56 pages • 1 hour read
John DoerrMeasure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 18-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The New World of Work”
Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary: “Culture”
Doerr discusses the importance of company culture, which he defines as “the living expression of its [the organization’s] most cherished values and beliefs” (212). He argues that company culture affects the capacity of OKRs and CFRs to drive high performance and success within an organization. In turn, OKRs and CFRs encourage a culture of accountability and transparency by fostering alignment, connection, autonomy, and engagement.
He gives the example of Coursera, a leading online education platform, which uses OKRs to establish and communicate goals at different levels of the organization. Coursera connected OKRs to the mission statement of the company, tying the organization’s values to its objectives and key results. This alignment helped foster a strong company culture in which employees felt connected to the overall mission and understood how their individual contributions contributed to the larger goals.
Part 2, Chapter 19 Summary: “Culture Change: The Lumeris Story”
Doerr highlights the company Lumeris, a technology firm in the healthcare industry, to illustrate the importance of company culture. This chapter includes writing by Chief HR Officer Andrew Cole. Doerr explains that before implementing OKRs, some companies may need to transform their culture first in order to make the organization more conducive to transparency and openness.
Lumeris was experiencing an internal clash between its doctors’ group and its data team. The doctors’ group was more conservative and resistant to change, while the data team was focused on innovation and technological advancements. Moreover, the senior management was autocratic and did not embody the company values. Cole explains that the HR department was crucial for setting the company’s culture, and that over the course of a year and a half, the company replaced 85% of its HR department. Lumeris also worked on getting the company’s senior team and frontline employees on board with the company values of ownership and accountability. The company then strengthened the middle management. After these changes, all players were more open to embracing OKRs, interdependence, and coordination.
Part 2, Chapter 20 Summary: “Culture Change: Bono’s ONE Campaign Story”
Doerr presents ONE, the nonprofit organization founded by musician Bono, as a case study that illustrates how OKRs can facilitate cultural change within an organization.
In this chapter, Bono explains that his nonprofit, DATA, formed with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, had highly ambitious, global goals from the start. It was a data-driven and results-oriented organization. But, when they brought many different groups together under the ONE Campaign, they found that the organization became scattered and lacked a clear focus. The coalition was trying to tackle too many different things at once.
OKRs, Bono says, forced ONE to prioritize and focus on a few key objectives at a time. Moreover, once Doerr began working with ONE, he helped the organization realize that they needed to shift their culture; they needed to move from “working on Africa to working in and with Africa” (235). Rather than viewing Africa as a problem to be solved, they needed to view Africans as partners and allies in their fight against poverty and disease; Africans needed a seat at the table. This altered ONE’s culture and led the team to embrace a more collaborative and inclusive approach to their work. They began partnering with African activists and leaders, amplifying their voices and working with them toward common goals.
Part 2, Chapter 21 Summary: “The Goals to Come”
In the concluding chapter of the book, Doerr emphasizes that OKRs have enormous potential. He dreams of seeing them applied to all aspects of life, not just in business. He believes that OKRs can help schools, governments, and healthcare systems set and achieve meaningful goals. As a flexible tool, OKRs can be adapted to different industries and situations, making them a versatile framework for goal setting, one that can be adjusted to different time frames, such as quarterly or yearly cycles. Doerr views OKRs as a source of inspiration and motivation for individuals and teams that unlock organizations’ full potential.
Part 2, Chapters 18-21 Analysis
OKRs can take time to implement, as discussed in Chapter 19. Doerr emphasizes the need for patience and commitment when adopting the OKR framework. The example of Lumeris demonstrates that successful implementation of OKRs may necessitate a cultural shift within an organization. In the tension between Alignment Versus Autonomy in Organizational Management, counterproductive autonomy was winning out over organization-wide alignment. The company had to undergo significant changes to become ready to accept the system. This insight suggests that while the benefits of OKRs are substantial, the successful implementation of OKRs can require a journey of persistence and strategic planning. However, Doerr suggests that this work will pay off in the end: At Lumeris, “[o]nce people experienced the new company under the surface, they couldn’t resist the temptation to keep diving back into it” (233). While the implementation of OKRs required work up front, the system gained traction in the long run.
Doerr describes culture as a critical medium that helps foster success when used in concert with OKRs and CFRs: “[G]oals cannot be attained in a vacuum. Like sound waves, they require a medium. For OKRs and CFRs, the medium is an organization’s culture, the living expression of its most cherished values and beliefs” (212). Doerr believes that, with regard to balancing alignment with autonomy, a strong company culture can help. Doerr quotes Andy Grove, who initially convinced him that a strong company culture can eliminate the need for micromanaging:
Someone adhering to the values of a corporate culture—an intelligent corporate citizen—will behave in consistent fashion under similar conditions, which means that managers don’t have to suffer the inefficiencies engendered by formal rules, procedures, and regulations (213).
A coherent company culture prompts employees to act consistently and predictably, which reduces the need for managers to overly scrutinize their workers’ behavior. The result, as indicated, strikes a balance between alignment and autonomy.
Doerr also touches on The Importance of Transparency in Organizations, arguing that a company culture that embraces OKRs fosters transparency, and transparency fosters accountability: “An OKR culture is an accountable culture. You don’t push toward a goal just because the boss gave you an order. You do it because every OKR is transparently important to the company, and to the colleagues who count on you” (215). According to Doerr, the transparent nature of OKRs also decreases the need for authoritative alignment; culture serves as a force that intangibly encourages alignment, even without strict top-down management.
Moreover, these chapters show that the data-centric method of OKRs works in coordination with other, less quantifiable aspects of a company, such as its culture. Doerr underlines the interconnectedness of OKRs, CFRs, and company culture in driving high performance. This argument emphasizes the need for a holistic approach to performance management.
Doerr leaves readers with the takeaway that OKRs are so flexible they can be applied to any industry, as indicated explicitly in the concluding chapter. This takeaway is bolstered by the fact that Measure What Matters is comprised largely of case studies, with over 11 examples of situations in which OKRs drove company success.
