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christina r wodtke: the R is for radical focus

24 Jun, 10 tweets, 2 min read

The problem with being a recognized "expert" in OKRs is sometimes I get attacked for something someone else is doing (typically a boss) in the name of "OKRs" that I never recommended or endorsed.

People want to tilt at me for things I've vigorously denounced, like using OKRs in performance reviews, because somehow all of the things wrong with OKRs are my fault.

I do feel bad about these things, and often wonder if I had just found the right words in the book or written a more persuasive essay or given a better talk, things might be different.

But I'm a mom of a teenager and I teach college students. I know I can't make anyone do anything. I can't make people listen, I can't make people understand, and I certain have no control over other's actions.
I can only give advice, as clearly as I can manage.

We want heroes and villains, we want someONE to blame. But we're all just humans trying to help other humans and mucking it up as we go along.
Our great hope is tomorrow is a little better than yesterday.

Other people who get what I'm writing and talking about say, "How do I make them do it the right way?"
same answer: you can't. You can only listen, gain social currency, and try explaining things in different ways.

And implement slowly, for heavens sake. Do not expect or demand overnight change. Getting people to change is HARD. (slide from edbatista.com/the-art-of-sel…)
You need Psych safety and for people to believe change is needed for survival.

OKRs are just a little tool that are part of a larger toolbox, and asking it to solve everything and getting mad when it doesn't work is like getting mad at a wrench when you can't use it to remove a screw.

And getting mad at me when OKRs don't do the thing you wish the did, or when someone is doing them wrong? Well it's like teaching a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
(and yes I am the pig in the scenario. I'm ok with that.)

When things go sideways I am more than happy to help figure out how to recover, though, either short form here or over a coaching call.

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christina r wodtke: the R is for radical focus

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Once upon a Time, someone, perhaps Andy Grove, perhaps Peter drucker, came up with a very simple idea. What if we told people what result we wanted and trusted them to figure out how to make that result happen.

They called it managing by objectives. And the big idea was saying, "we'd like to improve engagement." Or "we'd like to make the business successful by becoming the number one name in processors" or "we'd like to make the world's information findable and usable."

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https://twitter.com/emalone/status/1368326281776017415

We wanted to make a magazine for digital product designers. We eschewed loyalty to any faction, which at the time were mostly UX, information architecture and interaction design. We just wanted to offer useful insights, to share knowledge.

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christina r wodtke: the R is for radical focus

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It was design for a service economy: memorable, saleable, repeatable, apparently universal, and slightly vague in the details. | n+1 | nplusonemag.com/?p=11657

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@lauraklein

Since working at Stanford, I've been staring at the design thinking hex-model a bunch. Finally (maybe it was @lauraklein's ranting at me) I see the giant missing puzzle piece.

"Elaborate" is the shortest way to say "huge amounts of fucking detailed thoughtful work."

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