John DoerrRezensionen

My very favorite part of this book was the chapter on Elizabeth, her penchant for bad taste in clothing, and buying gift “frocks” for the author from outlet stores, her infectious optimism, and unrivaled grace. An intimate portrait that could have been skipped but humanizes the author and establishes the authenticity of the trust others placed in the author on their political careers. She is the ground on which political careers are built, thrive, and survive. May the future Madam President benefit form this time capsule of advice, and redeem the trust, good will, and promise of our democracy. Amen

John Doerr & Ryan Panchadsaram have given us a book about dealing with our climate crisis, one worth reading.
It is glitzy, upbeat, full of boosterism, but has a real plan, based on data and projections, and includes warnings on how hard the plan will be to carry out. It includes estimates and goals in units of gigatons of greenhouse gases and trillions of dollars, as well as effort needed in both technology and politics.
Speed and Scale has an interesting feature, its own highlighting. Every other page or so includes red highlights over one or two phrases, phrases that define important points of the plan. So, one way to read this book is to leaf through its pages noting these highlights and stopping to read details as need or interest demands.
It also includes pages of comments by industry leaders, who give their takes on some aspects of our climate problems. These pages come with a gray background, so they can be easily skipped as desired.
There are details to argue about in Speed & Scale, but on the whole this is an important book.

This suffered a little from having the business book’s downfall of having one too many examples to prove its point but is still an interesting and insightful read. The argument makes perfect sense and the detail of the early heats of Google is particularly fascinating.

Worth reading. Covers similar ground to Bill Gates book at the beginning and then expands on it. Optimistic with sense of urgency. Great explanation of the different type of investment companies and their goals.½

A good book that has some great ideas. OKR's (Objectives with Key Results) have a wide application - they can be used in various business situations (which is the book's focus), personal development, family interaction, and other social and political applications. I found that the presentation was decent, but at times I wanted more detail. I think that the appendix items are the most useful, as they show the ideas being applied (there is a example of how Google uses OKR's).

OKRs are a good management concept (essentially, finding essential objectives and then some very clear metrics for achievement), extensively used at Google, and while simple, they're hard to master as a practice. This book was a decent overview.

However, this book is filler in between two great alternatives: a simple 30 minute overview of the OKR process, and reading Andy Grove's High Output Management. A lot of it was just Doerr bringing in people in his general orbit to speak about OKRs, largely a marketing exercise.

Narrated by the author lots of famous tech people
Running time:6 hours 7 minutes

1. Loooots of name dropping and argument by authority
2. OKR are still a good method, but you don’t really need that whole book to know that
3. Super easy to cargo-cult adopt OKR, since it’s a super simple idea

I picked up Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs because I wanted to learn more about how objectives and key results (OKRs) could be implemented in my department and our college. At one time, I learned that Google used and still uses OKRs to drive their business forward. John Doerr, the author of Measure What Matters introduced OKRs to Google. This is definitely the right person from whom to learn about OKRs. Read more

Little too management stuff for my taste.

Measure What Matters, written by John Doerr, a successful investor and a venture capitalist, provides us with strategic thinking on how to how to set goals effectively and measure what really matters.

I think, the best recommendation I could put here are words of Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, who once said that he wished he had this book 20 years ago when they founded Google.

The book focuses on OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) a goal system used by Google, Intel, Oracle, LinkedIn, Sears and many other companies to create alignment, engagement and clarity around measurable goals. It is a collaborative goal-setting protocol for individuals, teams and companies.

First, the book determines four “superpowers” to focus on as the outcome of OKRs. They are:

Focus - High-performance organisations should aim at what’s important to dispell confusion and be aware of what doesn’t work for their business. As a leader, you have to make hard choices on that. Moreover, you have to be a precise communicator on each level, department, team and individual.
Align - With right OKR transparency, everyone’s goals, from the CEO to first-line employees, are openly shared. In such an arrangement each individual can link their objectives to the company’s business plan, identify cross-dependencies and synchronise themselves with other teams. By connecting each employee to the organisation’s success, top-down alignment brings sense to work. By deepening contributor’s sense of ownership, bottom-up OKRs boost engagement and innovation.
Track – possibility to be driven by proper data. It means that OKR’s should be aligned by periodic check-ins, objective classifying, and continuous revision — all in a spirit of no-judgment accountability. Key results in danger should trigger proper actions to get them back on track or to modify or alter them if warranted.
Stretch – right OKRs motivate employees to excel by achieving more than they originally aimed at. By stretching their limits and giving the freedom to fail, people release their creativity, ambitions.
Next, John Doerr explains how to implement the OKR system to maximise its benefits so in six steps you should:

List approximately 3 objectives on each level
Define 3 to 4 key results to be achieved for each objective
Communicate key results and objectives to everyone
Regularly track your results using a 0-100% scale
When objective’s result reaches 70-80%, consider it done
Review OKRs regularly and set new ones
Then, the book talks a lot about what most of us know, that goals should be SMART. It uses interesting examples which put extra light on how to set goals and make it even... (if you like to read my full review please visit my blog https://leadersarereaders.blog/measuring-what-matters/)

Specifically read to get a better idea of how OKRs have helped other companies. I definitely came away with a greater understanding, and hope to apply it to my own OKRs for the upcoming quarter. Beyond that, there's not much inspiration, although I did enjoy the testimonials far more than the other parts of the book.

Pretty cool until it gets to some pretty hardcore dehumanising evangelism of social engineering!

With proof points from Intel, Google, MapMyFitness, YouTube, Coursera and the ONE Campaign, it's surprising the OKR methodology doesn't have a stronger following. Maybe we're too scattered with multiple objectives further impeded by the superficiality of email and social media. Alternatively, it might be that most leaders think they have focused, crisp objectives. By the standards of Measure What Matters, they don't. OKRs create a hyperfocus on the most important things to do next. I appreciate how well this book describes the underpinnings of the concept and then illustrates multiple applications across companies and decades. This book is a definite read, and once exposed, I don't know how an intentional leader could resist at least trying the approach.