Christina WodtkeBesprekingen

About Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and how to implement them. Mentions applications for individual + team/organizational use, but the focus is mainly in organizations. You'll learn:
• What are OKRs, and how/why they work;
• The pre-requisites, components, and steps to set and implement OKRs; and
• Useful templates and tips to successfully use OKRs to maximize results at individual, team, and organizational levels.
Book summary at: https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-radical-focus-christina-wodtke/

Reasonable intro

This is a great small book introducing to the concept of OKR. It does not go too deep into explaining how to set up and monitor OKRs, however, a book is perfect to understand the main idea behind it. Book consists of entertaining fable ( a story about fictional startup) and more formal part explaining basic concepts.

I've read it when we already were using OKR for some time in our company so there were not so many new things but confidence levels were something new and we successfully adopted that in our team. It helps to remind us about our KRs during sprint meetings.

While the book is great for introduction, it is lacking deeper insights.

I love this quote from the book which sums up it pretty nicely:

“You don’t need people to work more, you need people to work on the right things,”

Borrowing language from the book, Radical Focus will give you a path into the future that uses Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to align your work to OUTCOMES, not merely plans or initiatives.

Being anchored on ACTUAL RESULTS helps teams become more innovative, pivot when appropriate, and experiment to understand the best market fit for your products. Part One includes an engaging story / business use case in need of OKRs. Part Two provides what is needed to implement OKRs, including how to bookend the week by setting intentions on Monday, celebrating successes on Friday, setting and evaluating progress quarterly, and how to implement OKRs in three special cases, exploratory work for "start-ups" and innovation teams, Hypothesis OKRs for understanding whether to pivot or persevere on the road you are on, and Milestone OKRs to link your work on long-term initiatives to OUTCOMES rather than outputs.

Of particular interest is Wodtke's adaptation of the Boston Consulting Group's 2 by 2 matrix for mapping each product in your portfolio to a Market Growth versus Relative Market Share matrix. Different products will require different types of measurement. Your "Question Mark" products should have exploratory OKRs. Your "Star" products should have expansion OKRs: State your objectives, and set KRs that tell you how high the ceiling goes. Your "Cash Cow" products will be those in saturated markets where measuring by growth would be frustrating, but maintaining them adequately will continue positive returns. Lastly, your Dog products occupy fading market positions that are costing you time and resources with inadequate return on your investment.

The author has extensive experience in web product work as well as consulting and teaching.

Best combo of a fable and how-to manual for managers.

I dislike fable books. I find them too simplistic. I dislike fiction in general because I find it hard to connect with the characters. This book proved me wrong on both counts. The fable was nuanced and the characters engaging. THEN the last half of the book was a manual with models, diagrams and explanations of how to apply all the things the main character did in the fable part.

I had been taking notes in the fable part, then the authors give you all the good stuff and much more in the second part of the book. They cover models for (in no particular order) these things:

- Managers job = hiring, firing & coaching in between.
- How to do 1 on 1 meetings
- Some great tips on using OKRs properly.
- A model for how to give Feedback - and it isn't the sh*t sandwich.
- The GROW model for coaching
- Team building: Goals, Roles, Norms
- A great way to develop job descriptions
- Some advice on performance reviews
- Empathy map & 360 visual evaluation
- How to pull off some of the touchy-feely stuff from T-groups.

My biggest gripe is with the title. I firmly believe that the idea of self-management is a false hope. Managers serve two functions: to help people do their work better and to integrate / align their work into the over-all direction of the larger organization. This book focuses on the first of those, and doesn't really get into the second. That may be because it is heavily focused on the role of a typical mid level manager in a tech company.

This is a very dense, useful, and also readable and practical book. It's for anyone who wants to learn how to be a better manager and is willing to put in the time and self reflection that managing other people requires. It's great to see so much practical wisdom all in one place.

A good model that emphasizes outcomes over output. OKRs themselves are a prop for the larger goal of creating a culture of productive focus and accountability. A little rough around the edges, the telling in the form of a fable (a la Patrick Leoncini) is a great way to introduce the concept, and more importantly, speak to the process of change management.

I used this book for a web design class ages ago. I remember liking it, and if I recall correctly, it wasn't a how to code book as much as it was about how to present information in a clear way. Not sure how dated it would be today.

This is a solid introduction to information architecture. No, it isn't Morville and Rosenfeld's Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, but Wodtke and Govella's book covers the essentials, does so in a friendly, non-frightening way, and is a little more portable than the polar bear book. Plus, it's actually enjoyable to read, which is a good thing in its own right.½

Although not as in-depth as 'the polar bear book' by Morville and Rosenfeld, this book on IA is much more approachable, and therefore perhaps easier to introduce IA concepts to interested colleagues. Also has some tips on keeping care of yourself as you play the IA game.½

This book covers a range of core concepts in the field of information architecture. It’s packed with practical advice and is downright fun to read. This is the kind of book you can read in a few sittings.