JUSTIN FOX: Finally, a better way to do 'performance management'?
'In business, I have found, there is rarely a single right answer'
Jerry Z. Muller is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America known for his finely wrought accounts of capitalism’s intellectual origins. John Doerr is the billionaire chairman of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, known for his early investments in the likes of Amazon.com Inc. and Google. They both have new books out about performance measurement. Muller’s is titled “The Tyranny of Metrics.” Doerr’s is “Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs.” Muller’s book is, as you might expect, more elegant and erudite than Doerr’s. It is also, as you might not expect, shorter. Here’s what I really didn’t expect, though: Muller and Doerr more or less agree about the use and misuse of metrics. I picked up Doerr’s book right after finishing Muller’s this past weekend mainly because the juxtaposition amused me. And yes, stylistically they’re really different! But a core message of both books is that while stan...
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