About the book 'Measure What Matters'...
For a long time, I have been critical of the book. After a recent second reading, I have softened. Here's why.
Measure What Matters introduced Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to the masses and should be lauded for this contribution. On the other hand, it also provides many examples of OKR practices that have since proven less effective than alternatives. The book’s popularity, combined with the assumption by many readers it is a ‘how-to’ guide, has led many astray when they follow examples from the book too closely. Thus to vilify or revere the book, it's a tricky question.
I became critical of the Measure What Matters book once I formed the opinion that Objectives should reflect Outcomes and not Outputs or Actions. This was a conclusion I reached after a significant period of working with our teams using OKRs and some inspired suggestions from some clever colleagues. I also experienced first-hand the benefits of aligning OKRs over cascading them.
I have softened my view on my second reading of the book much more recently. Not on the aforementioned principles but I am more sympathetic to the book's place in history and it's approach. Measure What Matters served a purpose, and the credibility and authority of its author, John Doerr, helped build the awareness of OKRs to where it is today.
The book's structure was mainly around how several well-known organisations were using OKRs, which influenced many of the examples. Given its popularity, it seems in part that structure resonated. People respond to learning what other successful organisations use.
As a 'how to', that structure is less helpful unless you carefully consider the book in this context. By this, what I mean is that you must look at each example to reflect where those organisations were in their journey at the time and not necessarily as examples of ‘best practice’. Personally, I've been more influenced by the writing of Wodtke, Castro, Cutler, Barr, McCarthy and others when it comes to the leading edge of OKR best practices.
The ease of implementing OKRs is impacted by the number of bad examples available for reference. I believe the volume of bad examples is partially a function of OKR tool companies and the content they produce as much as any other source. They may have been influenced by content in Measure What Matters, but they are mostly influenced by the vast majority of users of their tools who are looking for an easy path to ‘doing OKRs’ which, as I cover in the following post, is a decent indicator you aren’t up for the commitment needed to focus on outcomes:
The evolution in books on OKRs is a shift to addressing the practical concerns of implementation. For instance, Allan Kelly’s book ‘Succeeding With OKRs in Agile’ focuses on how OKRs are used with agile practices. The topic is focused and practical and addresses many questions about getting the most out of OKRs in their context.
I think it’s fair that some clear disclaimers be public and at suitable levels of awareness regarding the strengths and weaknesses of Measure What Matters fitness as a guide for implementing OKRs. But if it's a choice between criticising a work that helped bring awareness to a helpful approach to goal-setting or sharing what we have learned about using OKRs successfully, I choose the latter.
Suppose we want the awareness of what practices work best in each situation. In that case, we must put more, higher quality examples into the public domain and show the value of these more disciplined approaches.
Where do you stand on Measure What Matters? Please share your view in the comments.