When I first selected Measure What Matters as the September book assignment for our clients, I was hoping for a conversation starter.

I was looking for a way to strengthen our clients’ ability to capture and showcase their goals and deliverables. A way to combat the tendency to overemphasize ‘process’ and operations. The author, John Doerr, who personally narrates the audio book, is a grey beard who harkens back to Andy Grove’s glory days leading Intel. John tells us all about those days and the system he learned from Grove. The system, the magic of how you Measure What Matters is called “OKRs” which stands for Objectives and Key Results. The Objectives portion of the framework is meant to be an almost out-of-reach goal, rooted in the very real possibilities in your market and industry. To get your Objective just right you need a real knowledge of where the “hockey puck is heading” in your field. You need an ear to the ground in addition to the level of immersion you already have attained with your in product and sales. The Key Results are the quantifiable measurements that simply must occur in order for the Objective to be reached. All quarterly, FY and five year road map planning stems from there. I hoped the book would serve to increase personal willingness to measure self and programs. What I didn’t expect was the book to turn into an epiphany among my clients at Series B and C startups. They took down this book like they had run marathon and I was offering them their first glass of water.

Operating a private leadership development practice in the heart of Seattle’s startup district means we get a pretty fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the growth and leadership needs of these mighty upstarts.

Roughly a quarter of our clients are part of the startup ecosystem (the majority of clients typically are affiliated with larger organizations) so we have some experience to inform our assessment of why the OKR system was so darn appealing to this set. Within the field of startup leaders and professionals we are tracking two consistent, recurring themes related to being overextended: 1. Disconnect from market trend awareness. The leader in question is working their face off and accidentally stops getting new inputs, new influences, has a reduction in market trend awareness and thus the “Objectives” or “O” portion of the OKR system crumbles. The Objective goes from a future focused, ambitious deliverable to a near term milestone that is all but already locked in. 2. Reduction in alignment. Founder focus, investor focus, un-climbable mountain of work (often in more than one business category) turns into save your own ass and deliver something you are reasonably proud of. Also sleep sometimes. What is Ron in Operations up to? Not totally sure but he seems to be doing fine, getting some sleep and also delivering something to be reasonably proud of. Propping up six to tweleve month goals to fill in for refined, tested, long range objectives leads to leadership burnout and loss of direction. Its a band aid that only works for a short while and is universally demoralizing. It not a big surprise then, that Measure What Matters, a book plus tutorial on Objectives and Key Results was most highly beloved by our clients who lead in the startup sector. OKRs are an elastic, flexible system for hierarchy busting, allowing employees to efficiently align their goals directly with the company. Clients outside the startup sector enjoyed the book too, they seemed to find it a call to drill down further into KPIs and communicate more clearly about their achievements. However truth of the matter is, the larger organizations tend to have more systems in place to measure and track. It appears to be a less urgent dilemma. OKRs we learn in the book, get everyone stretching for the business’ One Big Goal from Intel to seed round upstart. Stretching means leaders and employees alike get the intellectual enjoyment of tracking emerging technologies plus the ability to tell the story of where you are headed and what’s so exciting about it. I listened to this book on Audible because as a #workingmom, multitasking is king these days. I also bought copies to hand out to clients, and snapped a photo of one copy on my table with (I kid you not) the leaves my 7 year old brought in from the street and the pumpkin my 4 year old brought in from the pumpkin patch #nofilter. What’s funny is that although this book is really dry at points and the case studies are frankly excessive (many self congratulatory, first person narratives) its ultimately about hope.

Having a big, smart, stretch goal and tethering each business inside the organization to it gives employees and leaders alike something to believe in. Something to rally behind. A horizon to keep their eyes on even when the overwhelm is high.

Measure What Matters will make you want to riot like a middle manager, make you want to go disrupt something nearby –starting with inefficiencies and broken team alignment at work. It’s a little bit of an oxymoron, this book: a dry, self congratulatory volume about tools to help you revitalize moon-shot goals and dominate your market. Tools to improve the quality and agility of your cross functional team work, and ship products that make you stand up and cheer in any size organization.