by John Doerr
Doerr advocates for Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as the goal-setting system that powered Intel and Google. The method forces alignment, transparency, and measurable ambition across entire organisations.
In this collection, Measure What Matters references 2 other books and is cited by 4 other books.
It draws on High Output Management and The Lean Startup.
It’s picked up by Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell, Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value and Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value and 1 others.
Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.
Measure What Matters is regarded as the definitive guide to implementing OKRs, drawing credibility from Doerr's direct lineage to Andy Grove at Intel and his role installing the system at Google. Teresa Torres and Melissa Perri both discuss OKRs as a foundational framework for aligning product work with business outcomes, while Eric Schmidt's Trillion Dollar Coach notes that Bill Campbell himself helped refine OKR discipline at Google alongside Doerr.
Not everyone is persuaded, however -- Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall argue in Nine Lies About Work that cascading goals create false alignment and that meaning, not goal hierarchies, is what truly motivates teams. Readers find the book most useful for its real-world case studies and practical templates, though some wish it spent more time addressing what to do when OKRs go wrong.
The books Doerr references and why each one mattered to the argument.
Doerr learned the OKR system directly from Andy Grove at Intel in the 1970s. The entire Measure What Matters framework is an extension and popularisation of Grove's management approach.
Doerr references Ries's Lean Startup as complementary to OKRs.
The exact passages where other authors bring up “Measure What Matters” and what they take from it.
Connects to Doerr's Measure What Matters on OKRs, noting that Campbell coached Doerr and helped install and refine OKR discipline at Google
Cited in
Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbellby Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle
Torres discusses the OKR framework popularized by Doerr's Measure What Matters as the starting point for continuous discovery, with product outcomes derived from organisational objectives
Cited in
Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Valueby Teresa Torres
Perri discusses OKRs from Doerr's Measure What Matters as a strategy deployment tool, explaining how organisations like Google use objectives and key results to align product work with business outcomes
Cited in
Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Valueby Melissa Perri
Buckingham's challenge to cascading goals contradicts the OKR framework championed by Doerr in Measure What Matters, arguing that alignment comes from meaning, not goal cascades
Cited in
Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader's Guide to the Real Worldby Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall
How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
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