John Doerr: Measure What Matters
EPISODE 201
Is your company focused on the right things? Do you understand what goals will move your company forward, and how to measure them? OKRs can help. Measure What Matters shows you how to use the OKR management system to identify your priorities, set ambitious goals, clearly measure and track them, and motivate and align everyone on your team.
This system helped Larry Page and Sergey Brin turn a small startup called Google into one of the most innovative companies in the world. Whether your business is large or small, OKRs are invaluable tools. Learn to implement the same management system used by Google, Intel, LinkedIn, Disney, Twitter, and Spotify.
Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.
― John Doerr
INTRO
John Doerr introduces his book MEASURE WHAT MATTERS
Setting goals (1m39)
UNDERSTANDING YOUR VALUE
John Doerr says it's crucial to choose the right goals for the right reasons — in business and in our personal lives.
How Google, Bono, And The Gates Foundation Rock The World With OKRS (3m57)
ADVICE TO MAKING YOUR OKRS
Weekdone and how to measure objectives with team members, using two example cases
Learn how to set good OKRs_PN (4m25)
John Doerr interviews Seema Verma (former CMS Administrator for USA’s Medicare) on how she used the OKR goal-setting system to lead a large government agency
The Story Behind How a Government Agency Adopted OKRs (3m38)
OUTRO
John Doerr tells us how a Googler, Sundar Pichai, built the best browser
Why the secret to success is setting the right goals (3m22)
READING:
John Doerr: Measure What Matters
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TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the Moonshots Podcast. It's episode 201. I'm your cohost, Mike Parsons, and as always, I'm joined by Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, Mark. Good morning,
Mike. Look, we couldn't be starting the big 200th onwards between 200 and 300 with a better series than today in episode 201.
Could we. This is one way to usher in a new century of moonshots. And Mark. I think this goes to the heart of most moonshots.
This goes to the heart, I think of what a lot of us are doing with regards to being entrepreneurs, being business leaders, or even just being part of a great team, and that's about achieving.
Your goals. And today, listeners and members, we are diving into Show 201 with John Doerrs. Measure what matters, how Google and the Gates Foundation rock the world with OKRs.
Yeah, and I think a lot of our listeners probably have heard of this famous acronym. OKRs, But the question is, what the hell is it?
Why is everyone talking about it? Why are so many successful people using it? And what is this whole thing about Mark? How have you found putting your mind into OKRs and the work of John? Do you think so? What do you think our listeners should be
ready. I think listeners, you should be ready to perhaps learn a little bit more about what OKRs or better said, or easier said objectives and key results really mean and how they matter to brands.
John do has a huge amount of experience working with some of the. Biggest companies in the world, and specifically in the book, he calls out growth behind Intel, Google, Amazon, and Uber for, somewhat successful brands. I would say . And they've all utilized this methodology, framework of movement.
Of OKRs to achieve great growth. And I think that all of us are gonna learn new ways of thinking as well as utilizing OKRs to go out and set goals and maybe achieve the results that we're all dreaming of.
Yeah. And I recently helped a company install OKRs in a team of about 40 people. And they hadn't had OKRs before and it was transformational.
I really cannot emphasize to you and to our listeners how powerful setting objectives and key results really can be. Particularly if you build it out of the vision that the team or the company or the business has, that it really gives such clarity on how the mission and the purpose and the values that you have, what they look like as things I do in the next 90 days.
And it transforms not only the individual having their own personal OKRs. It transforms how they interact with their manager, how they interact with their peers. It becomes a huge clarifying practice of knowing what you need to do, what's a priority, what really matters. And if you all get on the same page with your OKRs, everybody starts to feel more satisfied, more fulfilled in their work.
It's easier to tackle problems of alignment and collaboration. Because you have a universal language Mark. I think this book is called Measure What Matters by John Doerr. I think OKRs, which are inside of this book, are a tool to sort it out in your team and your group of collaborators. In your business, I think we should jump into this world and make sure that we set the right objectives and we are measuring the key results.
I think the only person that could follow and build on what you've just summarized and put into words, Mike, is John do the author himself, introducing the book, Measure what Matters, and helping all of us understand the value of setting goals. I came to Silicon
Valley with $50 in my pocket. No job, no place to live.
I wanted to work in the computer industry and someday to start my own company. So I figured I'd apprentice myself to a venture capital firm, and I met lots of them. And guess what? They all turned me down. But one of 'em said, We've just backed this company in Santa Clara by the name of Intel. You should check it out as a summer intern.
Somehow I was admitted to a course on Intel's philosophies taught by a resident, professor and ceo. Andy Grove and he said, it almost doesn't matter what you know, what matters is how you execute. And so Andy developed a system for setting goals called OKRs that led to excellent execution. OKRs are objectives.
That's the O and key results. The KRS and objectives are what it is you're trying to get accomplished. The key results are how we're gonna get that done. OKRs are important because how you set goals makes all the. They're a vaccine against fuzzy thinking and fuzzy execution measures. What matters is not a textbook.
It's more of a handbook. It's a field guide, a chalk full of a dozen different colorful stories about entrepreneurs and big time executives for profit organizations and nonprofits all struggling to achieve excellence by doing a better job of setting their goals. This is a book for folks who care about teams, individual team contributors, and the leaders.
Those teams, I've written with the hope that it'll be truly useful, and allow your team to do more than anyone ever thought possible.
No more fuzzy. I can't tell you how many times in my career I've been in teams and we're running around going, What the hell are we doing? What the hell are they doing?
Do you know? This is so frustrating. Why are they doing that? It's all of those situations that you confront where there is a. A chunk of fuzzy, and I think if you wanna get the fuzzy outta your team, outta your business, I think OKRs are a great place to start. But I think there's a, There was another idea there, Mark, which we've heard a lot, and I don't want to be too like jumping around here, but you'll remember in the Einstein series, he.
Kind of said something similar, like it wasn't so much about inspiration. Einstein said, I just thought about that same problem more than anyone else. He was very focused, and this is a huge meta pattern that we've seen in all the superstars that we've studied. All the authors, the experts, the entrepreneurs.
That they have this enormous strength to focus on and not just have a good idea. It's almost a good idea, but executed with greatness, right? Execute with determination, and I think that. This is a fascinating thing. It's get the job done and how do you do it? Clear objectives and results.
What do you think?
Yeah, exactly with the Einstein quote I think, I believe that's attributed to him is genius is 1% talent and 99% hard work. Yeah. So this idea of execution and a propensity towards action. I think is something that really stands out a lot in the series and the individuals that we're, we are diving into on the Moonshot Show, and I think what this demonstrates to me is this drive towards having, a growth mindset and being open to maybe learning new ideas, new frameworks, new techniques, but also the next stage, which is actually following through with.
So putting them into action, seeing whether they work, and this idea of removing the fuzz, I think how John Doerr describes it as a vaccine against the fuzz. Let's find something that brings clarity. That's ultimately what he's making the case for here, isn't it? Remove that fuzz, have a clear goal in mind, and that journey is then up to you to follow.
And once you. Putting, let's say one foot in front of the other, or executing a plan or a series of objectives with a team, you then start to see change and without actually putting foot to pavement, so to speak, and without following through with the action. And instead just maybe living with a load of models framework.
Jira boards that you then occasionally might build. You might spend a couple of weeks maybe building it out, but unless you continually refer back to them, work on them, refine them, optimize as well as repeat, what's the point? And I think John is making the case there and similar to Albert Einstein, your intention is great, but unless you actually put it into action and go out and do it.
Then what's the point?
Yeah, exactly. So here's the funny thing, like we've talked about this largely in a frame of being in a team, being at work, working on a project. The crazy thing is, This applies equally to your personal life. And I think the thing that really ties them together, your professional and personal lives, is that not only is it about doing the hard work, not everything happens perfectly the first time round.
I think that it is a continuous process of improvement, a continuous process of learning. That's Mark. That's why we have created the entire show, this continuous theme of evolution, improvement, refining, growing, understanding, and it works equally on your personal life. As it does in your professional life.
And the great thing is we now can listen to John Deere talking about why setting the right goals matters not only in the business but at home as well.
What's crucial is choosing the right audacious goals for the right reasons, and I think there's never been a more important time for that than now.
Let me tell you what OKRs are. First, it's a kind of geeky acronym, but what it stands for is objectives and key results. Objectives are what you want to have accomplished, and key results are how you're gonna get it done. It's a deceptively simple goal setting system that was invented by Andy Grove in the 1970s to help make Intel the best run technology company of his or maybe any era.
He was a superb CEO and also a teacher. And so when I first came to Intel, Andy said to me, John, it almost doesn't matter what you know, and that's because execution is what matters most. And so he invented this amazing system for execution and valued it far more highly than anything else results.
Did you get your key results done or not done? Did you achieve the objective? OKRs pioneered at Intel. Subsequently I've taken 'em to maybe a hundred different organizations. I introduced them to Larry Page and Serge Brin when they were 24 years old in their garage as co-founders. Of Google. I showed them the system and Serge Brynn agreed to enthusiastically adopt them.
Not quite . What he actually said was, We don't have any other way to manage the company, so I guess we'll give this a try. And I took that as a ringing endorsement. But here's the point. Every quarter since then, every Google has written down her objectives and key results they've graded. And then they published them for everybody in the organization to see.
So 70,000 Googlers are doing that this quarter. Then quite remarkably, they take these objectives and key results and put 'em aside. They don't count for bonuses. They don't count for promotions. They serve a higher purpose. They're a kind of collective commitment, a social contract to what's important and what really matters the most.
In, in the words of the founders, they can't imagine running Google without them. I dream that they will affect our schools. Perhaps our hospitals, even our government's OKRs, can make a difference. On the personal front I had a goal not so many years ago. It was something about getting more intimacy in our family.
My real motive was to make sure that the girls grew up strong willed, independent and happy. And I read and believed that having dinner together as a family would make a difference. My key result was to be home for dinner 20 nights a month by 6:00 PM and to be fully present, which meant actually we had to turn off the router.
The smartphones wouldn't work, and that I want you to know was a tough goal to achieve. I probably hit it 70% of the time. I'd like the readers of this book to ask the following questions. Do you have the right metrics and goals in your life? Do you have goals in your life? What are your values, your objectives, and your key results?
This is John again, making the case not only with OKRs being a northern star, a guiding light, a way of removing that fuzz and bringing in transparency for businesses. As well as my personal life. This is already sparking a few ideas in my brain as to how not only I set goals with my work, but also about how I wanna function, whether it's fitness, whether it's spending time with family, whether it's just spend time with me, it's showing how broad as well as flexible the idea of OKRs can be.
Depending on how you want to implement into your life, what, what's sparking in your brain as you hear from John? Doer?
it was so neat that somebody who is not only a great author, I think we have to realize that he is actually the chairman of the venture capital firm, client Perkins.
Kind of like Perkins is like one of the greatest venture capital firms on the planet. And check this out. He is talking about OKRs. Relative to being home for dinner with his family. Yes. I just love the fact that he is not completely down the rabbit hole of work. But he's No, this thing is, this is making sure I'm a better dad.
So this is a company that obviously invested in Google, Uber, Twitter. I mean their pedigree and tech is amazing. But hey, this is a system that works in those companies and it can work in your home too. And I think that's the gift of getting clear on your objectives.
What are you gonna do? Results? How are you gonna get there? This is a really powerful one, two punch. And mark, we're gonna go deep deep into this world over the course of this show. And I think if I was setting an objective, I want you to think, Mark, I want you to think of an objective that we could maybe give to our wonderful.
Our thriving global audience and all four corners of the planet. If the objective was to build the moonshots community and to spread the word, what would be a key result that they could actually nominate?
In this instance, Mike, it's something as simple as opening. Your podcast app of Choice.
Let's say it's Spotify, let's say it's an Apple Podcast, and navigate over to the Moonshot Podcast and leave an Aura Review, and this really makes a huge difference. Difference. It helps us get the moonshots message as well as what we're doing every week. Mike, Bearing in mind, it's shown 201. We're learning out loud.
We're digging into the realms of OKRs today. Last week was John F. Kennedy and the leadership lessons that he had around the Cuban missile. Our crisis, we're going pretty broad and it's amazing that every single one. I would say one day we can find a new source of inspiration for the Moonshots family. But it's all up to you, our listeners, to help us share the good vibes and the lessons that we're learning.
And that's as simple as leaving a rating review to help us be heard in far away lands throughout the globe.
I love it. So you get into that app and give us a rating or a review. I think the second. Ok. If you want to get real serious, could in fact become a member of the Moonshots podcast. Oh, now we are really pushing the boat out, aren't we, Mike?
Because we are joined by such interesting and valuable members already, some of whom have been with us for over a year, supporting the moon shots growth, as well as being direct. That we have set ourselves. So as per first of all, the way, if you are listening to us thinking well, yeah. Mike and Mark and Bridie from the Moonshots podcast.
Yeah I like what they're doing. I wanna join the Moonshots family. You can do so by running on over. To moonshots.io and clicking on the little member button, ride at the top, and you will join the ranks of many well known individuals by now, including our annual members, Bob Niles, John Terry, Marline, Ken and Dmar.
But that's by no means letting down or deprioritizing everybody else. So please welcome as usual. Marja Con, Rodrigo and Yasmine, Lisa, Sid, Mr. Bonk, Maria, Paul and Berg, Calvin, David, Joe and Crystal. Evo Christian, Hurricane Brain, and Sam, Kelly, Barbara, Bob, Andre, Matthew, Eric, Abby, and Ho. Joshua, Chris, Kobe and Damian, Deborah Lasse, Steve and Craig.
Lauren, Javier, Daniel, Andrew, Ravi, Yvette, Karen and Raul. Welcome once again members, whether you've joined us today, yesterday, or over a year ago, thank you for being part of the Moonshots
family. There you have it. Thank you. We are so grateful for your membership, for your contribution. It really does play an important role in helping us pay some of the bills that we get for doing this show, but we would have it no other way.
We love learning out loud together. We love challenging ourselves and saying, Okay, how am I gonna be the best version of myself? It's like the fundamental question that we're trying to ask. Together. So thank you to our members. Thank you to our listeners for being part of that, and I, Mark OKRs are a huge part in your personal professional life of actually being the best version.
Yourself. So now we start to put our minds, we turn our cerebrum, we put that brain power towards making, creating, setting OKRs. So why don't we delve into the advice of the week and they are gonna share with us how to. Get those OKRs set up, how to make them become real and how they become, I think, the starting point to continuous improvement.
Before writing an okr, you need a good understanding of what you want to accomplish. First, focus on your objective. Think of the potential objectives you'd like to accomplish this quarter, and ask yourselves the following questions. Does the objective help achieve company? Is the objective inspiring? Does the objective move the company forward?
Is the objective timebound and is the objective set for the end of the quarter or for the end of the year? After asking yourself those questions, it's also. Important to consider what objectives are not. Objectives should not be easy. You should only expect to achieve up to two thirds of your objective in a single quarter.
If an objective is achieved well before the end of the quarter, you weren't thinking big enough, and if you don't reach anywhere near that, you may have. That is an annual objective instead, objectives are not projects with subtasks. Objectives are aspirational goals which seek to improve your company.
They're not one off activities, which could be considered tasks or plans. So if we wanted to write an objective for a company to increase revenue, a good objective might be to achieve record third quarter revenue growth. This objective works since it's aspirational, timebound, and helps move the company forward.
An example of a bad objective would be, Keep making revenue. This is a bad objective as it's not time bound, inspiring and not forward looking. After choosing an objective, you then need to decide on your key results. Remember, key results are the way you measure your objective. Key results should be specific, quantifiable, achievable, lead to objective grading and be difficult, but not impossible.
It's also important to consider what key results are not as well. They're not binary. Key results should be numeric and updated throughout the quarter. If your key result is binary, it may be a task or plan and not a key result. Which moves us to our next point. They're not tasks to be achieved. Of course, tasks and projects are important in supporting your objective.
Key results are metrics and should be treated as such. Some good examples of key results for previous objectives would include, one, generating a hundred thousand dollars in new revenue. Two, reduce customer return in the first quarter from 15 to 10%, and three onboard 300 new. These examples are quantifiable, objectively graded, and while challenging, they should still be achievable.
A bad example of a key result would be one launching a new business line. The key result is not numerically measurable, and it is not objectively clear how it contributes to the objective. This would be considered as a project or could be rewritten into a separate objective. Now that we have a better grasp on what makes for a good okr, let's run through some examples and see what is good or could be improved about each.
For our first example, we have the objective, make our company go viral with the following key results: one, generate a hundred thousand views on our YouTube channel. Two, get 10,000 new followers. And three, increase organic search traffic to our website by 20%. This is a good example of an O okr. The objective is aspirational and moves the company forward while the key results are numeric and objectively quantify the.
Success of the overall objective. Bad key results for the objective would include things such as make videos for YouTube, get more Instagram followers, or improve seo. For our next example, we have the objective to design, create and launch a new product with the following key. One interview 50 existing customers on what they would like to see for a new product line, and two, create new products.
In this case, the OKR could use some work. The objective is likely not possible to achieve in a single quarter, and while the first key result is good, the second key result is not quantifiable.
We're getting into the real hows of writing and approaching good as well as a consideration of bad OKRs in this clip, aren't we?
We're really getting into the guts of how you and I and our listeners can really go out and start to make OKRs, whether it's for business or personal lives.
We are, and I wanna say the temptation here is when you're actually making your own OKRs for either yourself, your team, or your business is to make it really complex, right?
. Yeah. I think the temptation is, could it be this simple? Yeah, , the answer is, it is. But for those of you who have ever tried to build a product or to simplify the complex, the challenges in the simplifying prioritizing, isn't it Mark? Like it's all about simple statements I'll give you an example.
My objective is to improve promotional channels to generate more marketing qualified leads. Now that's a really simple objective. You're starting the shift, right? What would be the key results while increasing email marketing? Increase AdWords conversion. Increase organic search conversion by specific, and that's the key word, specific measurable numbers you'd add in there.
From 100 to one 50, from 70 to a hundred, from 45 to 50, whatever your number is. If you. A handful of these for the business, for individuals throughout the organization, throughout the team, and they all cohesively work together. They must all come out of the team's overall goal, the business's overall vision, if they cascade out like that, it's a beautiful thing, but.
There will be a lot of discussions of is that the most important thing? Which one comes first? Do I improve this first or do I transform that? So we have cause and effect discussions, urgency versus important discussions. That's where all the complexity is. And what's the number? Any of you that are used to practicing Lean startup?
You often, when you really get into Lean startup, you become really in, really focused on the number. And as a result, the question then becomes which number is the right number to focus on? . And that all comes out of this doesn't. Yeah,
it does. It does. And I think the important call out here, similar to what you were just saying is the admission.
That this is not the only tool in your armory. This is not necessarily replacing your company vision or your business plan, nothing like that. Instead, I think the real value from. Setting or considering good personal as well as team objectives. And k is for that guiding principle, isn't it?
It's providing that focus as well as providing the similar to what we are hearing from week done, the transparency across the business. And with that focus then comes the relief as well as confidence that can. Be achieved when everybody's working towards that same goal, isn't it?
So I want you to imagine we were sitting at the beginning days of Microsoft and they had this big audacious goal, which was a computer on the desk in every home.
Massive visionary audacious goal that really captured the spirit of what they were trying to do. I believe that when you have a big idea, and then you need to go what are we doing today? I believe OKRs are the bridge. Often we're all working towards some exciting vision, but we can very quickly all get a bit off track as to what should we be doing now?
So like a quick frame here with OKRs, I think this is really important things for us to go through is. Because we know it's a really simple structure. You have an objective and then you have three key results. Let's talk a little bit about what we think are things to watch out for, things that may get you a bit off track.
Okay. So I think when I reflect on, I mentioned that I actually. Installing OKRs with a company earlier this year. And the great thing is we've just gone through the first quarter of those, so this is like a really great reference point for me. I think the most important place to start is over the next 90 days.
What are the objectives? What would we need to do over the next 90 days if we have that plan? For the next nine years, right? Or that goal for the next nine years, or maybe this big hairy, audacious goal for the next 30 years, or our vision of the, what we wanna transform in the world start with saying, Okay, what do we need to do this quarter?
And when you write an objective make sure that it is. Not too easy, but this is the trick, isn't it, Mark, But not too hard, right? Because if it's too hard, what happens, Mark, when you keep setting ridiculous goals?
No, talk about that lack of confidence that comes with not
hitting them, right?
Yeah. Now quick, interesting thing on this is do you remember in the Tim Ferris show, we talked a lot about the fact that if you take health transformation, so you wanna get bigger and stronger, or you wanna cut weight, the downfall. In setting your goal is often that you set way too ambitious goals. So when you do not reach them, It's very deflationary. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty disappointing. Here's the other thing, it's really hard to keep on track because even if you are making progress against an crazy impossible goal, you're like, Hey, I've dropped five kilograms, but I said I wanted to lose 50, right?
, you're like, Oh, geez, I've still got a long way to go. But maybe if you said, Hey, I only want to lose two kilograms this month. That might be a little easy. Push it up to four. Oh, that's okay. And you hit five. All of a sudden your reaction to that is, That's great. I'm one over. Whereas if you'd been way too ambitious, you were said, I forget it.
I'm never gonna get there.
You are reminding me, Mike, of series on happiness and this idea of setting. Let's call them ambitious. But achievable goals or even ways that you want to live your life is so important. Cause if you, exactly, like you just said, where let's use fitness as the example.
If you set yourself, I'm gonna run a marathon. Then you might only run 25 kilometers and then you're gonna feel that deflation that comes with it. Instead, if you can focus more on small, let's call them bite size objectives, in this case, again, you're still pushing yourself. Otherwise there's no motivation.
And I think this is really what we were digging into in the Neil Pcha. Happiness Equation episode that we did. It's about achieving that in a timely manner so that you can feel confident and go out and go and achieve it. I think you are. You are totally right.
The, Yeah, and the, I think then, once again, coming back to something we mentioned earlier is this is a continuity, a continuous iterative process.
Continuously learning and refining. And so I want you to, We'll come back to this great example. Let's say we want to improve nurturing process for new leads. Say that's a sales objective. Now here's the key thing you must have as a key result to increase. The trial to paid conversions from five to 14%.
What's beautiful about this is in the end you're trying to have a successful company, but you're now starting to get laser focused on a key result. Now, I think the key nuance here with what it should be, increase the trial to the trial to pay conversions from five to 14%. The mistake that you could be tempted to, to make here is to.
We're gonna send a lot more trial emails, but that's not really a result, right? That is like just an activity. The key thing here, the most important thing to remember is that these set of results will help you achieve this objective. So again, you want to improve the nurturing process for new leads when they come into your business.
Result number one that we need to achieve is increasing the trial to pay conversion. Okay, And we've got specific numbers there. Now we need to receive a hundred responses to our service quality survey and prioritize improvement ideas. Increase follow up email, open rate from 14 to 45%. What is beautiful about this?
Is you would say from those two, for example, did we receive a hundred responses today or this week did we go from 14% to 45%? And what this enables us to do, Mark, imagine you were on an iris on the same sales team, we're like, are we only got from 14 to 18% on our open rates? We're way off. Okay. While.
Maybe we should try writing a new type of headline or subject line for the emails. Okay. What have we been doing? Okay let's try this. Test an experiment. Ooh. None of those worked. , we gotta try again. What is best practice? Let's go read up on this. Let's ask an expert and then you start going, Okay, we've got 14 to 21, now we've gotta get 14 to 28, and so on and so forth.
But the beauty is you stay on that course cuz you know that key result. It's related to the other key results which pays off on the objective. This is. Like the hard yards of objectives and key results is to continually come back to them because they're time bound and they are really about getting a specific outcome.
And if you can't get clarity on how are we tracking on the key result, if it's open to interpretation if we're all negotiating it, arguing it, Then the key result was not specific enough.
That's right. That's right. And coming back to the work that we were hearing from John Deere earlier in the show as well, is it's providing that, that guidance, a talk about going into in the examples that you were just sharing.
Going into that type of activity where you're trying to optimize, let's say a sales process or just a way of engaging your customers without having that valuable objective identified and without breaking down what those key results and you know how you're gonna go and do it, identified you standing in a very dark, confusing room and, I think it's gonna be, the reactions are gonna be quite subjective.
You're gonna be choosing something that maybe is a little bit easy, maybe B, it's gonna be your preference because you've done it before. Or C, it's affordable. You know what? Whatever that solution might be. And I think utilizing OKRs allows you to step away from your own prejudice with regards to how you might go out and solve a problem.
And instead in stores, the framework around how you can do it in a measured and prioritized way, and therefore hopefully improve the results i e the output that you are gonna be achieving from that ultimate goal that you had. I think it really does start to. Frame how we can all utilize a structure like this to remove the uncertainty that comes with knowing you have to do something.
Maybe as John do was saying earlier, spending time with his family, or maybe it's improving. Nurturing the process for new leads in your business. It's removing that fuzz again to use James Yes. Joe's word and allows you to focus on something that until now, maybe has felt a little bit overwhelming, confusing, or complicated.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that what we've got to here is a little run through of what you should do and what you shouldn't do with your OKRs. Of course, there's a couple of great places to go. I would say to you that if you are saying, Oh my gosh, we totally need this, or, If that was for your team at work, maybe you're like, I wanna set some OKRs for myself in my personal life.
Head over to moonshots.io, go to the show notes for this show@moonshots.io and you'll get all the links to all the clips and all the tools and resources that you need for OKRs. I would honestly say to you, this is one of the greatest clarifying things that I have done for myself or four teams. This is something that just.
Makes so much sense. And the elegance is in the simplicity, but it doesn't mean. There's not a lot of work to this. It's not a one click set and forget this is something you'll continuously come back to, something you'll continually iterate upon. And now we're gonna have a listen to John J, the author of Measure What Matters.
He's chatting with SEMA Verma, and she's the former CMS administrator for. Medicare program, and she actually brought OKRs into a government agency. Yes. They actually had results and objectives. It's really true. So let's have a listen to this story of OKRs. More
than any other agency that I'm aware of, you deeply embraced a goal setting system OKRs.
I'd love to hear the story of both how and why you did.
When I came to cms, I had run a small company and it was a tiny little company. It was very easy to have alignment. You spent a lot of time with your employees. They worked personally with you on a bunch of projects, so it was easier. And then I come to this big, large sprawling organization and there's so much going on.
Even just getting your arms around what is everybody doing? What is everybody working? I'd probably describe CMS as almost like a bunch of musicians. You've got the piano players here, you've got the drums over there, and everybody's doing their own thing and they're great. They're making beautiful music, but they're all doing their own thing.
And even as a leader to come in and put your arms around, what are you doing that was very hard. And a lot of, I think administrators that I've spoken to, they get focused on a few priorities. For the Obama administration, they had the Affordable Care Act all hands on deck. They're focused on implementing a large piece of legislation.
Same thing with Part D and the Bush administration. I think it's been natural that a lot of these administrations have been focused around a huge initiative. But we didn't have that with the Trump administration, so it was almost thinking about what, putting together this agenda. We did a large listening tour where we went across the country.
We talked to innovators, providers, and patients. And so we had a pretty good idea of here's all the things that I want. Here's how I want to do them. But how do you get all that done? And I remember being advised, just, once you pick out three or four things that you wanna get done, and I thought look, I'm commuting back and forth and I'm leaving my family behind.
I don't wanna get four things done. I wanna do everything I can in my time here to affect as much change as possible. And I'm sure this won't be the case, but I didn't wanna look back at this time saying I wish I would've done this and I wish I would've done that. And I'm sure I'll get to that point, but I'd like to keep that list as small as possible.
So John, my introduction to OKRs was this. You and I had been talking, we had never talked about OKRs. We had been talking a lot about interoperability, but I happened to be at the airport delayed flight, and I'm just looking at the great best sellers and I see your book and I was like I know John and I've got it.
I've got some time here in the airport. So I bought the book and I started reading it. So I don't know if it was just serendipity and I called you afterwards. But it was a serendipity where I'm coming into this organization, I'm trying to get a lot of work done and I don't feel like we're getting there.
And I was frustrated as a leader. I wasn't getting the results that I wanted to get. Happened to read the book and recognize that we needed to do something to pull the whole agency together, to have alignment, to have shared goals, to have an understanding of what we were trying to achieve and to deliver it, and to deliver it in a way that was organized.
I didn't wanna have a meeting and then say where's this and where's that? So it gave us a framework in terms of trying to organize. Our goals are accomplishments and holding people accountable.
A framework for organization all the way through to delivery as well as accountability. It's a great clip, Mike, because we're really now hearing from an individual SEMA who was implementing these OKRs as a means to remove the uncertainty.
As SEMA calls out, it's pre, It's a little bit easier. Because when you're in a small company, you see what people are working on. You can grab a cup of coffee or just a chat and you feel a little bit more maybe connected. But once that business or once the situation gets bigger and bigger, the uncertainty kicks in.
And we've covered this idea on the show many times. And that what negativity can come up through feelings of uncertainty with. What your team are working on, what your leaders and how they're managing people, what that breeds is this dissatisfaction. And what I, of course, with stigma is she's calling out, Look, we had these great big ideas, but we didn't really know how we would go and do them.
We did our research. We even identified what the things were we wanted to do, but it all felt a little bit overwhelming and. I love this reference that SMA makes with regards to legacy. I don't wanna look back at my time and wonder, Oh, I wish I, I did this. And I think with regards to OKRs being a framework and a methodology to help us achieve maybe those wild objectives or those wild things that we wanna go out and do, it seems.
Short cited almost to not give these a go and see whether it does help you go out and achieve your teams or your individual objectives or goals or dreams, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, and I, How neat was that metaphor? It's like there's a bunch of musicians all off in the corner playing music, but it doesn't really work as a full orchestra.
And she was using OKRs to bring people in line. So that, she had a full symphony. , which is a particularly good metaphor. As you mentioned, as the team grows, the disconnections begin bigger, the team, the bigger the disconnect. So something like OKRs can work on a micro level just to set your personal objectives and goals right up to expanding a huge multi thousands of people in the Medicare program.
We're able to get on the same page with OKRs. This for me is. Really, I can really relate to what she was talking about having taken this into before and after moments, seeing the clarity and the relief. One of the things I saw in this team that we brought OKRs into is people are, I just know what I need to do.
And what that was suggest of is prior to OKRs, They were just burning so much brain power on, is this a priority? Yeah. And if you find yourself struggling to prioritize things, it is indicative, likely indicative that the objectives and key results are not clear to you. So if you do carry the, those moments where you're like, not a hundred percent here, Mark, I think our advice is OKRs, right?
Yeah,
I totally agree. Whether you have just started a new job, whether you are in the business or whatever the situation is for an extended period of time, what's likely is you run into moments when you do burn and waste a lot of your b. Your time, your energy on maybe chasing something that fundamentally is not going to help your overarching objective, your overarching goal.
And I think without identifying these OKRs, you never I don't know whether there is an easier, and by easier, something you can put into action pretty much straight away. Than OKRs. It's certainly something that has helped us in the past provide that level of confidence that I know I'm working towards the greater good here.
I know what I'm doing is not only valuable for the business. But actually valuable for me too. Without being able to look forward and identify, this is where I wanna be or where we should be, and this is how we're gonna go and do it. It's also, I think, an interesting build on something that you said earlier, Mike, which is.
Reference back to your OKRs for maybe that previous quarter. Did we achieve them? How might we tweak them for the following quarter? Yes. It's and breathing thing, isn't it? Yeah
So that's the key thing. So let's say you do OKRs for three months. The key thing then is before you update your own personal OKRs, is you should go back as a group and look at the company's OKRs.
How do we do, What do we wanna change? Because, and this is a key alignment thing, if at the beginning we all came together, set the company's OKRs, we did the first quarter, and you only edit and review. Your personal OKRs in your own context and do not revisit the company's goals. What do you think happens over time?
You do that three or four times and you're all off sailing in different directions. Only mind.
Yeah, exactly. You're sailing off in, in different directions and you're likely wasting a lot of time and a lot of energy and creating frustration amongst the team. Now Mike, I think a great extension to this and a great build is if we hear from John, do just maybe one more time closing out the show and really making the case from a Googler Sundar Pcha who helped work on the Google Chrome browser up and how they found that the secret to success was really understanding and setting the right goals.
In 2008, a Googler Sunar Piche took on an objective, which was to build the next generation client platform for the future of web applications. In other words, build the best browser. He was very thoughtful about how he chose his key results. How do you measure the best browser? It could be ad clicks or engagement or rep.
He said numbers of users. Because users are gonna decide if Chrome is a great browser or not. So he had this one, three year long objective, build the best browser, and then every year he stuck to the same key results, numbers of users, but he upped the anti. And the first year his goal was 20 million users, and he missed it, got less than 10.
Second year, he raised the bar to 50 million. He got to 37 million users somewhat better in the third. . He upped the, and he wants more to a hundred million. He launched an aggressive marketing campaign, broader distribution, improved the technology, and kaboom, he got 111 million users. Here's why I like this story.
Not so much for the happy ending, but it shows someone carefully choosing the right objective and then sticking to it year after year. It's a perfect story for a nerd like. . Now I think of OKRs as transparent vessels that are made from the what's inhouse of our ambitions. What really matters is the why that we pour into those vessels.
That's why we do our work. OKRs are not a silver bullet. They're not gonna be a substitute for a strong culture or for stronger leadership, but when those fundamentals are in place, they can take you to the mountain. , I want you to think about your life for a moment. Do you have the right metrics? Take time to write down your values, your objectives, and your key results.
Do it today. If you'd like some feedback on them, you can send 'em to me on john@whatmatters.com. If we think of the world changing goals of an intel. Of a new ninth of Bono of Google. They're remarkable, ubiquitous computing, affordable healthcare, high quality for everyone, ending global poverty, access to all the world's information.
Here's the deal. Every one of those goals is powered today by OKRs. Now I've been called the Johnny Apple seat of OKRs for spreading the good gospel according to Andy Grove. But I want you to join me in this movement. Let's fight for what it is that really matters because we can take OKRs beyond our businesses.
We can take 'em to our families, to our schools, even to our governments. We can hold those governments accountable. We can transform those informations. We can get back. On the right track
if we can, and do measure what really matters. Thank you.
There you go. That was his Braveheart moment, wasn't it? .
Look I think this is a John really closing out the show on measure what matters and the value of OKRs, isn't it? We really, I believe, Mike, I think we've made the case as to the value that they can bring individuals as well as businesses,
don't you?
Yeah. So where would you focus your follow up on more personal or professional?
I think the personal my personal OKRs, but in a professional situation. So what I mean by that is how I can. Both achieve the life I wanna live outside of work. The the fitness exercise piece, the good sleep, the relationships, but balancing a little bit with the work piece.
I wanna make sure I work hard, I achieve those OKRs for my business that I'm working on as well as, make the most of my time and build a bit of a legacy. But it's around achieving that personal element, isn't it? That's perhaps, Maybe just, or even more important. What about you, Mike? Where are you taking this next?
I feel like I am like a forever student of this because sometimes it's about personal or professional goals. Sometimes it's about how they relate to the people around me. Let's say you have a partner, you should be talking about what your individual goals are and then what your. Relationship goals are same at work.
Then I'm always, I'm still a student of transforming what is the big vision into the OKRs, finding those priorities. There is such a universe here. I think that you could, this is like a book. I think Mark this, if you look at the Moonshots library, this one I'm very tempted to put in, read every.
I think you're right. I think if these are practices that we revisit regularly, and by practices I mean you refer back to it every quarter. You revisit work with your team as well as your partner perhaps. It's gonna be something that we've gotta dig back into and remind ourselves annually with John do, isn't it?
We've gotta dig back into the book and make sure that we are optimizing the way that we're, we are. Creating those. Ok. Yes.
Yes. So I think what we have seen today is just how applicable they are and what an agent John Doer really is for doing it in all parts of your life. Mark, I think we've given ourselves and all over our members and listeners, lots of homework, don't you?
I'm amazed that even though our listeners might be listening and thinking, Wow, this seems a little bit tricky obviously I can see the value. The truth is, as we've heard today with Google, with Medicare and the us with Intel, with reference to Andy Grove, they can be very simple, can't they?
So the practice is just beginning it today and referring back to them and seeing how you get on, I.
There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, members and listeners, you have your homework from Mark Pearson, Freeland . I wanna thank you, Mark, for setting us that homework assignment, and I want to thank you, our members and listeners here on Show 201 of the Moonshots podcast where we.
Dived in to measure what matters by John Doer, and it started with setting goals. Yes, it's all about goals. And if you need any inspirational convincing, that's what Google Bono, the Gates Foundation, massive agencies in the US government use. And the key thing on an OKR is make it measurable. And that's exactly.
SMA Verma did in transforming the Medicare program in the United States. And if that wasn't enough, there's a guy Sunda Pichai, now CEO, Google. He used OKRs to set very ambitious but reachable stretch goals for the Chrome browser, and that's why he's running the ship and he knows the secret to success, which is setting the right goals.
Set those goals, learn out loud, and you will truly transform yourself into the best version. You can be. And that's what we're about here at the Moonshots Podcast. That's a wrap.