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Christina Wodtke is an author, Stanford University professor, and speaker who teaches strategies for building high-performing teams. She’s also the author of Radical Focus, which some consider the de facto guide to OKRs. In today’s episode, we dive into OKRs and how they can be used to help your team achieve better results. Christina shares her expertise on crafting OKRs, how she uses them in her personal life, and common mistakes you should avoid when you sit down to write your own. She discusses effective goal setting and outlines a systematic approach to achieving key results. Finally, Christina gives some specific tips on how to improve your storytelling and drawing skills and explains why it’s smart to set ambitious goals.

Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-okrs-christina-wodtke-stanford/

Where to find Christina Wodtke:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cwodtke

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinawodtke/

• Website: https://eleganthack.com/

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

Referenced:

• OKR worksheet template: http://eleganthack.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/OKR_Worksheet.pdf

• Yahoo’s peanut butter memo: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116379821933826657

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fable/dp/0787960756/

• Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Focus-Achieving-Important-Objectives/dp/0996006087

• Pencil Me In: https://www.amazon.com/Pencil-Me-Christina-Wodtke-ebook/dp/B075Z8J35G?

• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures: https://www.amazon.com/Back-Napkin-Expanded-Problems-Pictures/dp/1591842697/ref=sr_1_1

• The Minto Pyramid Principle: https://www.barbaraminto.com/

• Lane Shackleton’s guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-coda-builds-product

• The Product Trio by Teresa Torres: https://www.producttalk.org/2021/05/product-trio/

• Ken Norton’s website: https://www.bringthedonuts.com/about/

• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth: https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Organization-Psychological-Workplace-Innovation/dp/1119477247

• The Overstory: https://www.amazon.com/Overstory-Novel-Richard-Powers/dp/039335668X/

• Cloud Atlas: https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Atlas-Novel-David-Mitchell/dp/0375507256

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9114286/

• The Team That Managed Itself: A Story of Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Team-that-Managed-Itself-Leadership-ebook/dp/B07ZG5Y689

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Christina’s background

(04:54) How Christina uses OKRs to manage her personal life

(07:42) The purpose of OKRs

(16:15) Mission, vision, roadmaps, and OKRs

(20:57) How strategy ties in

(22:39) Why OKRs should be kept simple, and the ideal way to express key results

(23:45) The importance of customer satisfaction and why you need a qualitative researcher

(24:58) Common mistakes people make when writing OKRs

(26:14) An example of writing OKRs for an online magazine about interior design

(29:28) The importance of repetition

(33:17) The 5 whys

(36:40) Why you should start OKRs with your best multi-disciplinary team

(38:44) Christina’s book, Radical Focus

(40:26) The importance of storytelling and drawing (even badly!)

(43:21) Tips to become a better storyteller

(44:29) Using the Minto method for storytelling

(46:02) The cadence of OKRs and the importance of celebrations

(51:09) A different kind of approval process to get OKRs done more efficiently

(53:01) Why the focus on learning is more important than grading

(54:29) Why you should set ambitious goals

(57:47) Where to start

(1:00:48) The overemphasis of UX in product management education and the importance of business sense

(1:03:01) Advice for people seeking a career in product management

(1:05:44) Lightning round

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

What’s the secret to coming up with good ideas? For Jeremy Utley, it’s about generating as many as possible. 

The director of executive education at the Stanford d.school, Utley says, “very few problems we face in business or in life have a single right answer.” All ideas — the good, the bad, and the ugly — are “a necessary input to an innovation process,” and an essential step in getting to solutions that will actually work.

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Utley and host Matt Abrahams explore how we can focus less on finding the “right” answer and open ourselves up to more innovative ideas.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How others perceive us in person and via social media can impact our careers and social standing. But we can build the reputation we want through conscious communication.

On this podcast episode, strategic communication lecturers Matt Abrahams and Allison Kluger share techniques on effectively improving and managing your reputation.

Listen for details on this episode’s “homework assignment” and share on LinkedIn.

Join the community & conversation by following the Think Fast, Talk Smart LinkedIn page.

Think Fast, Talk Smart on the Stanford GSB website

Show Notes:

• Allison Kluger, Stanford GSB profile
• Reputation Rules, by Daniel Diermeier
• “How Tylenol Made a Comeback” NYTimes
• Allison Kluger: "Telling your Story Can Lead to Success and Opportunity"
• Allison Kluger: Last Lecture Series: “If Not You, Then Who”

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“We have to make data emotional because emotions are what drive us to act,” says Chip Heath, a professor of organizational behavior and author of the new book, Making Numbers Count: The Art of Science of Communicating Numbers. In this interview with podcast host Matt Abrahams, Heath talks about ways that data and statistics can be used to illuminate — or obscure — our message. “A lot of people in the world don’t understand numbers like the numbers people,” he says. “And there are a lot of untranslated numbers that float around in organizations and in society.” 

Heath suggests thinking about numbers like a foreign language we need to “translate” for our audience: “If we don’t translate numbers into something that’s more tangible, we’re going to sacrifice in a big way.“ 

Think Fast, Talk Smart is a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business. Each episode provides concrete, easy-to-implement tools and techniques to help you hone and enhance your communication skills.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“Social psychologists believe that if we want to understand our own behavior and the behavior of others, the first thing we have to ask or notice is, ‘What is the situation in which they are performing, in which they are behaving?’ And then we want to know as much about the situation as possible.”

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Stanford emeritus psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo sits down with host Matt Abrahams to discuss how time influences our perception and our positive or negative thought processes. The two also talk about how the findings of Zimbardo’s most notable (and controversial) study — the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment — inform our understanding of human behavior. 

Think Fast, Talk Smart is a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business. Each episode provides concrete, easy-to-implement tools and techniques to help you hone and enhance your communication skills.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A chat among several of the founders of online AI-focused magazine The Gradient (thegradient.pub) about its origins and purpose.

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Theme: Deliberate Thought Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Humor does more than just make people laugh. It allows you to connect with your audience, diffuse tension, elevate status, and compel others to your point of view. Humor can also help you and your message stand out, yet most of us hesitate to use humor, especially in our professional lives.

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Matt Abrahams speaks with Stanford GSB Professor Jennifer Aaker and Lecturer Naomi Bagdonas about when and how humor operates in the work place. “Many believe that humor simply has no place amidst serious work,” Professor Aaker says. “Yet showing your sense of humor can make your peers and your friends attribute more perceptions of confidence and status to us while also cultivating a sense of trust.”

Aaker and Bagdonas are are the authors of Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life, which comes out in October of this year.

Think Fast, Talk Smart is a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business and hosted by Matt Abrahams. Each episode provides concrete, easy-to-implement tools and techniques to help you hone and enhance your communication.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Philip Zimbardo, PhD, is one of the most recognizable names in the field of psychology. In this episode, Zimbardo discusses recent criticism of his controversial 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment as well as his other work on time, shyness, men and heroism.

APA is currently seeking proposals for APA 2020, click here to learn more https://convention.apa.org/proposals

The national conversation on opioids focuses mostly on abuse and overdose deaths but there are millions of Americans using opioids to manage chronic pain. Can integrating psychological approaches into pain care offer some patients low-risk pain treatment options? Beth Darnall, PhD, from Stanford University, explains how psychology and mindfulness can treat pain and help people with chronic pain live better lives.

APA is currently seeking proposals for APA 2020, click here to learn more https://convention.apa.org/proposals