Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results by Christina Wodtke. After reading John Doerr’s Measure What Matters it was a short trip to discover Christina’s book as a worthy follow-up.
Christina certainly established herself in Silicon Valley. Leadership roles at LinkedIn, Myspace and most recently Zynga.com serve her key message why OKRs are essential and not just limited to startups.
Further, her insights consulting with Yahoo, Hot Studio, and The New York Times solidify her experience. Today Christina teaches at Stanford.
Listening to Atruity Consultancy’s OKRs Q&A Podcast and following single episode OKR podcasts, it is clear Radical Focus holds impactful messages. It is and yet is delivered in a very unique way.
Above all, in the growing pandemic how can organizations inspire diverse teams to address unplanned challenges while collaborating remotely OKRs provide a framework for regular check-ins, reviewing weekly key results, adjust to setbacks and unplanned failures, while striving amid COVID to create success.
TeaBee
Likewise, Radical Focus is an actionable business book in the form of a fable as stated up front by Christina. To clarify, I had to stop myself from Googling their startup name. The narrative is a fictional case study of two recent MBA grads Hanna and Jack, who are stumbling in their newly launched startup. Likewise after hard lessons, they learn the practical steps they need to take to do what must be done.
When the two receive an ultimatum from their only investor, they must learn how to employ Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) with radical focus to get the right things done. Will they be able to accomplish the few critical actions that will save their startup?
They fight shiny object syndrome, losing focus, and dealing with communication issues.
COVID
The agile structure of OKRs certainly demonstrate a proven solution in a COVID-19 world. Organizational SMART goals based performance upon an annual approach. That view became successful since the mid 1980s. Yet 40 years later most organizations cannot pivot to their implementation to the demands of COVID-19.
How many organizations continue sitting on SMART goals established last December? Certainly COVID-19 drove massive change upon organizations in an unplanned and dynamic scale. How many SMART goals are simply obsolete? HR professionals must already understand the agile strength of OKRs.
OKR Resources
In addition, the second half of the book demonstrates how to use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to help teams realize big goals in a methodical way, leaving nothing to chance.
Laid out in a practical but compelling way, she makes the lessons of Hanna and Jack’s story clear and actionable. In conclusion, Christina communicates OKR values via a fun, engaging narrative. Certainly her message resonates.
Agile Spain | Radical Focus and Empowered Teams
Being Human Podcast | Objectives and Key Results
Dan Olsen | Beyond OKRs: The Formula for High Performing Teams
Dan Olsen | How to Influence Without Authority by OKR
BigSpeak Speakers Bureau | Reboot Your Team
Readara | How Entrepreneurs Focus to Achieve Goals