Summary Notebook

Measure What Matters

Measure What Matters

by John Doerr

8 min read

Objective Key Results or OKRs have been the foundation of growth in many established companies, including Intel and Google.

In this summary, we'll discuss OKRs, how they can help you achieve your wildest dreams, and how to use them effectively.

Let's start by defining:

Objective Key Results

Objectives are what you or your business wants to achieve in a fixed time.

For example, an objective for Hulry could be "Reach 500 paid subscribers".

And I can set up a year-long timeline to achieve this objective.

Key Results are the high-level actions you'll take to achieve your objective.

For example, the above objective can have the following KRs:

  1. Publish 100 free & 50 paid blog posts
  2. Promote paid membership in 25 personal growth newsletters
  3. Appear on 10 personal growth podcasts

If you've noticed, all these KRs are measurable.

This is crucial with OKRs because you need a way to track whether you've achieved them or not.

And without a way to measure your KRs, how do you tell if you've achieved a KR and subsequently the objective?

Here's an abstract KR:

"Promote paid membership to people."

Unlike our previous clearly defined KR in Point No.2, we can't tell when or how we'll achieve this KR.

I can promote the paid membership in a single newsletter and call it complete.

But, that has a low chance of moving the needle of my objective.

I've had 2–3 smaller but relevant newsletters outperform a bigger generic one in ads CTR.

So, here are a few key points to remember when creating OKRs: