Navigating OKRs


Book Description

In his book, James P. Anderson offers a comprehensive roadmap for businesses aiming to navigate the complexities of setting and achieving objectives through the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework. This book unpacks the theory behind OKRs, showcases their pivotal role in strategic alignment and performance tracking, and provides a wealth of real-world examples and strategies for effective implementation. It addresses common challenges and misconceptions, ensuring organizations can leverage OKRs to foster transparency, accountability, and sustained growth. Essential for leaders seeking to instill an outcome-oriented culture within their teams, this guide is a must-read for anyone committed to driving their enterprise towards clear, measurable success.




The OKRs Field Book


Book Description

Take your OKRs coaching skills to the next level with this practical handbook. In The OKRs Field Book: A Step-by-Step Guide for Objectives and Key Results Coaches, Ben Lamorte, a seasoned coach and management science expert, provides a structured approach for implementing objectives and key results. This book provides tips and tools that enable you to coach your OKRs clients with confidence. Lamorte analyzes foundational questions that must be answered prior to deploying OKRs and the roles required to sustain an OKRs program. Packed with excerpts from actual OKRs coaching sessions, this step-by-step guide shines a light on the OKRs coaching process. You learn how to help your client refine key results that look like tasks into key results that reflect measurable outcomes. In addition to sample training workshop agendas and coaching emails, Lamorte introduces the first comprehensive list of OKRs coaching questions. The field book covers how to: Structure an OKRs coaching engagement using a three-phased approach. Avoid common pitfalls such as cascading OKRs based on the org chart. Ensure your client asks the right questions at each step of the OKRs cycle. Perfect for external coaches and business mentors looking for a repeatable structure to help their clients succeed with OKRs, The OKRs Field Book is also an indispensable resource for internal coaches looking to support their organization’s OKRs program.




Measure What Matters


Book Description

#1 New York Times Bestseller Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth—and how it can help any organization thrive. In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress—to measure what mattered. Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked. In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization. The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention. In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.




Radical Focus


Book Description

"Radical Focus is a must-read for anyone who wants to accomplish out-sized results. Christina does a great job showing both the why and the how of OKRs. Avoid the all-too-common mistakes by reading this book first." - Teresa Torres, author Continuous Discovery Habits "This book is useful, actionable, and actually fun to read! If you want to get your team aligned around real, measurable goals, Radical Focus will teach you how to do it quickly and clearly." - Laura Klein, Principal, Users Know The award-winning author of The Team That Managed Itself and Pencil Me In returns with a new and expanded edition of her landmark book on OKRs. If you've ever wanted to know how to use OKRs, or why yours might not be working, Radical Focus teaches you everything you need to achieve your goals. The author pulls from her experience with Silicon Valley's hottest companies to teach practical insights on OKRs in the form of a fable.When Hanna and Jack receive an ultimatum from the only investor in their struggling tea supply company, they must learn how to employ Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) with radical focus to get the right things done. Using Hanna and Jack's story, Wodtke walks readers through how to inspire a diverse team to work together in pursuit of a single, challenging goal, and how to stay motivated despite setbacks and failures.Radical Focus has been translated into six languages and sold more than 50,000 copies. Now, the second edition of her OKR manifesto proves that Wodtke's business strategies are essential in a world where focus seems to be a more and more unreachable goal. The updated version includes 22,000 words of all-new material designed to help OKR users in larger companies create, grade, and manage OKRs in ways that accelerate success and drive rapid organizational learning.Ready to move your team in the right direction? Read this book together, and learn Wodtke's powerful system for attaining your most important goals with radical focus.




Objectives and Key Results


Book Description

Everything you need to implement Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) effectively Objectives and Key Results is the first full-fledged reference guide on Objectives and Key Results, a critical thinking framework designed to help organizations create value through focus, alignment, and better communication. Written by two leading OKRs consultants and researchers, this book provides a one-stop resource for organizations looking to quantify qualitative goals and ensure each team focuses their efforts to make measureable progress on their most important goals. You’ll learn how OKRs came to be and how leading companies use them every day to help teams and employees stretch their thinking about what’s possible, build their goal-setting muscles and achieve results that reflect their full potential. From the basic framework to a detailed dissection of best practices, this informative guide walks you through real-world implementations to help you get the most out of OKRs. OKRs help employees work together, focus effort, and drive the organization forward. Key results are used to define what it means to achieve broad, qualitative goals, and imperatives like “do it better” are transformed into clear, measureable markers. From the framework’s inception in the 1980s to its popularity in today’s hyper-competitive environment, OKRs make work more engaging and feature frequent feedback cycles that enable workers to see the progress they make at work each and every day. This book shows you everything you need to know to implement OKRs effectively. Understand the basics of OKRs and their day-to-day use Learn how to gain the executive support critical to a successful implementation Maintain an effective program with key assessment tips Tailor the OKRs framework to your organization’s needs Objectives and Key Results is your key resource for designing, planning, implementing, and maintaining your OKRs program for sustainable company-wide success.




The Team that Managed Itself


Book Description

"In this new book, Christina has tackled what I consider the most important problem in the tech industry. Only a small fraction of product teams are working at their potential, and while there are many reasons, this is the responsibility of management, or the lack thereof. People that care enough to provide the level of coaching to help their people become first competent, and then exceptional at their craft." Marty Cagan, Author of Inspired and Founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group "What if you could learn the secrets of self-managing teams like the best ones you hear about in tech startups? And what if you could learn them through a simple and compelling story about someone like you who is dealing with familiar challenges every day? And what if you could learn them from someone who has spent decades practicing, learning, and teaching these principles to those great teams? That's exactly what you'll get in Christina Wodtke's tour de force, The Team that Managed Itself."Bruce McCarty, Internationally renowned Speaker and Author on Product Management and Founder of Product Culture An Actionable Leadership Book in the Form of a Fable In The Team That Managed Itself, Christina Wodtke teaches leaders how to build and lead high performing teams based on her long career in the trenches in Silicon Valley. Her book is engaging, actionable--and built around a story you'll want to read.After her boss leaves suddenly, Allie finds herself responsible for the casual gaming titan Quiltworld and the dozens of people working on the highly dysfunctional team. Can Allie learn to competently hire, fire, and give feedback in time to make the product's big sales goals? Or will the team, the buggy code, and the beloved game fall apart while Allie's job goes up in smoke? Learn to lead a team along with Allie as she tackles one challenge after another while the clock ticks down.How do you build the right team and choose the goals to pull them to greatness, even if you're dealing with a toxic environment? How do you keep your people moving in the right direction without burning out or burning it all down? As Allie finds out, even in the face of overwhelming pressure it's about setting expectations, giving good feedback, checking in against goals, and learning as a team.. Leading so well that your team learns to manage itself? That's no fable. Learn how from Christina Wodtke.




Lean UX


Book Description

UX design has traditionally been deliverables-based. Wireframes, site maps, flow diagrams, content inventories, taxonomies, mockups helped define the practice in its infancy.Over time, however, this deliverables-heavy process has put UX designers in the deliverables business. Many are now measured and compensated for the depth and breadth of their deliverables instead of the quality and success of the experiences they design. Designers have become documentation subject matter experts, known for the quality of the documents they create instead of the end-state experiences being designed and developed.So what's to be done? This practical book provides a roadmap and set of practices and principles that will help you keep your focus on the the experience back, rather than the deliverables. Get a tactical understanding of how to successfully integrate Lean and UX/Design; Find new material on business modeling and outcomes to help teams work more strategically; Delve into the new chapter on experiment design and Take advantage of updated examples and case studies.




Navigating a Travelling Organization


Book Description

This book dives deep into the "Three Pillar Model" (3-P-Model) applied by the authors for organizations. These pillars are: Sustainable Purpose, Traveling Organization, and Connected Resources. The authors specifically concentrate on the pillar Traveling Organization and help in understanding the concept, its design, and navigation in practice. The expert contributors also show the relevance of the 3-P-Model in diverse areas – from profit and public organizations to the catholic church and cultural work. The navigation is aligned with the pillar Sustainable Purpose and connects professional topics, organizations, and people as three core resources. Organizational scientists, business strategists, and executive MBA students will particularly benefit from this book.




OKRs At The Center


Book Description

Companies today are using OKRs-Objectives and Key Results-to improve the way they set and work with goals. Along the way, they discover something else: changing the way you work with goals can lead to other changes. Changes in how you plan work, how you lead and reward people, how you make decisions, how you budget, and so much more.In short, if you really, sincerely start pursuing goal- setting in a new way, you will discover that goals live at the center of everything you do. What's exciting about this is where it leads: Changing how you work with goals has the potential to drive ongoing change and bring new ways of working to the whole organization. That's what this book is about: how goals live at the center of your organizational system and how you can leverage their potential for organizational development by adopting OKRs in an intentional way.This short, practical book includes case studies, examples, and practical guidance to help you get started on your own OKR journey.Written by Natalija Hellesoe and Sonja Mewes, who bring their extensive experience working OKRs in companies of all sizes. Natalija and Sonja are trainers, coaches, and change agents. They work with companies at different stages of the their OKR journeys-from first "know-how" workshops to OKR Practitioner coaching and organizational development."This book is a great explanation of how to set and deploy OKRs to improve your business. Whereas other books paint a rosy picture of best-case scenario for setting and deploying OKRs, this one focuses on reality. Many companies will see themselves in this book and be able to harness the practical advice in the book to fix their current scenarios and thrive. Highly recommended for every business that's trying to find focus and define impact." - Melissa Perri, author "Escaping The Build Trap"




Moving the Needle With Lean OKRs


Book Description

Leaders in the digital era are faced with breaking into new markets, disrupting existing ones, and doing so with more precision than ever before just to keep up with their competitors. To innovate more quickly, to rapidly experiment with ideas and technology, to pivot seemingly overnight, you need to have a system in place that can help you execute your most ambitious strategy. While OKRs (Objective and Key Results) have made huge waves recently, practical implementation of OKRs remains elusive for many. Lean OKRs are the evolved version of the OKR strategy execution tool that has powered the transformational journeys of giants like Google and Facebook. It is the lightweight method that turns good ideas into great execution, heightens employee engagement, aligns teams, and achieves measurable, breakthrough results. Lean OKRs presents insightful anecdotes, creative exercises, clear figures and step-by-step models. Designed as a comprehensive guide, it covers everything from theoretical roots to practical execution, including company-wide strategy alignment and emotional management. Applicable to small companies as well as large organisations, Lean OKRs drives innovation through behavioral changes, empowering and motivating teams through focused daily OKR practices that are simple to put into action. Practical and to the point, this book integrates a unique combination of structural and leadership strategies, resulting in a new approach to OKRs that conquers the hurdles experienced by most business leaders today.