Coach Me! Your Personal Board of Directors

40 Objectives and Key Results

Patti P. Phillips PhD

Patti P. Phillips, PhD, is CEO of ROI Institute, Inc., the leading source of ROI competency building, implementation support, networking, and research. She helps organizations implement the ROI Methodology, provides consulting services, and facilitates workshops for major conferences worldwide. Patti is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 75 books.

Andy Grove was a no-nonsense executive who changed the world. As one of the founders of Intel, along with Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce, Andy helped build this successful computer chip manufacturing company. He also did something that no other top executive of a major corporation had accomplished. He delivered over 40% annual stockholders’ return for 11 years in a row. In 1997, almost three decades after Intel was founded, Andy Grove was named Time magazine’s Manager of the Year. According to Time, “Andy was the person most responsible for the amazing growth in the power and innovative potential of microchips.”

OKR Definition

The secret to Andy’s success is a system he developed called objectives and key results (OKRs). Building on the work of Peter Drucker, who had developed and coined the term “Management by Objectives,” Andy made goal setting powerful, systematic, and transparent in Intel. He explained that OKRs have two parts. The first part is a direction (something that you want to do or achieve). The second part is the key result, the measure that shows if the objective ...