Measure What Matters ― The Simple Idea That Drives 10x Growth

Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr's revolutionary approach to goal-setting that grew tech giants like Google and is spreading across Silicon Valley to corporate America.

You may have never heard of the biggest management secret common to the hottest tech firms: objectives and key results (OKRs). But you should pay attention now: Google's Eric Schmidt credits OKRs with "changing the course of the company forever."

OKRs help companies and teams reach incredibly ambitious goals by ensuring transparency and efficiency. Leaders agree on objectives, like doubling growth or capturing 50% of market share. Then, they determine the measurable key results that are the benchmarks for progress. Employees design their own OKRs that ladder up to the company's central objectives. Employees can see each other's goals, and teams regularly meet and discuss whether they're on track. Because everyone in the organization has a stake in the company's mission and performance, they can achieve huge goals together.

Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr--an early investor in Google, Amazon, Twitter, and known as the "Father of OKRs"--brought this approach from Intel to Google in 1999, when Google had fewer than 40 employees. He taught Larry Page and Sergey Brin how OKRs worked: the Google founders saw how powerful OKRs are and quickly adopted them as a key tool to spur relentless growth. Since then, Doerr and former Google employees have spread OKRs across Silicon Valley, making it standard practice at companies from Amazon to Zynga.

Measure What Matters Most will help a new generation of managers understand why OKRs are the most effective way to align their team and achieve big goals. For readers of The Lean Startup, Work Rules!, and Scrum, this book explains how to develop an OKR program to provide the agility, transparency, and tremendous growth that has fueled tech giants and can help all organizations and teams, of any size and in any industry, capture the same magic.

John Doerr joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1980 and has since backed some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and companies, such as Google, Zynga, Amazon, and Twitter. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Kris Duggan is the CEO and co-founder of BetterWorks, which helps Fortune 1000 companies move toward continuous performance management. A noted thought leader on goal-setting and OKRs, he has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company.