Perkins and the author of bestsellers Measure What Matters and Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. For over forty years, he has served entrepreneurs with ingenuity and optimism, helping them build bold teams and disruptive companies; and for the last twenty years, he has been investing in green companies tackling climate change. He was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon and has helped create more than a million jobs. John is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was a member of US President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. A passionate climate activist, he has 287k followers on Twitter and his TED Talks on ‘greentech’, goal setting and decarbonizing the energy grid have over eight million combined views.
