Virtual Lean Book Club

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr

 #1 New York Times Bestseller! Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth—and how it can help any organization thrive.

In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress—to measure what mattered.

Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked.

In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization.

The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention

In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic. 

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Starting January 4, 2023, we will meet weekly on Wednesdays from 12:00 (noon) to 1:00 PM Eastern Time. The meetings will last for approximately one hour for the next six weeks. 

Microsoft Teams web meeting invites will be sent to enrolled attendees. I would encourage you to join via both webcam video and audio. I have found that this combination enriches our interactions and our discussion.   

Bookclub members will submit topics and questions you want to discuss before each meeting. The responses will be compiled, and we will then priority vote on the most popular topics to discuss in each meeting. This format is similar to Lean Coffee and helps ensure we discuss what is most interesting to the group. 

John Doerr is an engineer, acclaimed venture capitalist, and the chairman of Kleiner Perkins.

For 37 years, John has served entrepreneurs with ingenuity and optimism, helping them build disruptive companies and bold teams. In 2018, he authored Measure What Matters, a handbook for setting and achieving audacious goals. Through his book and platform, WhatMatters.com, he shares valuable lessons from some of the most fearless innovators of our time.

John was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon, helping to create more than half a million jobs and the world’s second and third most valuable companies. He’s passionate about encouraging leaders to reimagine the future, from transforming healthcare to advancing applications of machine learning. 

KARL E. WEICK is the Rensis Likert Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Organizational Behavior and Psychology at the University of Michigan. Weick received the Irwin Award and Best Article of the Year award from the Academy of Management. Fast Company's Senior Editor Keith Hammonds calls Weick "the smartest business thinker that you've never heard of."

KATHLEEN M. SUTCLIFFE is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Business and Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and the Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor Emerita of Business Administration at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. She was named Researcher of the year and has served on a National Academy of Science panel to assess the resilience of the Department of Homeland Security.

Managing the Unexpected, Third Edition is a thoroughly revised text that offers an updated look at the groundbreaking ideas explored in the first and second editions. Revised to reflect events emblematic of the unique challenges that organizations have faced in recent years, including bank failures, intelligence failures, quality failures, and other organizational misfortunes, often sparked by organizational actions, this critical book focuses on why some organizations are better able to sustain high performance in the face of unanticipated change. High-reliability organizations (HROs), including commercial aviation, emergency rooms, aircraft carrier flight operations, and firefighting units, are looked to as models of exceptional organizational preparedness. This essential text explains the development of unexpected events and guides you in improving your organization for more reliable performance.

Matthew Luhn is a writer, story branding consultant, and keynote speaker with over 25 years of experience creating stories and characters at Pixar Animation Studios and beyond. Matthew’s story credits include Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, Monsters Inc., Monsters University, Finding Nemo, UP, Cars, Ratatouille, and other films and TV shows currently in development. Alongside his story work in Hollywood, Matthew also trains CEOs, marketing teams, directors, and other professionals on how to craft and tell stories for Fortune 500 companies, Academy Award-winning movies, and corporate brands grossing billions of dollars worldwide. Matthew attended the world-renowned Character Animation department at Cal Arts in Los Angeles and holds a BFA in Illustration from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He currently resides in Oakland, California

The Best Story Wins provides fresh perspectives on the principles of Pixar-style storytelling, adapted by one of the studio’s top creatives to meet the needs of entrepreneurs, marketers, and business-minded storytellers of all stripes. Pixar movies have transfixed viewers around the world and stirred a hunger in creative and corporate realms to adopt new and more impactful ways of telling stories. Former Pixar and The Simpsons Animator and Story Artist Matthew Luhn translates his two and half decades of storytelling techniques and concepts to the CEOs, advertisers, marketers, and creatives in the business world and beyond. A combination of Luhn’s personal stories and storytelling insights, The Best Story Wins retells the “Hero’s Journey” story building methods through the lens of the Pixar films to help business minds embrace the power of storytelling for themselves!

As Founder of JFlinch, Jamie Flinchbaugh has helped purpose-driven leaders craft effective, resilient organizations at over 300 companies.  Leveraging more than 30-years of experience and helping build over 20 companies, Jamie collaborates with leaders and their teams to bridge capability, strategic, cultural, and systems gaps so that they can safely span potential pitfalls and have a purposeful impact on their organizations.  Jamie has helped leaders across a wide spectrum of industries including healthcare, utilities, technology, consumer products, and professional services, including Harley-Davidson, Intel, Mars, Amazon, Crayola, Fidelity, Whirlpool, among many others.  Jamie is the author of People Solve Problems, The Power of Every Person, Every Day, Every Problem and co-author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean, Lessons from the Road and is the co-host of the podcasts Lean Whiskey and Happy Heuristics.  

Every person in every function of every organization is involved in solving problems. They show up in your email inbox, in meetings, in your own work. They are strategic and tactical, mundane and breakthrough, easy and difficult. Most organizations want to, and need to, improve their people’s problem-solving efforts, and so they offer them tools, templates, and training. Yet this is not where the leverage for impact is found. 

People Solve Problems: The Power of Every Person, Every Day, Every Problem explores the real leverage to improve your problem solving.   In the first section of the book, we explore the problem with problem solving, including both the value and limits of tools and templates. We also explore the marriage of problem solving and standards. Building on that start, People Solve Problems is built on four primary domains. After setting up the challenge, we start by exploring People-Centered Capabilities. These capabilities are tool agnostic, equally applicable to any chosen problem-solving method or no method at all. This includes a wide range of capabilities from creating problem statements to integrating intuition into problem solving. 

Next, we cover Problem-Solving Culture. These chapters outline the culture needed in the organization or the personal behaviors you must master to be successful in problem solving. The behaviors explored range from deliberately learning through problem solving to building transparency, vulnerability, and trust.

In the third section, we dive into Success through Coaching. Problem solving is unlike other practices, training is incredibly insufficient, and coaching is the major driver of success. This section addresses the why, who, when, where, and of course the important how of coaching. 

Finally, we explore the Role of the Leader, whether the CEO or a team leader, in building an environment where problem solving can thrive. The leader must be the architect of their problem-solving systems, a shaper of culture, and a framer of problems. Problem-solving effectiveness is critical to success for both the problems you already know about and those you have not yet experienced. People Solve Problems will you help you, and those you lead, to be more effective now and in the future. 

 Ed Schein is Professor Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management.  He was educated at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology.  He worked at the Walter Reed Institute of Research for four years and then joined MIT, where he taught until 2005.  In 2009 he published Helping, a book on the general theory and practice of giving and receiving help followed in 2013 by Humble Inquiry which explores why helping is so difficult in western culture, and which won the 2013 business book of the year award from the Dept. of Leadership of the University of San Diego.  

Peter Schein is a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley.  He provides help to start-ups and expansion-phase technology companies. Peter’s expertise draws on over twenty years of industry experience in marketing and corporate development at technology pioneers.  Peter was educated at Stanford University (BA Social Anthropology, Honors and Distinction) and Northwestern University (Kellogg MBA, Marketing and Information Management, Top Student in Information Management), and the USC Marshall School of Business Center For Effective Organizations (HCEO Certificate, 2017).

This worldwide bestseller offers simple guidance for building the kind of open and trusting relationships vital for tackling global systemic challenges and developing adaptive, innovative organizations—over 200,000 copies sold and translated into seventeen languages!

We live, say Edgar and Peter Schein, in a culture of “tell.” All too often we tell others what we think they need to know or should do. But whether we are leading or following, what matters most is we get to the truth. We have to develop a commitment to sharing vital facts and identifying faulty assumptions—it can mean the difference between success and failure. This is why we need Humble Inquiry more than ever.

The Scheins define Humble Inquiry as “the gentle art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the answer, of building relationships based on curiosity and interest in the other person.” It was inspired by Edgar’s twenty years of work in high-hazard industries and the health-care system, where honest communication can literally mean the difference between life and death.

In this new edition the authors look at how Humble Inquiry differs from other kinds of inquiry, offer examples of it in action, and show how to overcome the barriers that keep us telling when we should be asking. This edition offers a deepening and broadening of this concept, seeing it as not just a way of posing questions but an entire attitude that includes better listening, better responding to what others are trying to tell us, and better revealing of ourselves. Packed with case examples and a full chapter of exercises and simulations, this is a major contribution to how we see human conversational dynamics and relationships, presented in a compact, personal, and eminently practical way. 

Katie Anderson is an internationally recognized leadership coach, consultant, and professional speaker, best known for inspiring individuals and organizations to lead with intention. She founded her consulting practice in 2013 to work with leaders at all levels and organizations of all sizes to achieve higher levels of performance. She helps leaders to develop clarity of purpose and align their processes and behaviors in service of that purpose. 

Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn: Lessons from Toyota Leader Isao Yoshino on a Lifetime of Continuous Learning a leadership book that defies generational or cultural divides, offering a refreshing, proven perspective for all those who dare to lead. Life is about looking back and reflecting upon experiences with the intention to look forward and envision where your life has the power to take you. Through each story, author Katie Anderson helps to share Isao Yoshino's experiences of leadership, learning, giving and empowering. Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn sheds light on what it means to weave a full life of purpose and intention - to pursue excellence and overcome challenges, to help others discover their best selves, and to develop our best selves at the same time.