In the fall of 1979, Intel president Andy Grove faced a huge challenge. The Santa Clara-based tech company was falling behind its competitors and deals were evaporating into thin air. Its main competitor, Motorola, had just launched an innovative new microprocessor and Intel’s sales leaders became worried as they watched it quickly take over the market. Grove knew he needed to make some radical changes if the company was to survive. And he needed to start at the top. Intel, like most companies at the time, were adherents to a “topdown” management system that had dominated the business world since the Industrial Revolution. Managers told their teams what to do and their employees executed those instructions exactly as told. That approach worked for factory assembly lines, but it didn’t make sense at Intel, a company that traded on innovation and creativity. Grove ripped up the old-school management rule book and set out to design a new goal-setting methodology from scratch. He called it Intel Management by Objectives. The name was later simplified to Objectives and Key Results—better known today as OKRs.
It worked on the revolutionary idea that teams perform better by focusing on outcomes, not procedure. Instead of telling Intel’s employees precisely what to do, he’d set them a goal and let them work out how to achieve them. The change lit a rocket under the troubled company. During Grove’s 19-year tenure at the helm, Intel went from industry laggard to trailblazing icon, increasing its revenues from $1.9 billion to $26 billion in the process. Grove taught his OKR system to hundreds of people at Intel, including John Doerr, who famously codified his work and transported it to the rest of Silicon Valley. There, it spread like wildfire. In his book Measure What Matters, Doerr distilled Grove’s ideology to one simple template: I will [objective] as measured by [key result]. The objective is the goal you want to achieve and the key result is the metric by which you’ll measure your progress. It’s a simple but immensely flexible template that bends and bows to fit nearly every purpose. For instance, OKRs have become just as effective at guiding public policy as they are at directing specific projects for a tech startup.
rolling hills of Upstate New York, the city uses OKRs to drive its financial and social developments
OBJECTIVE
Increase economic investment and neighborhood stability
KEY RESULT 1
95% of permits and zoning approvals will be issued on time
KEY RESULT 2
Increase compliance of code violations by the comply by date from 20% to 35%
KEY RESULT 3
Improve stability in the quality of life pilot area by 20%.
In the fall of 1979, Intel president Andy Grove faced a huge challenge. The Santa Clara-based tech company was falling behind its competitors and deals were evaporating into thin air. Its main competitor, Motorola, had just launched an innovative new microprocessor and Intel’s sales leaders became worried as they watched it quickly take over the market. Grove knew he needed to make some radical changes if the company was to survive. And he needed to start at the top. Intel, like most companies at the time, were adherents to a “topdown” management system that had dominated the business world since the Industrial Revolution. Managers told their teams what to do and their employees executed those instructions exactly as told. That approach worked for factory assembly lines, but it didn’t make sense at Intel, a company that traded on innovation and creativity. Grove ripped up the old-school management rule book and set out to design a new goal-setting methodology from scratch. He called it Intel Management by Objectives. The name was later simplified to Objectives and Key Results—better known today as OKRs.
It worked on the revolutionary idea that teams perform better by focusing on outcomes, not procedure. Instead of telling Intel’s employees precisely what to do, he’d set them a goal and let them work out how to achieve them. The change lit a rocket under the troubled company. During Grove’s 19-year tenure at the helm, Intel went from industry laggard to trailblazing icon, increasing its revenues from $1.9 billion to $26 billion in the process. Grove taught his OKR system to hundreds of people at Intel, including John Doerr, who famously codified his work and transported it to the rest of Silicon Valley. There, it spread like wildfire. In his book Measure What Matters, Doerr distilled Grove’s ideology to one simple template: I will [objective] as measured by [key result]. The objective is the goal you want to achieve and the key result is the metric by which you’ll measure your progress. It’s a simple but immensely flexible template that bends and bows to fit nearly every purpose. For instance, OKRs have become just as effective at guiding public policy as they are at directing specific projects for a tech startup.
Almost all leaders acknowledge how important mission, objectives, and goals are to their organization. Indeed, a recent report found that some 86% of leaders say defining a purpose is essential to a successful growth strategy. But often leaders misdiagnose the challenge of purpose as solely a communication or transparency problem.
They “solve” the challenge by sharing OKRs at all-hands meetings or including them in company-wide newsletters. Few realize that this doesn’t go far enough. Nudging someone occasionally causes a spark of engagement. For an hour—possibly even a day—they feel a connection to the why behind their work. But eventually, the spark fades and people slip back into a murky work environment where they know what they’re doing, but not why they’re doing it
This organizational confusion is remarkably common. The Anatomy of Work Index, which surveyed over 10,000 knowledge workers, found that just 43% of people understood their organization’s overarching mission and less than half of all employees understood how their day-to-day work contributed to broader goals.
At Asana, our company mission—enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly—is built on our philosophy that having clarity of purpose, plan, and responsibility is what enables teams to do their best work together.
So in order to reap the full benefits of OKRs and drive sustained alignment, goals must be ingrained in our daily work. Otherwise, alignment is happening at a moment in time, removed from when teams are actually executing
