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Book review - Measure what matters


Measure What Matters by John Doerr


The concept is simple: Measure what matters (Objective and Key Results). However this is a hard one to craft on your own. If you want to have a peep at how successful companies such as Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation have  utilized it, this is a great book for you. 

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OKR means Objective Key Results. Book mentions it provides following benefits: provides focus and commit to priority, help aligning and connect for teamwork, track for accountability, and stretch for amazing. Companies noted in this book include Google, Intel, The Remind, Nuna, MyFutbessPal, The Gates Foundation, Google Chrome, YouTube, Adobe, Zume Pizza, Lumeris, Bono's ONE campaign. 

 The beauty of OKR to me was that it help avoid any arguments on how to interpret test data and be able to move fast based on the outcome of the test. For all AB tests, we want to know which one works better for the company in a long term. However, when there is a cost associated with waiting data for a year, business leaders have to determine which experience or feature to move forward with. 

 Here is a classic example; we are making more people to purchase, and at the same time more people to cancel later one. That is higher acquisition and higher retention. Typically the data collection waiting time is limited to 1 or 2 months. By making a decision at month 1 or 2 instead of waiting for a year, we could still be in-accurate. More acquisition and equal rate of cancellation without net long term gain might mean more negative impact to customer experience (as they might have been disappointed at the products or they might have a bad mouth about cancellation process). The real question is even with conflicting data points, what is the right way to use the data? What do we favor when there is conflict? 

 On that note, I see why YouTube was brilliant. YouTube, under the same parent company as Google, was going against the Google OKR in that it valued longer time spent. This was quite an opposite to Google's objective. If Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, didn't clarify that early on, would the team really be clear and optimize their activities for that metrics? Probably not. That is the power of OKR. 

 What is your Objective and Key Results? 






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