CHAPTER 1: Google, Meet OKRs
As prize pupil Marissa Mayer: Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). In some cases, the key result is binary, either done or not: “Complete onboarding manual for new hires.”
“Goals Gone Wild”: Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and Max H. Bazerman, “Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting,” Academy of Management Perspectives, February 1, 2009.
“Goals may cause”: Ibid.
said Edwin Locke, “hard goals”: Edwin Locke, “Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, May 1968.
“one of the most tested”: “The Quantified Serf,” The Economist, March 7, 2015.
“involved in, enthusiastic about”: Annamarie Mann and Jim Harter, “The Worldwide Employee Engagement Crisis,” gallup.com, January 7, 2016. Worldwide, only 13 percent of employees are engaged. Moreover, according to Deloitte, it’s not getting better; engagement levels are no higher today than they were ten years ago.
In the technology sector: Dice Tech Salary Survey, 2014, http://marketing.dice.com/pdf/Dice_TechSalarySurvey_2015.pdf.
More highly engaged work groups: Annamarie Mann and Ryan Darby, “Should Managers Focus on Performance or Engagement?” Gallup Business Journal, August 5, 2014.
“retention and engagement”: Global Human Capital Trends 2014, Deloitte University Press.
“clearly defined goals”: “Becoming Irresistible: A New Model for Employee Engagement,” Deloitte Review, Issue 16, January 26, 2015.
“When people have conflicting priorities”: Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).
goals “can inspire employees”: Ordóñez, Schweitzer, Galinsky, and Bazerman, “Goals Gone Wild.”
As Eric told: Levy, In the Plex.
OKRs became the “simple tool”: Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, How Google Works (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014).
In 2008, a company-wide: Levy, In the Plex.
When Jonathan Rosenberg: Schmidt and Rosenberg, How Google Works.
In 2017, for the sixth: Fortune, March 15, 2017.
CHAPTER 2: The Father of OKRs
In the space: While there’s no record of the session I attended, we unearthed a video recording of a similar seminar Grove gave three years later. The attributed remarks are sourced from that recording and hosted on www.whatmatters.com.
Scientific management, Taylor wrote: Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1911).
“crisp and hierarchical”: Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management (New York: Random House, 1983).
“a principle of management”: Peter F. Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York: Harper & Row, 1954).
In a meta-analysis: Robert Rodgers and John E. Hunter, “Impact of Management by Objectives on Organizational Productivity,” Journal of the American Psychological Association, April 1991.
“just another tool”: “Management by Objectives,” The Economist, October 21, 2009.
He sought to “create”: Grove, High Output Management.
Andy recruited “aggressive introverts”: Andrew S. Grove, iOPEC seminar, 1978. For one contemporary example, Larry Page is an aggressive introvert.
As one Intel historian: Tim Jackson, Inside Intel: The Story of Andrew Grove and the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Chip Company (New York: Dutton, 1997).
As he once told: New York Times, December 23, 1980.
“one of the most acclaimed”: New York Times, March 21, 2016.
“the person most responsible”: Time, December 29, 1997.
CHAPTER 3: Operation Crush: An Intel Story
“There’s only one company”: Tim Jackson, Inside Intel: The Story of Andrew Grove and the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Chip Company (New York: Dutton, 1997).
Crush veterans recalled: “Intel Crush Oral History Panel,” Computer History Museum, October 14, 2013.
CHAPTER 4: Superpower #1: Focus and Commit to Priorities
values cannot be transmitted: Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management (New York: Random House, 1983).
“When you’re the CEO”: “Lessons from Bill Campbell, Silicon Valley’s Secret Executive Coach,” podcast with Randy Komisar, soundcloud.com, February 2, 2016, https://soundcloud.com/venturedpodcast/bill_campbell.
two of three companies: Stacia Sherman Garr, “High-Impact Performance Management: Using Goals to Focus the 21st-Century Workforce,” Bersin by Deloitte, December 2014.
In a survey: Donald Sull and Rebecca Homkes, “Why Senior Managers Can’t Name Their Firms’ Top Priorities,” London Business School, December 7, 2015.
“must be able to measure”: Peter F. Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York: Harper & Row, 1954).
“For the feedback”: Grove, High Output Management.
“with an iron hand”: Mark Dowie, “Pinto Madness,” Mother Jones, September/October 1977.
Safety was nowhere: Ibid. As Iacocca liked to say, “Safety doesn’t sell.”
“The specific, challenging goals”: Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and Max H. Bazerman, “Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting,” Harvard Business School working paper, February 11, 2009, www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-083.pdf.
a manager’s teenage daughter: Stacy Cowley and Jennifer A. Kingson, “Wells Fargo Says 2 Ex-Leaders Owe $75 Million More,” New York Times, April 11, 2017.
“their paired counterparts”: Grove, High Output Management.
“The one thing”: Ibid.
“The art of management”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 5: Focus: The Remind Story
Class participation rose: Matthew Kraft, “The Effect of Teacher-Family Communication on Student Engagement: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment,” Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, June 2013.
CHAPTER 6: Commit: The Nuna Story
Andrew M. Slavitt: Steve Lohr, “Medicaid’s Data Gets an Internet-Era Makeover,” New York Times, January 9, 2017.
CHAPTER 7: Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork
Research shows that public: Based on BetterWorks’ analysis of 100,000 goals.
In a recent survey: Wakefield Research, November 2016.
The term for this linkage: According to the Harvard Business Review, companies with highly aligned employees are more than twice as likely to be top performers as their competition (“How Employee Alignment Boosts the Bottom Line,” Harvard Business Review, June 16, 2016).
Studies suggest that: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001).
a poll of global CEOs: Donald Sull, “Closing the Gap Between Strategy and Execution,” MIT Sloan Management Review, July 1, 2007.
“We’ve got a lot”: Interview with Amelia Merrill, people strategy leader at RMS.
“Having goals improves performance”: Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2015).
“People in the trenches”: Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Identify and Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Business (New York: Doubleday Business, 1996).
The “professional employee”: Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York: Harper & Row, 1954).
dim view of “managerial meddling”: Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management (New York: Random House, 1983).
“The higher the goals”: Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, “Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey,” American Psychologist, September 2002.
“People across the whole”: Interview with Laszlo Bock, former head of Google’s People Operations.
CHAPTER 9: Connect: The Intuit Story
for fourteen years running: http://beta.fortune.com/worlds-most-admired-companies/intuit-100000.
“Whenever Intuit makes”: Vindu Goel, “Intel Sheds Its PC Roots and Rises as a Cloud Software Company,” New York Times, April 10, 2016.
CHAPTER 10: Superpower #3: Track for Accountability
Research suggests that making: Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).
“The single greatest motivator”: Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009).
“Without an action plan”: Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
In one California study: Research by Gail Matthews, Dominican University of California, www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/study-highlights-strategies-for-achieving-goals.
“If the ladder is not”: Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989).
“people can learn from failure”: “Don’t Be Modest: Decrypting Google,” The Economist, September 27, 2014.
Learning “from direct experience”: Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano, and Bradley Staats, “Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Improves Performance,” Harvard Business School working paper, April 11, 2014.
“We do not learn”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 12: Superpower #4: Stretch for Amazing
For companies seeking: Steve Kerr, “Stretch Goals: The Dark Side of Asking for Miracles,” Fortune, November 13, 1995.
As Bill Campbell liked: Podcast with Randy Komisar, soundcloud.com, February 2, 2016.
“A BHAG is a huge”: Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
the results were “unequivocal”: Edwin A. Locke, “Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 3, 1968.
“Setting specific challenging goals”: Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, “Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey,” American Psychologist, September 2002.
“stretched” goals could elicit: Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management (New York: Random House, 1983).
“This is Intel”: “Intel Crush Oral History Panel,” Computer History Museum, October 14, 2013.
By the third quarter: William H. Davidow, Marketing High Technology: An Insider’s View (New York: Free Press, 1986).
“the gospel of 10x”: Steven Levy, “Big Ideas: Google’s Larry Page and the Gospel of 10x,” Wired, March 30, 2013.
“tend to assume that”: Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, How Google Works (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014).
“The way Page sees it”: Levy, “Big Ideas.”
start of the period: Interview with Bock.
In pursuing high-effort: Locke and Latham, “Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation.”
“You know, in our business”: iOPEC seminar, 1992.
CHAPTER 13: Stretch: The Google Chrome Story
“If you want your car”: Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2015).
“If you set a crazy”: Ibid.
“Dear Sophie,” a spot: https://whatmatters.com/sophie.
CHAPTER 14: Stretch: The YouTube Story
“the most powerful woman”: Belinda Luscombe, “Meet YouTube’s Viewmaster,” Time, August 27, 2015.
“the true scarce commodity”: Satya Nadella, company-wide email to Microsoft employees, June 25, 2015.
CHAPTER 15: Continuous Performance Management: OKRs and CFRs
Yet only 12 percent: “Performance Management: The Secret Ingredient,” Deloitte University Press, February 27, 2015.
Only 6 percent think: “Global Human Capital Trends 2014: Engaging the 21st Century Workforce,” Bersin by Deloitte.
A manager’s “first role”: www.druckerinstitute.com/2013/07/measurement-myopia.
Table 15.1: Annual Performance Management: Josh Bersin and BetterWorks, “How Goals Are Driving a New Approach to Performance Management,” Human Capital Institute, April 4, 2016.
Andy Grove estimated: Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management (New York: Random House, 1983).
Andy believed the “subordinate”: “Former Intel CEO Andy Grove Dies at 79,” Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2016. When I met with my boss at Intel, it wasn’t for him to inspect my work, but rather to figure out how he could help me achieve my key results.
According to Gallup: Annamarie Mann and Ryan Darby, “Should Managers Focus on Performance or Engagement?” Gallup Business Journal, August 5, 2014.
“Feedback is an opinion”: Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (New York: Knopf, 2013).
“want to be ‘empowered’”: Josh Bersin, “Feedback Is the Killer App: A New Market and Management Model Emerges,” Forbes, August 26, 2015.
Today, progressive companies: Josh Bersin, “A New Market Is Born: Employee Engagement, Feedback, and Culture Apps,” joshbersin.com, September 19, 2015.
“As soft as it seems”: “Becoming Irresistible: A New Model for Employee Engagement,” Deloitte Review, issue 16.
CHAPTER 18: Culture
these five questions: https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team.
High-motivation cultures, they concluded: Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, “The Power of Small Wins,” Harvard Business Review, May 2011.
His team at LRN: The study was conducted by the Boston Research Group, the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California, and Research Data Technology, Inc.
DEDICATION
As Ken Auletta wrote: Ken Auletta, “Postscript: Bill Campbell, 1940–2016,” The New Yorker, April 19, 2016.
“Bill Campbell has been”: Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, How Google Works (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014).
He “kept Steve Jobs going”: Miguel Helft, “Bill Campbell, ‘Coach’ to Silicon Valley Luminaries Like Jobs, Page, Has Died,” Forbes, April 18, 2016.
“always wanted to be”: Podcast with Randy Komisar, soundcloud.com, February 2, 2016.