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Notes from the book "Measure What Matters"

Chapter 1 - Google, Meet OKRs

  • Do push-ups in the middle of the meeting
  • Ideas are easy, execution is everything
  • The OKR concept comes from an Intel engineer
  • Google managers have a minimum of seven direct reports?
  • Transparency

Chapter 2 - The Father of OKRs

  • So many people working so hard achieving so little
  • There's one guy running operations here, and that is...
  • How can we define and measure output by knowledge workers?
  • Aggressive introverts - confront a problem without attacking the person
  • Use whiteboards to talk about problems!
  • Creative confrontation
  • "Suddenly I had to hire a small team" - as if becoming manager is by accident
  • Basics:
    • Less is more
    • Set goals from bottom up
    • Cooperate
    • Stay flexible
    • Dare to fail
    • Encourage risk
    • Be patient

Chapter 3 - Operation Crush

What does your company do to let people bring problems to management's attention?

Chapter 4 - Focus and Commit to Priorities

  • Mission statement: This is what we should do, and then model it
  • Measure "both effect and counter-effect" - quantity + quality goal

Chapter 5 - Focus: The Remind Story

  • Have your goals printed by your side
  • Always encouraging to read successful startup stories, but there are thousand failure stories for every success though!
  • Be open about lack of progress

Chapter 6 - Commit: The Nuna Story

  • I wonder how they got around with zero orders for two years!!!
  • Aspirational goals need to be lead by enthusiasts

Chapter 7 - Align and connect for teamwork

  • Everything seems important, everything seems urgent
  • Cross-functional coordination

Chapter 8 - MyFitnessPal story

  • Worked on the app for eight years from savings and credit cards!
  • Glaring lack of alignment - compensated by more meetings - wasted time
  • Hire people but not going faster - more coordination is needed
  • Like the conflict-resolving phrase: "You need to let me know if you see anything missing, or if you think we're working on the wrong things."

Chapter 9 - the Intuit story

In siloed organizations you don't know where to start or have the time to follow up

Chapter 10 - Superpower #3: Track for Accountability

  • Scoring and assessment - progress using percentage!
  • Score is subjective - reflect!
  • Example:
    KR Progress Score Self-Assessment
    Bring in 10 new customers 90% .4 Realized these customers were more luck than hard work

Chaper 11 - Track: The Gates Foundation Story

People confuse objectives with missions

Chapter 12 - Superpower #4: Stretch for amazing

  • Committed vs Aspirational objectives
  • 10% improvement means you're doing the same thing as everybody else - discovering a couple of hidden efficiencies, tweaking the code
  • Thousand percent improvement requires rethinking the problem, exploring new ways to approach the problem
  • After 10 ms of celebration you have to set another objective - the reward of meeting one is that you get to play again

Chapter 14 - Stretch: The YouTube story

The idea of YouTube is to entertain people - keep them engaged and hang out

Chapter 15 - Continuous Performance Management: OKRs and CFRs

  • Conversations/Feedback/Recognition
  • Workers want to be empowered and inspired, not told what to do

Chapter 17 - Baking better pizza every day

  • Managers are paid for the quality of the decisions they make. When you hit a wall, you think you should work harder. What you should do it more counterintuitive - stop and shut out the noise.
  • One-on-ones:
    • You cannot be late
    • You cannot cancel
    • You don't talk about work
    • What makes you very happy? What saps your energy?

Chapter 18 - Culture

Pulsing

Chapter 20 - Bono's ONE

  • Philosophical change in how people think about helping the developing world helping itself
  • Transparency as central gole, not just in Africa, but in Europe and USA

Chapter 21 - The goals to come

Execution is everything

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