Measure What Matters

As a rule, we’d enter a quarter knowing we wouldn’t achieve all of them. If a department so much as approached 100 percent, it was presumed to be setting its sights too low—and there would be hell to pay.

The point of objectives and key results, after all, is to get everyone working on the right things.

In my view, the key to satisfaction is to set aggressive goals, achieve most of them, pause to reflect on the achievement, and then repeat the cycle.

What have I learned that might alter my approach to the next cycle’s OKRs?

After thoroughly appraising your work and owning up to any shortfalls, take a breath to savor your progress. Throw a party with the team to celebrate your growing OKR superpowers. You’ve earned it.

OKRs push us far beyond our comfort zones. They lead us to achievements on the border between abilities and dreams.

OKRs push us far beyond our comfort zones. They lead us to achievements on the border between abilities and dreams. They unearth fresh capacity, hatch more creative solutions, revolutionize business models.

“[T]he harder the goal the higher the level of performance. . . . Although subjects with very hard goals reached their goals far less often than subjects with very easy goals, the former consistently performed at a higher level than the latter.”

“[T]he harder the goal the higher the level of performance. . . . Although subjects with very hard goals reached their goals far less often than subjects with very easy goals, the former consistently performed at a higher level than the latter.” The studies found that “stretched” workers were not only more productive, but more motivated and engaged:

Aspirational goals draw on every OKR superpower. Focus and commitment are a must for targeting goals that make a real difference.

only after we satisfy more basic concerns—starting with food and shelter, then safety, then “love” and “belongingness”—can we move to higher-level motivations.

a ten percent improvement means that you’re doing the same thing as everybody else. You probably won’t fail spectacularly, but you are guaranteed not to succeed wildly.

Thousand percent improvement requires rethinking problems, exploring what’s technically possible and having fun in the process.

You know, in our business we have to set ourselves uncomfortably tough objectives, and then we have to meet them. And then after ten milliseconds of celebration we have to set ourselves another [set of] highly difficult-to-reach objectives and we have to meet them. And the reward of having met one of these challenging goals is that you get to play again.

“If you set a crazy, ambitious goal and miss it, you’ll still achieve something remarkable.”

“If you set a crazy, ambitious goal and miss it, you’ll still achieve something remarkable.” When you aim for the stars, you may come up short but still reach the moon.

at Google unless you were driven to succeed. As a leader, you didn’t want to find yourself at the end of the quarter, standing in front of the company with a big red on the screen, having to explain why and how you failed. The pressure and discomfort of that experience made a lot of us do a lot of heroic things to avoid

at Google unless you were driven to succeed. As a leader, you didn’t want to find yourself at the end of the quarter, standing in front of the company with a big red on the screen, having to explain why and how you failed. The pressure and discomfort of that experience made a lot of us do a lot of heroic things to avoid it.

He wanted people at Google to be “uncomfortably excited.”

As a leader, you must try to challenge the team without making them feel the goal is unachievable.