Stretch OKRs Trigger Infrastructure Resets

“Susan: Aspirational goals can prompt a reset for the entire organization. In our case, it inspired infrastructure initiatives throughout YouTube. People started saying, “If we’re going to be that big, maybe we need to redesign our architecture. Maybe we need to redesign our storage.” It became a prod for the whole company to better prepare for the future. Everybody started thinking bigger.”

“Our landmark OKR had some unanticipated consequences. Through the four-year push to reach the billion hours of daily watch time, our daily views soared in parallel. Stretch OKRs tend to set powerful forces into motion, and you can never be sure where they’ll lead. Another big lesson, for me, was the importance of support from the top—from Susan, of course, but also from Larry and Sergey.”