All Green Means You Failed

“Altogether, we averaged 62.5 percent (or a raw score of 0.625) on our KRs for this objective, a respectable grade. The Intel board judged it below expectations but not too far below, because they knew how aggressively management set our goals. As a rule, we’d enter a quarter knowing we wouldn’t achieve all of them. If a department so much as approached 100 percent, it was presumed to be setting its sights too low—and there would be hell to pay.”

“ONE mustn’t get institutional; we need to stay disruptive. I’m always scared that we’re going to go corporate and try to beat every quarterly goal. We needed John to remind us, “If everything’s at green, you failed.” That was counterintuitive for a lot of people, especially now that we’re financed up and have the best and the brightest working here. But John kept saying, “More red!” He was right. We needed more big ambitions because that’s what we’re good at. We’re less good at the incremental stuff.”