Measure What Matters

Julien Deswaef reviewed Measure What Matters by John Doerr

A manual for working in large tech companies

No rating

Apart from the clear examples and guidance to come up with OKRs for your own company or team, which is why I was mainly reading this book, I finally understood what the company that employs me wants to achieve with continuous feedback and all around conversations around performance. I did not know those two things were so much linked together. Now things make more sense. Maybe a good read if you work in a large tech company.

paven reviewed Measure What Matters by John Doerr

Review of 'Measure What Matters' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This book is now my OKr go to book. If your org is considering that technique or are struggling with working in the same direction read this book.

One thing i finally understood, is the use of goals that is too large to be reached or feels that way. As reaching these goals at 75% is still a victory. They are used for direction and not estimation of where we can go. So looking at it as the direction to move towards, not an expectation to reach we can create alignment.
Storytime: When first introduced to such goal it was not explained to me the rest of the goal, the goal fell flat. It did not help that it was expressed in measurements, we had not access to, nor ever been shown to the department.

I always had problems with measured goals (SMART) with timelines as so many assumptions needed …

This book is now my OKr go to book. If your org is considering that technique or are struggling with working in the same direction read this book.

One thing i finally understood, is the use of goals that is too large to be reached or feels that way. As reaching these goals at 75% is still a victory. They are used for direction and not estimation of where we can go. So looking at it as the direction to move towards, not an expectation to reach we can create alignment.
Storytime: When first introduced to such goal it was not explained to me the rest of the goal, the goal fell flat. It did not help that it was expressed in measurements, we had not access to, nor ever been shown to the department.

I always had problems with measured goals (SMART) with timelines as so many assumptions needed to be made. But setting the objective without measure ments then complement them with the key results that carries the target values, and assumptions but are not as set in stone.

I think using OKrs could be a way to create a shared direction in an organisation, without locking in to rigid and slow decision hirakis. I also see that it could be mimicked into a rigid decision hierarki if only the format is Copied but not the way to set the OKrs, losing a lot of the power of OKrs.

Sergey Machulskis reviewed Measure What Matters by John Doerr

Review of 'Measure What Matters' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

Waste of time.

I was expecting it to analyze real problems, like how the chain of command gets broken in big companies. I was expecting questions like "how to ensure people focus on something useful?"
"What to do if you're CEO, middle manager, or junior developer wanting to help the system?"

Instead, I got boring advertisements of companies from the title page (Google, MyFitnessPal, Nuna, and so on). The story is the same everywhere "we're an awesome company, we had no problems, but decided to adopt OKR, now we don't have any problems". Seriously?

BrewerSeth reviewed Measure What Matters by John Doerr

Review of 'Measure What Matters' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It was fine. I like the OKR concepts, but felt that most of the book was spent offering "fan-boy" recognition of the giants of Silicon Valley. I get that it is good to show context on how a program has worked for others, but the book spent the MAJORITY of the time talking about how an OKR program worked for business and not enough time discussing HOW to set up OKRs.

Mahdi reviewed Measure What Matters by John Doerr

Review of 'Measure What Matters' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

کتاب جذابی بود، واقعا لذت بردم از مطالعه‌اش اما نسبت به رویکرد داستان‌وار و غیرعملی نویسنده توی طرح و توضیح مفهوم OKR نقد دارم.
من به عنوان مخاطب کتاب تا انتهای کتاب شاید به اندازه ۳ صفحه هم تکنیک عملی از نویسنده دریافت نکردم و این موضوع چندان خوشایندم نبود.
به جز این موضوع، کتاب رو خیلی دوست داشتم.

inerte reviewed Measure What Matters by John Doerr

Review of 'Measure What Matters' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This book made me finally understand OKRs. I heard “As measured by” and it finally clicked. Would give 5 stars if I was considering only the OKR part!

But the CFM part is full of platitudes. I would tune out while listening and come back seconds later and it still sounded empty as “multidirectional continuous communication built to strengthen strategic global organization” or something innocuous like that.