Are OKRs o-v-e-r?

Suzanne: Welcome to the 100 PM author series. This season, we are talking to the authors of our favorite product management books and I'm thrilled to be kicking off our very first episode, with Christina Wodtke, design thinker, information architect, OKR evangelist and author of the book, "Radical Focus." Christina, welcome to the pod.

Christina: Thank you so much. I feel like I learn so much about myself every time somebody introduces me.

Suzanne: Well and since you've got a long list of credentials, maybe you can introduce yourself to our audience by telling our listeners, what's one thing about you, that we probably can't find out on Google

Christina: As I said before earlier, when we were chatting, I think a lot is on Google because I do tend to live a lot of my life just in public. I don't really worry about it much, but I will say one thing that you might not be able to put together very easily, is that I'm a very, very good cook because I take cooking lessons everywhere I go.

I actually went to culinary school for six weeks, when I was trying to figure out how to change my life. So some people know I went to culinary school but I also went to the Cordon Bleu.

I studied in Thailand at Sitka, I've studied in Mexico. I find that getting to know people through their food and their culture is such a satisfying way to do things. And I also like leaning back and letting somebody teach me something for a change.

52 00:02:28,940 --> 00:02:31,320 Since I teach full time at Stanford,

53 00:02:31,320 --> 00:02:33,320 it's kinda nice to relax and just learn.

54 00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:36,170

• That's a delicious update.

55 00:02:36,170 --> 00:02:39,120 So you could be a contender

56 00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:41,670 for Master Chef when the next season rolls around

57 00:02:41,670 --> 00:02:44,520 and just be one of those experts that show the judges

58 00:02:44,520 --> 00:02:47,160 how to get things done in the kitchen.

59 00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:48,860

• I could be, except I'm gonna say

60 00:02:48,860 --> 00:02:50,280 cooking is really hard on the body,

61 00:02:50,280 --> 00:02:52,400 so I don't do much professional cooking.

62 00:02:52,400 --> 00:02:54,420 But my daughter seems to like my cooking just fine.

63 00:02:54,420 --> 00:02:56,780 So I have an appreciative audience.

64 00:02:56,780 --> 00:02:58,250

• Love that, love that.

65 00:02:58,250 --> 00:03:01,600 Now "Radical Focus," is not a new book.

66 00:03:01,600 --> 00:03:05,320 In fact, here at 100 PM, it's a many times

67 00:03:05,320 --> 00:03:07,910 over recommended read from some of our past guests

68 00:03:07,910 --> 00:03:11,030 so all of our guests are product leaders around the world.

69 00:03:11,030 --> 00:03:13,330 We always ask, what are your favorite reads?

70 00:03:13,330 --> 00:03:16,237 And over and over again, we hear Christina Wodtke,

71 00:03:16,237 --> 00:03:18,990 "Radical Focus," Christina Wodtke, for our listeners,

72 00:03:18,990 --> 00:03:22,780 it is on our reading list at the 100 PM website

73 00:03:22,780 --> 00:03:26,050 and so we're talking about it today

74 00:03:26,050 --> 00:03:27,750 because after just five years,

75 00:03:27,750 --> 00:03:29,760 we're getting a second edition.

76 00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:31,940

• Yes. That's always the question.

77 00:03:31,940 --> 00:03:33,680 Is it too soon for a second edition?

78 00:03:33,680 --> 00:03:35,270 Is it too late for a second edition?

79 00:03:35,270 --> 00:03:37,320 When does a second edition even come out?

80 00:03:38,250 --> 00:03:41,210 But since I've been consulting

81 00:03:41,210 --> 00:03:44,140 and I've been consulting on and off longer than five years,

82 00:03:44,140 --> 00:03:46,680 because I started with a blog post much in the way

83 00:03:46,680 --> 00:03:49,100 Eric Ries started with Lean Startup.

84 00:03:49,100 --> 00:03:51,980 I just, I thought I was writing a book for startups.

85 00:03:51,980 --> 00:03:54,630 I was like, gosh, startups have a really hard time focusing,

86 00:03:54,630 --> 00:03:55,910 there's so many shiny objects,

87 00:03:55,910 --> 00:03:57,770 there's so many things they can do.

88 00:03:57,770 --> 00:04:01,680 And yet they were unable to focus

89 00:04:01,680 --> 00:04:03,720 on product market fit and getting there.

90 00:04:03,720 --> 00:04:08,720 And so in between no longer working at SINGA

91 00:04:10,020 --> 00:04:15,020 and deciding to teach, I was advising a bunch of startups.

92 00:04:15,260 --> 00:04:18,080 And I was like, well we used OKRs at SINGA,

93 00:04:18,080 --> 00:04:19,250 let's try it.

94 00:04:19,250 --> 00:04:20,320 And people will be like, eh

95 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:22,380 I don't know, methodologies too much

96 00:04:22,380 --> 00:04:25,350 so I kept narrowing it down, making it simpler and simpler.

97 00:04:25,350 --> 00:04:28,240 And when I had something that was really helping startups,

98 00:04:28,240 --> 00:04:31,590 I went ahead and wrote the book and published it.

99 00:04:31,590 --> 00:04:33,200 And I did it in a very Lean Startup way.

100 00:04:33,200 --> 00:04:35,850 I wrote a prototype and sold it at South by Southwest

101 00:04:35,850 --> 00:04:38,200 and the feedback informed the final book.

102 00:04:38,200 --> 00:04:40,570 But after five years,

103 00:04:40,570 --> 00:04:44,610 I just kept seeing people do things that were just wrong

104 00:04:44,610 --> 00:04:46,630 or maybe wrong is not the right word.

105 00:04:46,630 --> 00:04:48,530 The right word would be, they were doing things

106 00:04:48,530 --> 00:04:50,660 that were not allowing them to meet their goals.

107 00:04:50,660 --> 00:04:53,000 And that just was breaking my heart because I wrote this

108 00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:55,130 so people could meet their goals, right?

109 00:04:55,130 --> 00:04:57,620 I've never wanted to be a big fancy consultant.

110 00:04:57,620 --> 00:04:59,600 I'm very happy in my teaching job.

111 00:04:59,600 --> 00:05:01,340 I'm very happy writing books,

112 00:05:01,340 --> 00:05:04,940 but I'm very unhappy when I see people struggling

113 00:05:04,940 --> 00:05:07,620 to do the things that they want most out of life.

114 00:05:07,620 --> 00:05:09,750 And so I thought, well, let's see,

115 00:05:09,750 --> 00:05:12,437 we've evolved so many practices for OKRs

116 00:05:12,437 --> 00:05:14,560 for the various companies I've worked with,

117 00:05:14,560 --> 00:05:16,780 maybe it's time to just write all that up.

118 00:05:16,780 --> 00:05:18,160 And sometimes I have to admit

119 00:05:18,160 --> 00:05:20,520 I got some stuff really wrong, like cascading.

120 00:05:20,520 --> 00:05:23,200 Awesome if you have a eight person startup,

121 00:05:23,200 --> 00:05:26,023 death if you have 800 or more, right?

122 00:05:27,530 --> 00:05:30,890

• Well and I wanna dive into a lot of the differences

123 00:05:30,890 --> 00:05:32,993 in the new edition because you're right.

124 00:05:34,130 --> 00:05:36,620 It's clear that you've been on a reflective journey

125 00:05:36,620 --> 00:05:38,120 since the first release

126 00:05:38,120 --> 00:05:40,400 but for the benefit of our listeners

127 00:05:40,400 --> 00:05:43,090 who maybe haven't actually read the book at all

128 00:05:43,090 --> 00:05:47,450 and because we are product managers here in this audience,

129 00:05:47,450 --> 00:05:51,340 what I wanna know is what is the kinda customer problems

130 00:05:51,340 --> 00:05:53,470 solution construct here?

131 00:05:53,470 --> 00:05:55,800 Who is "Radical Focus" for,

132 00:05:55,800 --> 00:05:59,240 what's the problem you were to solve with the book,

133 00:05:59,240 --> 00:06:02,240 and what's different about your approach

134 00:06:02,240 --> 00:06:04,390 as compared with others that are out there?

135 00:06:05,510 --> 00:06:09,270

• Well, first of all, as you know I said,

136 00:06:09,270 --> 00:06:13,650 startups have trouble focusing on the critical work

137 00:06:13,650 --> 00:06:16,680 and they get very distracted by opportunities.

138 00:06:16,680 --> 00:06:18,360 I'm working with a small startup now

139 00:06:18,360 --> 00:06:20,330 that is in the entertainment space

140 00:06:20,330 --> 00:06:22,680 and just her head keeps getting turned,

141 00:06:22,680 --> 00:06:24,360 Oh I'm meeting with Lucas films,

142 00:06:24,360 --> 00:06:27,270 I'm meeting with this person and that person,

143 00:06:27,270 --> 00:06:31,150 they get really excited and it's like, but what's your core?

144 00:06:31,150 --> 00:06:32,890 What are you trying to do right here?

145 00:06:32,890 --> 00:06:35,360 What does it look like when you hit product market fit?

146 00:06:35,360 --> 00:06:37,290 And so in the new book for that,

147 00:06:37,290 --> 00:06:40,300 I ended up putting in what I call exploratory OKRs

148 00:06:40,300 --> 00:06:44,250 which means I want something and I'm not sure what it is,

149 00:06:44,250 --> 00:06:46,130 but I do know it'll have these results.

150 00:06:46,130 --> 00:06:47,870 I do know it will bring in a certain amount of money.

151 00:06:47,870 --> 00:06:49,860 I do know it'll have a certain kind of growth.

152 00:06:49,860 --> 00:06:52,230 All those things sort of codified a little more

153 00:06:52,230 --> 00:06:54,193 for startups, because I think startups,

154 00:06:55,040 --> 00:06:57,160 you know what they say, they die of indigestion

155 00:06:57,160 --> 00:06:58,760 more often than they die of starvation,

156 00:06:58,760 --> 00:07:02,070 I forget whose quote that is, but that's just so right on.

157 00:07:02,070 --> 00:07:05,360 They're so busy running after every single shiny object

158 00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:10,360 but then when you look at enterprise, enterprise is huge.

159 00:07:12,690 --> 00:07:14,910 And when people ask me,

160 00:07:14,910 --> 00:07:16,530 what is it like to work at Google,

161 00:07:16,530 --> 00:07:18,390 'cause I've got friends there or Facebook

162 00:07:18,390 --> 00:07:21,780 or so on any big company, is no longer a company,

163 00:07:21,780 --> 00:07:23,260 it's no longer a culture,

164 00:07:23,260 --> 00:07:25,220 it's a bunch of small city states.

165 00:07:25,220 --> 00:07:27,840 And each city state has its own goals,

166 00:07:27,840 --> 00:07:31,140 its own profit margin, its own culture

167 00:07:31,140 --> 00:07:33,340 and it's really important to recognize that

168 00:07:33,340 --> 00:07:36,750 so that when you bring OKRs into an enterprise,

169 00:07:36,750 --> 00:07:38,560 you can't do a direct cost cascade

170 00:07:38,560 --> 00:07:39,790 'cause it's just takes too long

171 00:07:39,790 --> 00:07:43,030 and it's just too hard and you don't know enough.

172 00:07:43,030 --> 00:07:44,930 So you have to start thinking okay,

173 00:07:44,930 --> 00:07:47,700 one OKR per business model perhaps,

174 00:07:47,700 --> 00:07:50,640 or maybe one OKR per product market fit,

175 00:07:50,640 --> 00:07:52,110 that's already been established.

176 00:07:52,110 --> 00:07:53,800 These are the kinds of things that will help you

177 00:07:53,800 --> 00:07:55,880 when you're really digging in deep

178 00:07:55,880 --> 00:07:58,750 and sometimes a company will

179 00:07:58,750 --> 00:08:02,090 come up with an OKR that is good for huge enterprise company

180 00:08:02,090 --> 00:08:03,840 like join the digital age.

181 00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:06,400 That's something that will happen everywhere, right?

182 00:08:06,400 --> 00:08:09,530 Or understand what social means to our product.

183 00:08:09,530 --> 00:08:11,660 But most of the time it's a little smaller

184 00:08:11,660 --> 00:08:13,883 and it's better done at the lower levels.

185 00:08:14,910 --> 00:08:18,310

• Yeah and I think one of the things that strikes me

186 00:08:18,310 --> 00:08:20,797 and I mean, I guess this gets to the core of the title too,

187 00:08:20,797 --> 00:08:24,380 "Radical Focus," a lot of people when they get introduced

188 00:08:24,380 --> 00:08:27,740 to OKRs they sort of, they either get introduced to them

189 00:08:27,740 --> 00:08:29,710 sort of through John Doerr's sort of

190 00:08:29,710 --> 00:08:34,030 vis-a-vis the intel legacy or vis-a-vis the Google rollout.

191 00:08:34,030 --> 00:08:38,150 And so people become obsessed with that cascade

192 00:08:38,150 --> 00:08:40,130 of the company objective,

193 00:08:40,130 --> 00:08:41,950 down to the next tier of management,

194 00:08:41,950 --> 00:08:44,630 down to the next tier and down to the next tier

195 00:08:44,630 --> 00:08:46,470 and one of the things that I hear you

196 00:08:46,470 --> 00:08:49,190 advocating for in the book is like

197 00:08:49,190 --> 00:08:53,323 the one OKR to sort of govern it all,

198 00:08:54,680 --> 00:08:57,780 almost even in front of cascading it all

199 00:08:57,780 --> 00:09:01,530 it almost seems like the idea of whether or not to cascade

200 00:09:01,530 --> 00:09:04,030 might be somewhat relative to

201 00:09:04,030 --> 00:09:06,530 how many other people are we gonna try to

202 00:09:06,530 --> 00:09:08,673 pull in behind this?

203 00:09:09,587 --> 00:09:10,900 Can you speak to that a little bit?

204 00:09:10,900 --> 00:09:12,493

• Absolutely. Absolutely.

205 00:09:13,540 --> 00:09:16,180 The point of OKRs being so short,

206 00:09:16,180 --> 00:09:17,820 well there's a lot of advantages to that

207 00:09:17,820 --> 00:09:21,005 but one is simply the limitations of human memory.

208 00:09:21,005 --> 00:09:24,000 A lot of people have heard of the magic number seven

209 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:25,440 plus or minus two

210 00:09:25,440 --> 00:09:28,450 but the reality is that if you look at the updates

211 00:09:28,450 --> 00:09:31,370 it's really closer to maybe four or maybe five.

212 00:09:31,370 --> 00:09:35,030 So by creating a singular OKR set and remember,

213 00:09:35,030 --> 00:09:38,120 OKRs aren't one thing, they're four things, right? Or more.

214 00:09:38,120 --> 00:09:40,410 There are an objective and three key results.

215 00:09:40,410 --> 00:09:42,310 So you have to hold all that in your mind

216 00:09:42,310 --> 00:09:44,490 and be able to drag it out and hold it

217 00:09:44,490 --> 00:09:47,120 in your working memory while you're doing prioritization.

218 00:09:47,120 --> 00:09:49,120 And then maybe it can fall backwards.

219 00:09:49,120 --> 00:09:53,300 But it's really important to dig the grooves of memory

220 00:09:53,300 --> 00:09:55,280 that will guide you to the OKRs.

221 00:09:55,280 --> 00:09:57,410 And by that you do it by checking in

222 00:09:57,410 --> 00:09:58,710 over and over and over again,

223 00:09:58,710 --> 00:10:00,240 which is why we have our Mondays,

224 00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:02,930 why we have our Friday celebrations,

225 00:10:02,930 --> 00:10:06,160 why we have the email status report,

226 00:10:06,160 --> 00:10:08,010 which is super lightweight.

227 00:10:08,010 --> 00:10:11,540 It's about making sure that every time anybody says,

228 00:10:11,540 --> 00:10:13,860 what should I do right now, they have an answer.

229 00:10:13,860 --> 00:10:15,890 Well, is it moving an OKR or not?

230 00:10:15,890 --> 00:10:18,720 Or is it basically helping our health metrics

231 00:10:18,720 --> 00:10:21,193 which are the things we use to balance the OKRs.

232 00:10:22,380 --> 00:10:24,760 So in that case we really have to focus on

233 00:10:24,760 --> 00:10:25,810 keeping it simple.

234 00:10:25,810 --> 00:10:28,420 But also I see a lot of weirdness

235 00:10:28,420 --> 00:10:31,380 in the way people will come up with multiple OKRs,

236 00:10:31,380 --> 00:10:34,230 like they think they only have three key results.

237 00:10:34,230 --> 00:10:37,060 So they'll have a second objective, which is unnecessary.

238 00:10:37,060 --> 00:10:39,290 You could have one key result, you could have five,

239 00:10:39,290 --> 00:10:40,870 I recommend again 16

240 00:10:40,870 --> 00:10:43,370 'cause then we're starting to push against memory again.

241 00:10:43,370 --> 00:10:47,740 That kind of focus forces you also to think longer term.

242 00:10:47,740 --> 00:10:50,070 And this is a really weird thing I see

243 00:10:50,070 --> 00:10:51,100 when I talk to people

244 00:10:51,100 --> 00:10:54,170 is they have a really hard time thinking beyond

245 00:10:54,170 --> 00:10:56,920 this quarter, but guess what,

246 00:10:56,920 --> 00:10:58,550 you could do something next quarter

247 00:10:58,550 --> 00:10:59,733 and you could do something in Q3

248 00:10:59,733 --> 00:11:01,940 and you can do something in Q4 and it's okay.

249 00:11:01,940 --> 00:11:04,340 So when you think of these things you want to accomplish

250 00:11:04,340 --> 00:11:06,690 and the limited resources you have

251 00:11:06,690 --> 00:11:08,820 sequencing becomes really powerful.

252 00:11:08,820 --> 00:11:10,540 So what do we do first,

253 00:11:10,540 --> 00:11:13,130 and that'll create the alerting to go to the second thing

254 00:11:13,130 --> 00:11:14,390 and it'll go to the third thing

255 00:11:14,390 --> 00:11:16,500 and because you're product management folks,

256 00:11:16,500 --> 00:11:19,480 you know that doing conversion before retention

257 00:11:19,480 --> 00:11:21,200 means you convert people they leave,

258 00:11:21,200 --> 00:11:22,680 acquisition before conversion

259 00:11:22,680 --> 00:11:24,960 you set a bunch of people there and they leave.

260 00:11:24,960 --> 00:11:27,820 So if you can be really thoughtful about your sequencing,

261 00:11:27,820 --> 00:11:29,470 you can get a lot of power.

262 00:11:29,470 --> 00:11:32,020 Plus all those grooves in the brain have been made

263 00:11:32,020 --> 00:11:35,190 and at that point, 'cause retrieval practice

264 00:11:35,190 --> 00:11:36,430 improves memory.

265 00:11:36,430 --> 00:11:39,250 So that means by the end of the year,

266 00:11:39,250 --> 00:11:41,320 you've got an entire team who did acquisition

267 00:11:41,320 --> 00:11:42,660 and hire team great at conversion

268 00:11:42,660 --> 00:11:43,930 and entire team great at retention

269 00:11:43,930 --> 00:11:46,200 and how powerful is that?

270 00:11:46,200 --> 00:11:49,700

• Yeah. And is your recommendation.

271 00:11:49,700 --> 00:11:52,100 So I like the point that you make about

272 00:11:52,100 --> 00:11:54,337 guess what you get set goals again.

273 00:11:54,337 --> 00:11:57,670 You're only committing to these if you're a startup,

274 00:11:57,670 --> 00:11:59,810 you're only committing to these for the next three months

275 00:11:59,810 --> 00:12:01,730 and then we promise there's gonna be more

276 00:12:01,730 --> 00:12:03,950 and if you get to keep having years of runway,

277 00:12:03,950 --> 00:12:06,770 you're gonna have many many more kicks at the can on this.

278 00:12:06,770 --> 00:12:10,930 And you speak about this in terms of

279 00:12:10,930 --> 00:12:13,320 how do you pair it back to make it kind of

280 00:12:13,320 --> 00:12:14,870 right sized or realistic.

281 00:12:14,870 --> 00:12:18,458 So let's take as an example, we've got an objective,

282 00:12:18,458 --> 00:12:22,160 we want to expand into new markets.

283 00:12:22,160 --> 00:12:27,160 And so do we keep that objective throughout

284 00:12:27,670 --> 00:12:31,800 and change the key result to make it expand into California,

285 00:12:31,800 --> 00:12:34,330 expand into New York in Q2.

286 00:12:34,330 --> 00:12:39,330 How would you advise somebody to stay with a big aspiration

287 00:12:40,410 --> 00:12:42,740 but use the OKR methodology

288 00:12:42,740 --> 00:12:47,130 to actually make those quarterly goals attainable

289 00:12:47,130 --> 00:12:49,900 or feel attainable against them?

290 00:12:52,020 --> 00:12:53,570

• There is a lot of awesome

291 00:12:53,570 --> 00:12:55,540 in that question you just asked me.

292 00:12:55,540 --> 00:12:59,420 First of all, you might notice it includes a strategy.

293 00:12:59,420 --> 00:13:00,890 There's an idea there.

294 00:13:00,890 --> 00:13:03,410 And one of the things I say is I really recommend

295 00:13:03,410 --> 00:13:06,570 against using OKRs until you have a clear strategy.

296 00:13:06,570 --> 00:13:10,190 So when I hear the strategy, I hear you talking about

297 00:13:10,190 --> 00:13:14,330 all of North America and then I hear certain spots

298 00:13:14,330 --> 00:13:16,150 are more important than others.

299 00:13:16,150 --> 00:13:18,020 So there is probably a strategy behind that.

300 00:13:18,020 --> 00:13:19,810 The OKR didn't make the strategy,

301 00:13:19,810 --> 00:13:22,870 the OKR made sure everybody was pointed at the strategy

302 00:13:22,870 --> 00:13:25,550 and knew what it was and knew how to act against it.

303 00:13:25,550 --> 00:13:27,890 So if you're moving into San Francisco,

304 00:13:27,890 --> 00:13:29,640 yes and you have some key results

305 00:13:29,640 --> 00:13:31,930 about whether or not that's being successful

306 00:13:31,930 --> 00:13:33,600 and from that learning,

307 00:13:33,600 --> 00:13:37,030 you might actually do the same key results all over again.

308 00:13:37,030 --> 00:13:40,630 Let's say you wanna bring your product to San Francisco

309 00:13:40,630 --> 00:13:41,780 and you have a revenue number

310 00:13:41,780 --> 00:13:45,870 and customer number and maybe a cold lead number,

311 00:13:45,870 --> 00:13:49,810 'cause people get very excited and it's good quality metric

312 00:13:49,810 --> 00:13:51,490 and you didn't hit any of those numbers.

313 00:13:51,490 --> 00:13:54,700 Well then the question's going to be for your team,

314 00:13:54,700 --> 00:13:56,690 do we try again in San Francisco?

315 00:13:56,690 --> 00:13:58,570 Do we move to New York to see if they're different

316 00:13:58,570 --> 00:14:00,410 or Chicago, if there are different,

317 00:14:00,410 --> 00:14:02,280 what do these numbers mean?

318 00:14:02,280 --> 00:14:05,350 And that, I think there's a lot of the power is again,

319 00:14:05,350 --> 00:14:07,050 the learning, the knowledge,

320 00:14:07,050 --> 00:14:11,110 growth the ability to become a smarter company all along.

321 00:14:11,110 --> 00:14:14,457 So I guess the answer is, do you keep them or change them?

322 00:14:14,457 --> 00:14:18,170 And the answer is, yes, you can keep doing them

323 00:14:18,170 --> 00:14:20,474 as much as you need to, or you can change them

324 00:14:20,474 --> 00:14:22,290 if that's the appropriate thing to do.

325 00:14:22,290 --> 00:14:23,410

• Right right.

326 00:14:23,410 --> 00:14:26,130 Well, let's tease this apart a little bit more

327 00:14:26,130 --> 00:14:28,540 I'll borrow something that you say

328 00:14:28,540 --> 00:14:30,160 in the preface of the new edition.

329 00:14:30,160 --> 00:14:33,930 So first of all, now that OKRs

330 00:14:33,930 --> 00:14:38,010 have kind of been in the we'll call it the common sphere

331 00:14:38,010 --> 00:14:41,960 for a little bit of time, they're not hot.

332 00:14:41,960 --> 00:14:44,510 It's like they were hot and now they're not hot

333 00:14:44,510 --> 00:14:47,030 because you got a lot of people saying, Oh, they don't work.

334 00:14:47,030 --> 00:14:47,960 We tried that.

335 00:14:47,960 --> 00:14:48,793 It doesn't work.

336 00:14:48,793 --> 00:14:50,380 It only works for companies like Google.

337 00:14:50,380 --> 00:14:52,440 I don't even know if Google can make them work, right?

338 00:14:52,440 --> 00:14:55,420 So you're starting to see a little bit of backlash

339 00:14:55,420 --> 00:14:57,520 and you speak to that when you say,

340 00:14:57,520 --> 00:15:01,410 on one hand you thought is five years too soon

341 00:15:01,410 --> 00:15:02,470 for a second edition

342 00:15:02,470 --> 00:15:05,210 and then you said, I fear it's maybe not soon enough

343 00:15:05,210 --> 00:15:06,467 and I liked this line,

344 00:15:06,467 --> 00:15:09,777 "I fear that OKRs, may end up in the trash heaps

345 00:15:09,777 --> 00:15:11,320 "of management fashion."

346 00:15:11,320 --> 00:15:15,680 So why do you think people are railing

347 00:15:15,680 --> 00:15:17,523 against OKRs actually?

348 00:15:19,330 --> 00:15:21,570

• I honestly think it's probably because

349 00:15:21,570 --> 00:15:24,450 a lot of people have not taken the time to understand

350 00:15:24,450 --> 00:15:27,530 what makes the methodology work.

351 00:15:27,530 --> 00:15:28,363 And then they're like,

352 00:15:28,363 --> 00:15:30,097 okay, well, my boss said we need, OKRs

353 00:15:30,097 --> 00:15:33,240 and you look a lot like smart so let's just do that.

354 00:15:33,240 --> 00:15:34,280 We don't have time to read.

355 00:15:34,280 --> 00:15:35,960 We don't have time to think

356 00:15:35,960 --> 00:15:38,400 and this is another huge problem.

357 00:15:38,400 --> 00:15:41,170 I mean, we've seen people writing about

358 00:15:41,170 --> 00:15:44,140 how email destroys our ability to function

359 00:15:44,140 --> 00:15:46,780 and how we always on is exhausting us

360 00:15:46,780 --> 00:15:47,990 and I think that

361 00:15:47,990 --> 00:15:49,920 if you're talking about a change at the scale,

362 00:15:49,920 --> 00:15:52,370 with the stakes that are at the scale

363 00:15:52,370 --> 00:15:53,203 and we're talking about

364 00:15:53,203 --> 00:15:55,110 the stakes of your own company, right?

365 00:15:55,110 --> 00:15:57,170 And the stakes that the possibility is that

366 00:15:57,170 --> 00:15:59,870 your employees will spit out OKRs

367 00:15:59,870 --> 00:16:02,300 which I have actually had to go work with teams

368 00:16:02,300 --> 00:16:05,000 who tried OKRs and it went so badly,

369 00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:07,510 that basically the employers said no way,

370 00:16:07,510 --> 00:16:09,660 we're not doing this anymore it's terrible.

371 00:16:10,592 --> 00:16:13,363 So my first comment would be,

372 00:16:14,450 --> 00:16:17,210 take a little time to think about your company's culture,

373 00:16:17,210 --> 00:16:19,220 what you want from OKRs,

374 00:16:19,220 --> 00:16:21,608 are you doing it just 'cause your VC's telling you to do it

375 00:16:21,608 --> 00:16:24,300 and how does it work within your culture?

376 00:16:24,300 --> 00:16:25,560 If you're remote, there's no way

377 00:16:25,560 --> 00:16:27,550 you're all gonna gather together on Fridays.

378 00:16:27,550 --> 00:16:28,910 But that doesn't mean you just skip

379 00:16:28,910 --> 00:16:30,450 the bragging session right?

380 00:16:30,450 --> 00:16:32,060 You still have to get together and say,

381 00:16:32,060 --> 00:16:33,210 wow we're all so awesome.

382 00:16:33,210 --> 00:16:34,820 We're all doing amazing things.

383 00:16:34,820 --> 00:16:36,314 So how are you going to do that?

384 00:16:36,314 --> 00:16:37,750 Are you gonna create a Slack channel

385 00:16:37,750 --> 00:16:39,390 like some companies have

386 00:16:39,390 --> 00:16:41,830 are you going to do a series of video conferences

387 00:16:41,830 --> 00:16:43,083 like some companies have,

388 00:16:44,260 --> 00:16:46,570 you have to figure out how they work for you.

389 00:16:46,570 --> 00:16:51,570 You also need to go slow, please,

390 00:16:51,610 --> 00:16:54,870 do a pilot, pick your highest performing team

391 00:16:54,870 --> 00:16:56,700 and I say highest performing cause, guess what?

392 00:16:56,700 --> 00:16:58,593 OKRs aren't the silver bullet,

393 00:16:58,593 --> 00:17:01,330 they are tools to take good into great.

394 00:17:01,330 --> 00:17:03,080 So start with your highest performing team,

395 00:17:03,080 --> 00:17:04,600 see if they can make it work.

396 00:17:04,600 --> 00:17:05,730 If they can't make it work,

397 00:17:05,730 --> 00:17:07,770 your lowest performing team can't.

398 00:17:07,770 --> 00:17:09,247 The other thing is if they do make it work

399 00:17:09,247 --> 00:17:11,350 and the numbers pop,

400 00:17:11,350 --> 00:17:12,950 nothing succeeds like success.

401 00:17:12,950 --> 00:17:15,340 Everybody's gonna want a piece of that puzzle,

402 00:17:15,340 --> 00:17:16,560 a piece of that cake

403 00:17:16,560 --> 00:17:18,690 and so other people instead of saying, Oh gosh,

404 00:17:18,690 --> 00:17:20,180 OKRs are being forced on us,

405 00:17:20,180 --> 00:17:23,070 they'll say, yay can I get in the pilot?

406 00:17:23,070 --> 00:17:25,700 Can I be part of this and I've seen that helps.

407 00:17:25,700 --> 00:17:27,360 Also high performing teams,

408 00:17:27,360 --> 00:17:29,300 tend to be made of very smart people.

409 00:17:29,300 --> 00:17:31,410 And those very smart people will say, this doesn't work,

410 00:17:31,410 --> 00:17:33,020 this doesn't work, this doesn't work

411 00:17:33,020 --> 00:17:34,380 at which point you can adapt it

412 00:17:34,380 --> 00:17:36,860 and have higher success as you roll it out.

413 00:17:36,860 --> 00:17:39,980

• Yeah. You make this point about silver bullet

414 00:17:39,980 --> 00:17:43,010 and I think there is a close relationship that

415 00:17:43,010 --> 00:17:46,000 first we have to say, why are we

416 00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:47,730 attempting to adopt OKRs?

417 00:17:47,730 --> 00:17:51,690 Is it because my CEO read Christina's book

418 00:17:51,690 --> 00:17:52,870 and well this is great

419 00:17:52,870 --> 00:17:55,140 and then kicked it down several departments

420 00:17:55,140 --> 00:17:57,083 to someone and say, go implement this.

421 00:17:58,020 --> 00:18:00,140 So I think there's kind of a,

422 00:18:00,140 --> 00:18:03,140 and has to be a true why behind it, right?

423 00:18:03,140 --> 00:18:06,040 I guess my question to you would be

424 00:18:06,040 --> 00:18:10,810 why would OKRs be the right goal setting framework

425 00:18:10,810 --> 00:18:12,900 for an organization rather than

426 00:18:12,900 --> 00:18:14,890 I read about this and I want to try out.

427 00:18:14,890 --> 00:18:16,930 Why would it be right?

428 00:18:16,930 --> 00:18:18,453 When is it right?

429 00:18:19,460 --> 00:18:23,340

• So the first reason is because

430 00:18:23,340 --> 00:18:27,630 you're having trouble doing longer term strategic efforts.

431 00:18:27,630 --> 00:18:29,823 So if you think of the Eisenhower matrix.

432 00:18:30,870 --> 00:18:35,870 If it's important and urgent, you do it, you just do it.

433 00:18:35,920 --> 00:18:38,540 But the problem is if it's important and not urgent,

434 00:18:38,540 --> 00:18:41,160 urgent and unimportant things are loud and noisy

435 00:18:41,160 --> 00:18:42,460 and people are yelling,

436 00:18:42,460 --> 00:18:43,860 Hey when are you gonna get this done?

437 00:18:43,860 --> 00:18:45,730 And you didn't even agree to doing it.

438 00:18:45,730 --> 00:18:48,640 So it's really critical to create OKRs

439 00:18:48,640 --> 00:18:52,500 to move that out of non-urgent, to put a timeframe on it.

440 00:18:52,500 --> 00:18:54,270 And that's a very simple thing to do

441 00:18:54,270 --> 00:18:56,550 but you have to be careful not to do too many of them

442 00:18:56,550 --> 00:18:59,040 because then you don't have the resiliency

443 00:18:59,040 --> 00:19:01,270 to adjust the situations like COVID.

444 00:19:01,270 --> 00:19:03,990 So that's one reason to have fewer as well.

445 00:19:03,990 --> 00:19:06,330 The other reason is alignment.

446 00:19:06,330 --> 00:19:08,870 Often when you're looking at change management

447 00:19:08,870 --> 00:19:10,720 and I always recommend

448 00:19:10,720 --> 00:19:12,610 John Kotter's books on change management,

449 00:19:12,610 --> 00:19:13,990 they're really lovely.

450 00:19:13,990 --> 00:19:15,660 But one of the things that's hard

451 00:19:15,660 --> 00:19:17,040 is getting people to remember

452 00:19:17,040 --> 00:19:19,270 we're doing this in a different way and not in an old way.

453 00:19:19,270 --> 00:19:21,430 So OKRs can be put in place

454 00:19:21,430 --> 00:19:24,040 and to speak to the old intel example,

455 00:19:24,040 --> 00:19:25,770 it would remind people we're not

456 00:19:25,770 --> 00:19:27,100 doing the memory thing anymore,

457 00:19:27,100 --> 00:19:30,150 we're really working on the chip thing, right?

458 00:19:30,150 --> 00:19:32,160 So that's a good place for it.

459 00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:34,640 Another good place for it is

460 00:19:35,580 --> 00:19:39,990 getting people used to measuring although I honestly I think

461 00:19:39,990 --> 00:19:42,280 that might be cart before the horse.

462 00:19:42,280 --> 00:19:44,110 Some people who have never measured anything really

463 00:19:44,110 --> 00:19:46,550 have to start building a metrics muscle,

464 00:19:46,550 --> 00:19:48,480 within their organization first

465 00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:51,106 and then the OKRs, can come out of that.

466 00:19:51,106 --> 00:19:53,360 But if you're doing some metrics,

467 00:19:53,360 --> 00:19:55,670 but not really evaluating,

468 00:19:55,670 --> 00:19:56,580 not really thinking about

469 00:19:56,580 --> 00:19:58,595 what's the most important indicators,

470 00:19:58,595 --> 00:20:01,000 then OKRs can clarify that.

471 00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:02,740 The biggest, biggest reason is,

472 00:20:02,740 --> 00:20:07,160 it's not a goal setting management strategy.

473 00:20:07,160 --> 00:20:08,610 It's a goal setting in achieving.

474 00:20:08,610 --> 00:20:09,443 It's the pains.

475 00:20:09,443 --> 00:20:10,510 The pains is everything.

476 00:20:10,510 --> 00:20:11,620 It's so much better.

477 00:20:11,620 --> 00:20:13,860 You can set the worst OKRs in the world,

478 00:20:13,860 --> 00:20:17,460 you can have OKR and the objective and it's just a disaster

479 00:20:17,460 --> 00:20:19,610 But if every week you say,

480 00:20:19,610 --> 00:20:22,200 okay what are we really trying to do here

481 00:20:22,200 --> 00:20:23,960 and have we done it,

482 00:20:23,960 --> 00:20:26,450 you're gonna have amazing successes.

483 00:20:26,450 --> 00:20:28,740 And I think the cadence is what has made OKRs

484 00:20:28,740 --> 00:20:32,000 suddenly pop as a really popular choice.

485 00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:33,880 And then when people don't get the successes

486 00:20:33,880 --> 00:20:35,420 because they aren't running the cadence,

487 00:20:35,420 --> 00:20:38,370 'cause they are doing set and forget, they're disappointed.

488 00:20:39,980 --> 00:20:43,610

• Marty Cagan gave the preface to the second edition

489 00:20:43,610 --> 00:20:46,250 and he made the comment about

490 00:20:46,250 --> 00:20:48,790 part of what gets missed is that empowered teams

491 00:20:48,790 --> 00:20:50,840 and of course, if you know Marty in his work

492 00:20:50,840 --> 00:20:53,220 he talks a lot about that empowerment

493 00:20:53,220 --> 00:20:57,760 and I have to wonder if part of the failing of OKRs,

494 00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:02,760 is certain management realizing they have a lot less control

495 00:21:03,510 --> 00:21:05,990 over the how things get done

496 00:21:05,990 --> 00:21:10,990 when they lean into this flexible co-creative,

497 00:21:11,090 --> 00:21:14,220 we just wanna get to here and you Christina,

498 00:21:14,220 --> 00:21:16,790 get to help us decide and then you help them decide

499 00:21:16,790 --> 00:21:19,180 and they're like, I don't like that choice so much.

500 00:21:19,180 --> 00:21:20,260 Give me a different choice.

501 00:21:20,260 --> 00:21:22,270 Give me the one that was in my head, please.

502 00:21:22,270 --> 00:21:25,010

• Yes letting go sucks eggs

503 00:21:25,010 --> 00:21:28,150 but delegation is a survival strategy.

504 00:21:28,150 --> 00:21:30,630 I see start up founders do this all the time.

505 00:21:30,630 --> 00:21:32,450 They gets some success, they grow

506 00:21:32,450 --> 00:21:33,990 and they can't be in charge of everything.

507 00:21:33,990 --> 00:21:35,720 They can't make every final decision

508 00:21:35,720 --> 00:21:37,530 and their team is being held back

509 00:21:37,530 --> 00:21:40,410 and it's just a disaster area and they're not sleeping

510 00:21:40,410 --> 00:21:41,940 and they're texting people at 3:00 AM.

511 00:21:41,940 --> 00:21:46,250 No, you have got to spend a lot of time

512 00:21:46,250 --> 00:21:48,040 hiring extraordinarily well,

513 00:21:48,040 --> 00:21:50,410 and then trust the people you hire.

514 00:21:50,410 --> 00:21:52,360 And that's another thing that makes me crazy

515 00:21:52,360 --> 00:21:54,080 and I write about it a little bit in team

516 00:21:54,080 --> 00:21:57,050 that manages itself, is we have to slow down

517 00:21:57,050 --> 00:21:58,760 and be more thoughtful at our hires.

518 00:21:58,760 --> 00:22:00,130 You don't need bodies.

519 00:22:00,130 --> 00:22:01,930 You need human beings

520 00:22:01,930 --> 00:22:05,240 and human beings that have a brain and you trust

521 00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:08,340 and then you have to let go and that's hard.

522 00:22:08,340 --> 00:22:11,717 But that's why to use an old Ronald Reagan line,

523 00:22:11,717 --> 00:22:14,600 "Trust but verify," we trust these people

524 00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:17,060 and you can read the weekly status emails

525 00:22:17,060 --> 00:22:19,690 and you can read through their logic and you can ask them,

526 00:22:19,690 --> 00:22:21,370 Oh can you tell me more about this?

527 00:22:21,370 --> 00:22:22,920 But you can't say don't do that

528 00:22:23,880 --> 00:22:25,778 because the moment you do that,

529 00:22:25,778 --> 00:22:28,850 psychological safety will get damaged

530 00:22:28,850 --> 00:22:33,270 and people will become afraid to move without your blessing.

531 00:22:33,270 --> 00:22:35,380 And your entire goal needs to be

532 00:22:35,380 --> 00:22:37,250 telling people what the outcome is

533 00:22:37,250 --> 00:22:39,830 and letting them figure out what that's going to be.

534 00:22:39,830 --> 00:22:41,310 And yeah, it's hard.

535 00:22:41,310 --> 00:22:44,400 I think it's also been a little damaged by a lot of,

536 00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:45,940 some of the software manufacturers

537 00:22:45,940 --> 00:22:47,950 who call themselves OKR software,

538 00:22:47,950 --> 00:22:49,242 but they're actually just tracking the

539 00:22:49,242 --> 00:22:50,075 (mumbles)

540 00:22:50,075 --> 00:22:51,420 And that's project management software

541 00:22:51,420 --> 00:22:54,900 and it's not really doing the job of measuring the results,

542 00:22:54,900 --> 00:22:58,380 which is why I never recommend OKR software.

543 00:22:58,380 --> 00:23:01,520 I just go, work it out, use Google docs.

544 00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:03,280 And then when you're ready to buy,

545 00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:04,920 'cause you know how OKRs work and you can find

546 00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:06,410 something that matches your system

547 00:23:06,410 --> 00:23:10,240 but mostly put it off as long as humanly possible.

548 00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:11,880

• Yeah, yeah simple spreadsheet

549 00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:15,140 or a four square that you can sketch out for every Monday

550 00:23:15,140 --> 00:23:16,420 and exactly I love.

551 00:23:16,420 --> 00:23:19,740 I always say tools are great accelerators of good process

552 00:23:19,740 --> 00:23:21,440 and where most people make the mistake is

553 00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:25,389 they think that the tool is going to supplant the process,

554 00:23:25,389 --> 00:23:28,210 and they spend too much time configuring it.

555 00:23:28,210 --> 00:23:29,443 How do I configure JIRA?

556 00:23:29,443 --> 00:23:30,490 It's like, well, I don't know,

557 00:23:30,490 --> 00:23:32,470 how do you run your sprints?

558 00:23:32,470 --> 00:23:33,900 And then you could probably

559 00:23:33,900 --> 00:23:36,440 answer that question quite easily after.

560 00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:37,273 I'm just sort of

561 00:23:37,273 --> 00:23:39,530 wanting to do a little roll up as we go here,

562 00:23:39,530 --> 00:23:42,550 because I think what we've been talking about all along is

563 00:23:42,550 --> 00:23:44,440 what are some of the challenges

564 00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:47,840 for adopting OKRs at least in the startup world.

565 00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:50,880 One of the ones that I sort of heard you speak to is,

566 00:23:50,880 --> 00:23:52,870 OKRs are not your strategy,

567 00:23:52,870 --> 00:23:55,180 OKRs sort of reflect your strategy.

568 00:23:55,180 --> 00:23:58,760 So we could say that as you have to have a strategy

569 00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:01,230 or some ideas of what you want to accomplish

570 00:24:01,230 --> 00:24:05,623 before you can put the OKR syntax kind of around that.

571 00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:09,450 Another one that you speak about in the new edition

572 00:24:09,450 --> 00:24:14,450 is this idea that product market fit is kind of a barrier

573 00:24:14,570 --> 00:24:18,480 to entry for a startup and then you speak about this,

574 00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:21,900 using OKRs as a more exploratory mechanism

575 00:24:21,900 --> 00:24:26,120 rather than a more rigid,

576 00:24:26,120 --> 00:24:27,500 although it's not a rigid framework

577 00:24:27,500 --> 00:24:31,600 but a more rigid framework for accelerating those goals.

578 00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:35,600 And that last one that you also call out,

579 00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:39,370 to what extent is measuring even

580 00:24:39,370 --> 00:24:44,200 part of the organizational fabric and that's mindset,

581 00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:46,060 but that's also quite literally

582 00:24:46,060 --> 00:24:48,430 the instrumentations of measurement.

583 00:24:48,430 --> 00:24:51,220 Do you have Google analytics?

584 00:24:51,220 --> 00:24:55,530 If not, the idea of assigning some key result that

585 00:24:55,530 --> 00:24:59,370 traces back to what Google analytics can capture for you

586 00:24:59,370 --> 00:25:01,270 is gonna be problematic and that's gonna be

587 00:25:01,270 --> 00:25:04,290 a lot of learning at once.

588 00:25:04,290 --> 00:25:05,580 And of course, Google analytics

589 00:25:05,580 --> 00:25:07,570 and there's so many different analytics tools

590 00:25:07,570 --> 00:25:08,810 that are out there.

591 00:25:08,810 --> 00:25:13,810 Any other big challenges for why adopting OKRs

592 00:25:14,420 --> 00:25:17,570 at the startup level, where you would see somebody go wrong

593 00:25:17,570 --> 00:25:20,663 aside from those that we've just flagged?

594 00:25:23,500 --> 00:25:24,550

• Yeah, that's a lot.

595 00:25:25,570 --> 00:25:29,080 So yes, one of the reasons

596 00:25:31,070 --> 00:25:35,010 I developed the exploratory OKRs with startups

597 00:25:35,010 --> 00:25:36,220 that I was advising was

598 00:25:36,220 --> 00:25:38,510 because there's a huge problem that startups hit

599 00:25:38,510 --> 00:25:40,590 which is when do you quit?

600 00:25:40,590 --> 00:25:41,980 Sometimes you'll hear a VC saying

601 00:25:41,980 --> 00:25:44,310 that start ups kind of long in the tooth,

602 00:25:44,310 --> 00:25:46,080 they're heading towards a C round.

603 00:25:46,080 --> 00:25:47,460 And they haven't,

604 00:25:47,460 --> 00:25:48,490 they don't look like they're

605 00:25:48,490 --> 00:25:50,320 even anywhere near product market fit

606 00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:52,770 or maybe they think they have product market fit

607 00:25:52,770 --> 00:25:54,430 but the numbers continue to be too low

608 00:25:54,430 --> 00:25:57,060 to be interesting or significant.

609 00:25:57,060 --> 00:26:01,980 And so the key results in that case allow you to say no,

610 00:26:01,980 --> 00:26:05,700 because gosh, entrepreneurs are optimists, right?

611 00:26:05,700 --> 00:26:08,060 They're like, but next week, but next week

612 00:26:08,060 --> 00:26:11,550 and you can run a pretty hard high credit card bill

613 00:26:11,550 --> 00:26:13,170 with next week, with the next week.

614 00:26:13,170 --> 00:26:15,580 There'll be a point where the VC is tired of you

615 00:26:15,580 --> 00:26:17,580 and they're not going to hop on the next round.

616 00:26:17,580 --> 00:26:19,480 They're going to be like, you showed promise

617 00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:21,210 but the market's not there and we're done.

618 00:26:21,210 --> 00:26:23,630 And you almost have to be the same way

619 00:26:23,630 --> 00:26:26,740 but it's so hard 'cause it's your baby, it's your startup.

620 00:26:26,740 --> 00:26:30,180 So by setting the key results that

621 00:26:30,180 --> 00:26:34,170 you think are going to be a strong signal of success

622 00:26:34,170 --> 00:26:36,900 and then you can move into a hypothesis result,

623 00:26:36,900 --> 00:26:39,100 where instead of we gotta build something,

624 00:26:39,100 --> 00:26:43,820 we're gonna build this, in the objective field,

625 00:26:43,820 --> 00:26:47,660 it's a way of saying we've got to pivot right now

626 00:26:47,660 --> 00:26:49,900 or maybe we just have to shut down.

627 00:26:49,900 --> 00:26:51,590 We're not going to find that product market fit.

628 00:26:51,590 --> 00:26:53,540 And Steve Blank talks about this quite a bit, right?

629 00:26:53,540 --> 00:26:55,350 He talks about the fact that

630 00:26:55,350 --> 00:26:57,300 a startup is a temporary organization

631 00:26:57,300 --> 00:26:59,780 looking for product market fit and then once you found it,

632 00:26:59,780 --> 00:27:02,580 you're actually a company. Congratulations, you made it.

633 00:27:03,490 --> 00:27:08,490 So I like to think of it as numbers, tell a story

634 00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:13,050 about what your health is and what's next for you.

635 00:27:13,050 --> 00:27:16,330 The other thing is that I think figuring out

636 00:27:16,330 --> 00:27:19,780 how to create metrics is so important to a startup

637 00:27:19,780 --> 00:27:23,190 because well, you know, this old joke the vaudeville joke

638 00:27:23,190 --> 00:27:24,550 where somebody is saying,

639 00:27:24,550 --> 00:27:26,800 Hey, I'm looking for my keys

640 00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:28,200 and they're on their hands and knees

641 00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:30,300 and they're looking for their keys and a cop comes by

642 00:27:30,300 --> 00:27:31,700 and like what's going on?

643 00:27:31,700 --> 00:27:33,430 Oh I lost my keys.

644 00:27:33,430 --> 00:27:35,750 Finally, the cop gets down, helps him says,

645 00:27:35,750 --> 00:27:39,560 hey, where did you lose these keys anyway.

646 00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:41,660 He's like over there, why are you looking here?

647 00:27:41,660 --> 00:27:42,920 The light is better.

648 00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:45,520 And we see this reflected over and over again

649 00:27:45,520 --> 00:27:50,520 with the infamous page views, right?

650 00:27:52,790 --> 00:27:56,170 Emails instead of nobody lies with their wallet.

651 00:27:56,170 --> 00:27:58,510 So people are like 10,000 people signed up

652 00:27:58,510 --> 00:28:00,760 and it's like their emails already full of spam,

653 00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:01,593 they don't care.

654 00:28:01,593 --> 00:28:03,230 They've given up.

655 00:28:03,230 --> 00:28:04,890 So you have to start thinking about

656 00:28:04,890 --> 00:28:07,070 what's a really good, healthy, strong signal.

657 00:28:07,070 --> 00:28:10,000 And when you talk about things like, are people happy?

658 00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:11,420 Do they actually like our products?

659 00:28:11,420 --> 00:28:13,630 Everybody's pointing at NPS

660 00:28:13,630 --> 00:28:15,800 and I think we've got NPS fatigue.

661 00:28:15,800 --> 00:28:16,633 I don't know about you.

662 00:28:16,633 --> 00:28:18,730 But if I see one of those 10 point scales,

663 00:28:18,730 --> 00:28:22,360 I'm like, skip, close five. I don't care.

664 00:28:22,360 --> 00:28:24,040 It's just, I don't wanna get involved.

665 00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:25,260 I'm tired of it.

666 00:28:25,260 --> 00:28:27,690

• Sure all my Instacart drivers get a five,

667 00:28:27,690 --> 00:28:30,770 especially in the eras of COVID for sure.

668 00:28:30,770 --> 00:28:31,603 Yeah, no.

669 00:28:34,288 --> 00:28:35,650 So this comes up a lot, right?

670 00:28:35,650 --> 00:28:38,580 Which is you're talking or you're alluding to this idea

671 00:28:38,580 --> 00:28:40,770 of where do we even set benchmarks, right?

672 00:28:40,770 --> 00:28:43,290 'Cause I hear this a lot with folks that I coach

673 00:28:43,290 --> 00:28:44,450 and companies I work with,

674 00:28:44,450 --> 00:28:48,310 they say how do we set the success metric

675 00:28:48,310 --> 00:28:50,950 especially kind of if we don't know

676 00:28:50,950 --> 00:28:52,800 and one thing I like to say is,

677 00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:55,890 would you bet your grandmother's inheritance on that?

678 00:28:55,890 --> 00:29:00,160 Is that sufficient proof because it's gotta be

679 00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:03,030 worth it enough for you to make the next bet

680 00:29:03,030 --> 00:29:05,120 on the organization and you're right

681 00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:09,430 it's these sort of softer metrics and yeah

682 00:29:09,430 --> 00:29:10,980 email full of spam.

683 00:29:10,980 --> 00:29:12,780 We can relate for sure.

684 00:29:12,780 --> 00:29:16,660 You touched on something that I think is also

685 00:29:16,660 --> 00:29:18,650 another valuable distinction

686 00:29:18,650 --> 00:29:19,890 in the way that you write about it,

687 00:29:19,890 --> 00:29:22,660 which is the distinction between health metrics

688 00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:27,080 or what, some people might think of as KPIs

689 00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:32,080 and the key results and how they're actually different

690 00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:33,510 and both need to be looked at.

691 00:29:33,510 --> 00:29:36,450 But I think that that's worth hearing you speak about

692 00:29:36,450 --> 00:29:37,283 for just a moment,

693 00:29:37,283 --> 00:29:38,610 if you could set that up for the listeners,

694 00:29:38,610 --> 00:29:40,080 what's the difference?

695 00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:43,320

• Well, I think of it as push and protect.

696 00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:45,520 So the OKR is something you're pushing towards.

697 00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:46,920 It's a big thing.

698 00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:47,880 It's strategic.

699 00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:50,450 You're not sure what's going to happen

700 00:29:50,450 --> 00:29:53,180 but the KPIs or health metrics as I prefer to call them

701 00:29:53,180 --> 00:29:55,930 are all the things you don't want to destroy,

702 00:29:55,930 --> 00:29:59,750 as you're trying to achieve this moonshot goal.

703 00:29:59,750 --> 00:30:03,070 So if you're really working on a new product,

704 00:30:03,070 --> 00:30:04,310 you might wanna pay attention

705 00:30:04,310 --> 00:30:06,030 to your current customers, right?

706 00:30:06,030 --> 00:30:08,560 Because if they are leaving in droves,

707 00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:11,170 you're getting the ground pulled out from under you,

708 00:30:11,170 --> 00:30:12,880 rug, ground anyway.

709 00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:16,640 And so the health metrics also can be

710 00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:19,730 around the team health because we see this all the time,

711 00:30:19,730 --> 00:30:23,050 in game studios is they will just burn people

712 00:30:23,050 --> 00:30:24,570 all the way to the ground until

713 00:30:24,570 --> 00:30:27,320 they just quit in exhaustion and fury.

714 00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:30,730 Or maybe you wanna make sure the code health is good.

715 00:30:30,730 --> 00:30:33,170 I feel like when I was at My Space,

716 00:30:33,170 --> 00:30:34,120 most of our effort

717 00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:35,930 was to keep the whole thing from falling down.

718 00:30:35,930 --> 00:30:37,790 This was quite a few years ago

719 00:30:37,790 --> 00:30:39,660 and we were always growing like crazy,

720 00:30:39,660 --> 00:30:43,150 but the code was not trustworthy

721 00:30:43,150 --> 00:30:45,200 and we really had to move to a new architecture

722 00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:47,550 and there never seemed to be time for that.

723 00:30:47,550 --> 00:30:52,550 So being able to say, guess what, something's breaking

724 00:30:52,870 --> 00:30:53,990 I've got a code red,

725 00:30:53,990 --> 00:30:57,090 all of a sudden our current customers are disappearing.

726 00:30:57,090 --> 00:30:59,810 That means you mark the fact

727 00:30:59,810 --> 00:31:00,940 that you're focusing on something

728 00:31:00,940 --> 00:31:03,000 other than the objective and key result

729 00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:06,080 and that way, you know that when you come back

730 00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:07,700 at the end of the quarter and you're going,

731 00:31:07,700 --> 00:31:11,290 Oh man how did we miss our OKR so badly?

732 00:31:11,290 --> 00:31:13,790 Why are we like, 20% there?

733 00:31:13,790 --> 00:31:15,980 And the reality is, guess what?

734 00:31:15,980 --> 00:31:18,110 Your software's crashing every five minutes.

735 00:31:18,110 --> 00:31:22,190 Perhaps next quarter's OKR should pick a decent software.

736 00:31:22,190 --> 00:31:24,470 I mean, I'm just making things up off the top of my head,

737 00:31:24,470 --> 00:31:26,430 but the reality is that again,

738 00:31:26,430 --> 00:31:28,490 the OKRs, because they measure

739 00:31:28,490 --> 00:31:30,040 because you check in on them so often,

740 00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:31,470 they're an amazing learning tool

741 00:31:31,470 --> 00:31:34,430 and learning that the reality is you can't get things done,

742 00:31:34,430 --> 00:31:38,380 because you've got this deep problem is valuable

743 00:31:38,380 --> 00:31:41,090 and even if it's not a deep problem, it's still good to know

744 00:31:41,090 --> 00:31:42,760 that you're not losing your customers.

745 00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:45,010 That still seems like a nice thing to know.

746 00:31:45,010 --> 00:31:47,160

• I love that push and protect

747 00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,330 and these counter opposing forces.

748 00:31:50,330 --> 00:31:51,640 This is also thematic.

749 00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:55,470 You speak about this even in creating,

750 00:31:55,470 --> 00:32:00,470 I like to call it the dimensionality of key results.

751 00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:02,630 It's like, if I could visualize

752 00:32:02,630 --> 00:32:05,956 well-constructed set of key results,

753 00:32:05,956 --> 00:32:08,500 you can look at it from all different angles

754 00:32:08,500 --> 00:32:09,990 and find a way to hook into them

755 00:32:09,990 --> 00:32:13,000 and you speak specifically of you almost want to counter

756 00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:14,200 points of tension in there

757 00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:17,190 so that it's like drive revenue, but keep customers.

758 00:32:17,190 --> 00:32:19,350 And now you're like, damn, how are we gonna do that?

759 00:32:19,350 --> 00:32:20,890 I know how we could drive revenue

760 00:32:20,890 --> 00:32:22,560 we just crank the price up

761 00:32:22,560 --> 00:32:24,040 but all of the people will leave

762 00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:26,360 and now it's an interesting Rubik's cube

763 00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:28,180 for the folks to have to solve.

764 00:32:28,180 --> 00:32:32,840

• Yeah and as someone who's been with Wells Fargo

765 00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:36,163 since I moved to California, which is a very long time ago,

766 00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:39,170 the Wells Fargo scandals

767 00:32:39,170 --> 00:32:41,350 hit me a little bit almost personally,

768 00:32:41,350 --> 00:32:44,700 because I heard that they were setting these horrible

769 00:32:44,700 --> 00:32:47,090 numerical goals and saying, make this,

770 00:32:47,090 --> 00:32:49,810 or you're out of here, you're gonna fire people,

771 00:32:49,810 --> 00:32:53,660 which is why we should never grade on a curve or,

772 00:32:53,660 --> 00:32:54,840 fire all your B players.

773 00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:56,510 There's a place for B players in this world.

774 00:32:56,510 --> 00:32:59,400 But by asking a ridiculous number, no psychological safety

775 00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,547 so people could say, this is a ridiculous number,

776 00:33:02,547 --> 00:33:05,030 suddenly we had all this cheating and lying

777 00:33:05,030 --> 00:33:07,730 and it damaged their brand horrifically.

778 00:33:07,730 --> 00:33:12,410 And it's even caused me after 20 some more years

779 00:33:12,410 --> 00:33:13,510 to change banks.

780 00:33:13,510 --> 00:33:14,810 And that's a lot of work when

781 00:33:14,810 --> 00:33:16,190 you've been at a bank for a long time,

782 00:33:16,190 --> 00:33:18,030 'cause, you understand how it works.

783 00:33:18,030 --> 00:33:20,040 It's a really hard change to make.

784 00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:24,050 So making sure that you have this growth number

785 00:33:24,050 --> 00:33:28,500 but maybe eight customers per account, like Wells Fargo had,

786 00:33:28,500 --> 00:33:33,280 but then how do you find a balancing key result,

787 00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:35,300 that will keep you away from that?

788 00:33:35,300 --> 00:33:37,650 And maybe you shouldn't set something that is

789 00:33:37,650 --> 00:33:39,382 that ridiculously hard to do

790 00:33:39,382 --> 00:33:42,130 if you don't have the psychological safety

791 00:33:42,130 --> 00:33:45,630 to make people able to fail and learn

792 00:33:45,630 --> 00:33:47,970 and grow and fail and learn and grow.

793 00:33:47,970 --> 00:33:50,060 So, yeah.

794 00:33:50,060 --> 00:33:52,200

• Yeah. I think we can do an entire

795 00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:54,060 day's worth of sessions on this topic

796 00:33:54,060 --> 00:33:55,510 of psychological safety.

797 00:33:55,510 --> 00:33:57,450 I mean, there's so much inside that.

798 00:33:57,450 --> 00:33:58,500 That'll have to be another reason

799 00:33:58,500 --> 00:33:59,630 to have you back on the pod

800 00:33:59,630 --> 00:34:01,543 but this tension,

801 00:34:02,950 --> 00:34:06,240 I guess, a good analog for this in the developer world

802 00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:08,090 would be velocity, right?

803 00:34:08,090 --> 00:34:11,822 And so we want velocity and we want to encourage velocity

804 00:34:11,822 --> 00:34:15,880 to regulate itself and ideally get to a good number

805 00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:19,320 but not if it also comes with a high output of bugs

806 00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:20,850 because that just says that you're moving

807 00:34:20,850 --> 00:34:23,860 faster and sloppier not faster and better

808 00:34:23,860 --> 00:34:25,260 and that's that kind of tension.

809 00:34:25,260 --> 00:34:30,130 So we say increase velocity, but deliver tickets that pass

810 00:34:30,130 --> 00:34:32,180 through the quality assurance protocol as well.

811 00:34:32,180 --> 00:34:34,880 And I think expanding that into these other

812 00:34:36,220 --> 00:34:38,440 more nuanced terrains, right?

813 00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:41,580 Like making customers happier,

814 00:34:41,580 --> 00:34:46,580 while also delivering innovation and in a fast way.

815 00:34:47,540 --> 00:34:49,250 The other thing that I love

816 00:34:49,250 --> 00:34:52,200 and I don't think it gets called out enough

817 00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:54,930 but you called it out, especially in this latest edition

818 00:34:54,930 --> 00:34:57,270 is this idea that, sorry kids,

819 00:34:57,270 --> 00:35:00,788 not everyone can be part of the OKR club,

820 00:35:00,788 --> 00:35:04,510 which is important, right?

821 00:35:04,510 --> 00:35:06,240 Because for these companies

822 00:35:06,240 --> 00:35:09,340 we go back to the naysayers and the dissenters,

823 00:35:09,340 --> 00:35:11,900 the dissent is we can't find a way to make it work

824 00:35:11,900 --> 00:35:14,330 for all the departments and I think what you're saying is

825 00:35:14,330 --> 00:35:16,890 it can't work for all the departments.

826 00:35:16,890 --> 00:35:20,160

• Yeah. I think that there's a lot of situations

827 00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:22,370 where OKRs are not the appropriate choice

828 00:35:22,370 --> 00:35:24,200 because it destroys morale,

829 00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:26,670 because people should not be banging their head

830 00:35:26,670 --> 00:35:28,660 against a goal that can't move.

831 00:35:28,660 --> 00:35:32,230 So there's two categories of this.

832 00:35:32,230 --> 00:35:35,560 In the new book I talk about my four Es

833 00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:37,440 product portfolio evaluation tool,

834 00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:40,660 which is that if you're in a growing market

835 00:35:40,660 --> 00:35:44,590 and you don't have very many products in that market

836 00:35:44,590 --> 00:35:46,720 or maybe none, you just want to explore

837 00:35:46,720 --> 00:35:48,170 and use OKRs to explore.

838 00:35:48,170 --> 00:35:49,860 And if you're in a growing market

839 00:35:49,860 --> 00:35:51,570 where you're building out market share,

840 00:35:51,570 --> 00:35:54,870 you can use OKRs to expand,

841 00:35:54,870 --> 00:35:58,410 but then if you're in a situation where the market is flat,

842 00:35:58,410 --> 00:35:59,630 you're torturing people

843 00:35:59,630 --> 00:36:01,610 if you're asking them to set OKRs,

844 00:36:01,610 --> 00:36:03,810 maybe the market just isn't growing anymore.

845 00:36:03,810 --> 00:36:05,900 Maybe it's just not possible anymore.

846 00:36:05,900 --> 00:36:06,733 You can do it,

847 00:36:06,733 --> 00:36:08,710 OKRs for a couple of quarters, just to make sure

848 00:36:08,710 --> 00:36:11,090 that that's a true statement but then

849 00:36:11,090 --> 00:36:13,783 take your foot off the pedal and let these people,

850 00:36:14,720 --> 00:36:16,570 melt that cash cow, so to speak.

851 00:36:16,570 --> 00:36:19,610 And then sometimes people are on a dying product

852 00:36:19,610 --> 00:36:21,850 and it's just going downhill slowly

853 00:36:21,850 --> 00:36:23,630 and of course you would love that money,

854 00:36:23,630 --> 00:36:26,140 that little bit of money that's slowly going away.

855 00:36:26,140 --> 00:36:29,820 But again, you can't ask people to put huge OKRs

856 00:36:29,820 --> 00:36:34,450 on it beyond, one quarter, just to make sure

857 00:36:34,450 --> 00:36:36,950 that we haven't thought of something useful

858 00:36:36,950 --> 00:36:39,230 but again, it's gonna have to be really safe

859 00:36:39,230 --> 00:36:41,970 for people to fail because you need them to fail

860 00:36:41,970 --> 00:36:45,020 if it really is a market you want to get out of

861 00:36:45,020 --> 00:36:48,270 and it always costs you, just keeps coming back to

862 00:36:48,270 --> 00:36:50,580 making sure you have psychological safety,

863 00:36:50,580 --> 00:36:52,850 you have a situation where people can be honest

864 00:36:52,850 --> 00:36:54,970 but the other side of that is surface groups.

865 00:36:54,970 --> 00:36:57,680 So I've noticed over the last five years

866 00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:00,860 that surface groups go through certain life cycle changes.

867 00:37:00,860 --> 00:37:03,270 So let's take a designer engineering group.

868 00:37:03,270 --> 00:37:04,980 They often start very small.

869 00:37:04,980 --> 00:37:06,290 They're just coding all the time.

870 00:37:06,290 --> 00:37:08,550 But then they get to a certain size

871 00:37:08,550 --> 00:37:11,530 where they realize they can't stay organized

872 00:37:11,530 --> 00:37:14,090 at which point we have dev ops or design ops.

873 00:37:14,090 --> 00:37:15,140 We have this new group.

874 00:37:15,140 --> 00:37:16,993 Well, once you have that capacity,

875 00:37:17,930 --> 00:37:18,890 you can start saying,

876 00:37:18,890 --> 00:37:20,580 well what do we wanna get better at?

877 00:37:20,580 --> 00:37:22,720 Do we wanna get better at our design libraries

878 00:37:22,720 --> 00:37:24,220 or our code libraries?

879 00:37:24,220 --> 00:37:26,780 And then you could choose to have an OKR

880 00:37:26,780 --> 00:37:29,410 for a quarter or two or kick it off

881 00:37:29,410 --> 00:37:31,380 and there's groups like legal.

882 00:37:31,380 --> 00:37:33,500 I'm not sure,

883 00:37:33,500 --> 00:37:36,040 I would only add an OKR to a group like legal

884 00:37:36,040 --> 00:37:39,880 or customer service if I felt that they weren't performing

885 00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:42,530 at a standard that I was comfortable with,

886 00:37:42,530 --> 00:37:44,270 otherwise I'd probably just let them alone

887 00:37:44,270 --> 00:37:45,890 to do their thing.

888 00:37:45,890 --> 00:37:50,870

• Yeah. I think what I'm hearing in that explanation is

889 00:37:50,870 --> 00:37:55,110 this idea that OKRs are there for when you need them.

890 00:37:55,110 --> 00:37:58,660 So even in the context of making them work

891 00:37:58,660 --> 00:38:01,190 or that sort of binary, they work, they don't work,

892 00:38:01,190 --> 00:38:05,360 it's actually saying they work in a context,

893 00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:07,330 enjoy them in a context

894 00:38:07,330 --> 00:38:10,700 and be okay with not using them

895 00:38:10,700 --> 00:38:12,820 when the context isn't appropriate.

896 00:38:12,820 --> 00:38:14,550 You can dust them off the shelf

897 00:38:14,550 --> 00:38:17,340 and say I think we need a couple quarters of OKRs

898 00:38:17,340 --> 00:38:19,130 to get back into shape or to

899 00:38:19,130 --> 00:38:22,210 rally behind this ambition that we've got.

900 00:38:22,210 --> 00:38:24,150

• Yeah. OKRs aren't a hammer.

901 00:38:24,150 --> 00:38:25,640 They might be a screwdriver,

902 00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:26,850 but they're definitely a wrench.

903 00:38:26,850 --> 00:38:30,740 And sometimes the most basic tool is not,

904 00:38:30,740 --> 00:38:33,200 something beyond the most basic tools is not what you need.

905 00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:35,410 I think if I only had one tool in my house

906 00:38:35,410 --> 00:38:36,840 it would probably be a hammer.

907 00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:38,440 But maybe you want a little more,

908 00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:39,550 maybe you want screws

909 00:38:39,550 --> 00:38:42,220 because they hold things in place better over time,

910 00:38:42,220 --> 00:38:45,440 or bolts because you have some heavy lifting to do

911 00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:47,260 then bring, yeah.

912 00:38:47,260 --> 00:38:50,120 Use those OKRs to do that heavy lifting.

913 00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:53,080 But I have been a little bit shocked

914 00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:58,080 at how few companies know basic management skills

915 00:38:58,240 --> 00:39:01,890 and I feel like there's a lot we need to do

916 00:39:01,890 --> 00:39:05,470 to make sure people understand how to manage other people.

917 00:39:05,470 --> 00:39:07,950 And a lot we need to do helping people understand

918 00:39:07,950 --> 00:39:10,540 how to think about strategy and opportunity

919 00:39:10,540 --> 00:39:13,510 and hopefully because I have such a quirky style

920 00:39:13,510 --> 00:39:15,700 because I tell stories, that I tell fables

921 00:39:15,700 --> 00:39:18,360 with radical focus in the team that managed itself

922 00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:21,990 some people who fall asleep during that lecture about

923 00:39:21,990 --> 00:39:23,520 product management or whatnot,

924 00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:25,440 hopefully they'll stay awake and read the book

925 00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:26,880 and get some of these ideas

926 00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:28,900 that will make everything a little better.

927 00:39:28,900 --> 00:39:32,080

• Yeah I remember when I read the first edition,

928 00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:36,180 flying through the first half because it is so digestible

929 00:39:36,180 --> 00:39:39,320 and you're like, I'm halfway through this book

930 00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,270 and I just got kind of lullabyed into

931 00:39:42,270 --> 00:39:45,840 and now I'm appropriately clamoring for the, how do I do it

932 00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:47,130 which is great.

933 00:39:47,130 --> 00:39:48,790 So kudos. It works

934 00:39:48,790 --> 00:39:52,500

• Well I was writing a book about OKRs

935 00:39:52,500 --> 00:39:53,810 It's a book about an acronym.

936 00:39:53,810 --> 00:39:54,993 I had to do something.

937 00:39:57,180 --> 00:40:01,917

• You have this terminology, pipelines

938 00:40:03,430 --> 00:40:07,410 and you specifically set up pipelines

939 00:40:07,410 --> 00:40:11,380 as a concept distinct from roadmaps.

940 00:40:11,380 --> 00:40:14,610 And I think a lot of our listeners as product people

941 00:40:14,610 --> 00:40:16,450 hear about roadmaps.

942 00:40:16,450 --> 00:40:19,980 I don't know that as many people hear about pipelines

943 00:40:19,980 --> 00:40:22,480 or if they do they might be thinking about them in the more

944 00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:27,480 conventional sort of sales pipeline deal pipeline context.

945 00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:31,320 Can you share a little bit about that?

946 00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:32,570

• Yeah. Well, thank you

947 00:40:32,570 --> 00:40:35,340 for making that connection between sales pipelines,

948 00:40:35,340 --> 00:40:37,635 because in a weird way, product pipelines

949 00:40:37,635 --> 00:40:39,810 are a little bit similar.

950 00:40:39,810 --> 00:40:42,590 You come up with all the things you'd like to do,

951 00:40:42,590 --> 00:40:45,130 project wise or product wise

952 00:40:45,130 --> 00:40:46,759 and then you rate them.

953 00:40:46,759 --> 00:40:50,389 And I think anybody who's been through prioritizing

954 00:40:50,389 --> 00:40:52,730 JIRA cards or Trello or whatnot,

955 00:40:52,730 --> 00:40:55,570 is familiar with, how hard is this?

956 00:40:55,570 --> 00:40:57,510 How much effort does it have,

957 00:40:57,510 --> 00:40:59,230 how much impact is going to have

958 00:40:59,230 --> 00:41:02,810 and then of course, how confident am I?

959 00:41:02,810 --> 00:41:04,490 So there's a weird idea

960 00:41:04,490 --> 00:41:05,980 that I came across in Drucker's work

961 00:41:05,980 --> 00:41:08,410 that I found to be completely true which is

962 00:41:08,410 --> 00:41:11,240 you can learn to predict things which is amazing,

963 00:41:11,240 --> 00:41:13,180 if you just practice prediction.

964 00:41:13,180 --> 00:41:16,270 So to speak to earlier, how do we get a benchmark?

965 00:41:16,270 --> 00:41:18,400 Sometimes you don't, you just make a guess

966 00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:20,680 and then you learn from whether or not it worked

967 00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:21,960 and it's the same one here.

968 00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:24,640 So we're gonna guess at effort,

969 00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:27,030 we're gonna guess at impact, we're going to guess,

970 00:41:27,030 --> 00:41:29,590 we're gonna admit our confidence is low

971 00:41:29,590 --> 00:41:32,050 and then we're gonna go through this pipeline and say,

972 00:41:32,050 --> 00:41:33,630 okay, well, shall we try this?

973 00:41:33,630 --> 00:41:35,560 Is this the project going to be something

974 00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:37,000 that can move the OKR?

975 00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:38,050 Or how about this project?

976 00:41:38,050 --> 00:41:40,550 Is this something that could move the OKR?

977 00:41:40,550 --> 00:41:42,750 And again, it's moving into

978 00:41:42,750 --> 00:41:45,400 a much more lean startup mindset

979 00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:47,640 where we're really asking ourselves,

980 00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:50,390 what hypothesis do we have about our ability

981 00:41:50,390 --> 00:41:53,850 to affect this number or the three KR numbers.

982 00:41:53,850 --> 00:41:56,030 And then, which do we wanna try

983 00:41:56,030 --> 00:41:58,500 and how do we do the smallest experiment possible

984 00:41:58,500 --> 00:42:00,800 in order to make it move.

985 00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:01,650 And with the roadmap

986 00:42:01,650 --> 00:42:03,510 I think there's just too much commitment

987 00:42:03,510 --> 00:42:04,930 and I do say in the book

988 00:42:04,930 --> 00:42:07,780 you may be using language completely different,

989 00:42:07,780 --> 00:42:09,290 this is just a definition for the sake

990 00:42:09,290 --> 00:42:11,410 of having this conversation about

991 00:42:11,410 --> 00:42:13,370 laying out everything we're gonna do for what?

992 00:42:13,370 --> 00:42:14,840 A year, my gosh.

993 00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:16,970 Think of all the crazy things that could happen in a year.

994 00:42:16,970 --> 00:42:18,340 Oh, wait, we don't have to think of them.

995 00:42:18,340 --> 00:42:21,293 They all happened last year or.

996 00:42:22,907 --> 00:42:25,380 So with a pipeline

997 00:42:25,380 --> 00:42:27,230 you resume a certain amount of flexibility,

998 00:42:27,230 --> 00:42:28,800 you're still being very analytical

999 00:42:28,800 --> 00:42:31,260 about how you're choosing to spend your time where

1000 00:42:31,260 --> 00:42:33,500 and then you need to write down the results.

1001 00:42:33,500 --> 00:42:36,040 So you learn, so you learn.

1002 00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:37,130

• Yeah. Yeah.

1003 00:42:37,130 --> 00:42:40,390 Well, it sounds part of what I'm hearing

1004 00:42:40,390 --> 00:42:43,890 in the distinction is sometimes roadmaps

1005 00:42:43,890 --> 00:42:47,950 can fall back to that top down thinking.

1006 00:42:47,950 --> 00:42:50,180 So it would go something like this,

1007 00:42:50,180 --> 00:42:54,830 do this project and get these results, which is beautiful.

1008 00:42:54,830 --> 00:42:57,790 I mean, if I could map out all of my businesses that way,

1009 00:42:57,790 --> 00:42:59,830 well we wouldn't be here having this conversation.

1010 00:42:59,830 --> 00:43:01,400 I'd be on the beach somewhere

1011 00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:04,380 because every project that I said we were gonna do

1012 00:43:04,380 --> 00:43:06,530 would get the results that I said we needed to get

1013 00:43:06,530 --> 00:43:10,180 and that's it but actually what you're talking about is

1014 00:43:10,180 --> 00:43:12,834 there is guessing involved

1015 00:43:12,834 --> 00:43:15,480 and so if you lean into that, even at the road mapping level

1016 00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:18,900 and say, look, even if we're talking about

1017 00:43:18,900 --> 00:43:20,500 bigger scale initiatives

1018 00:43:20,500 --> 00:43:23,010 that might span over a quarter or over a year,

1019 00:43:23,010 --> 00:43:24,250 or even a couple of years,

1020 00:43:24,250 --> 00:43:27,480 what we're really just saying is bigger guesses

1021 00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:28,880 at what is gonna get there.

1022 00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:32,105 And so I think the way you frame pipelines in the book

1023 00:43:32,105 --> 00:43:35,630 it's like a backlog of bigger initiatives

1024 00:43:35,630 --> 00:43:38,700 that could in whole, or in part equal to

1025 00:43:38,700 --> 00:43:42,020 a key result or moving the needle in some way.

1026 00:43:42,020 --> 00:43:45,030

• Absolutely and if you think about that,

1027 00:43:45,030 --> 00:43:47,240 it also solves another problem, which is

1028 00:43:47,240 --> 00:43:50,030 folks like you and me, we'd like making things, right?

1029 00:43:50,030 --> 00:43:51,720 We're very solution thinkers.

1030 00:43:51,720 --> 00:43:53,860 And so the roadmap we're gonna put down

1031 00:43:53,860 --> 00:43:56,190 all the things we think are going to work

1032 00:43:56,190 --> 00:43:58,890 and when they touch the roadmap, they become true.

1033 00:43:58,890 --> 00:44:00,090 That's what we're doing.

1034 00:44:00,090 --> 00:44:02,980 But if you stay in that curiosity mindset

1035 00:44:02,980 --> 00:44:05,760 where you're like, Oh I wonder if this would work.

1036 00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:07,481 I wonder if there's something else we could do

1037 00:44:07,481 --> 00:44:09,910 that would be cheaper or faster or slower,

1038 00:44:09,910 --> 00:44:13,050 you just have to hold these projects very lightly,

1039 00:44:13,050 --> 00:44:15,610 so that you can constantly be pivoting.

1040 00:44:15,610 --> 00:44:18,190 The goals don't move, but the approaches do

1041 00:44:18,190 --> 00:44:20,680 and I think that's one of the things I do

1042 00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:22,230 when I talk to folks is they say,

1043 00:44:22,230 --> 00:44:23,620 Oh, well, we're doing the CRM.

1044 00:44:23,620 --> 00:44:26,840 And then I had five why them, like, why are we doing it?

1045 00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:28,350 Why do you want that?

1046 00:44:28,350 --> 00:44:33,350 Why it is, and until we get down to an actual desire,

1047 00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:37,870 that is we want to make more money

1048 00:44:37,870 --> 00:44:39,550 by not misplacing our customers

1049 00:44:39,550 --> 00:44:42,960 which is the thing that happens believe it or not so,

1050 00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:44,750 or else we would have customer relationship

1051 00:44:44,750 --> 00:44:46,200 management software.

1052 00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:47,700

• Yeah, absolutely.

1053 00:44:47,700 --> 00:44:51,180 Okay. So if I am listening in

1054 00:44:51,180 --> 00:44:54,160 and I have read the first edition

1055 00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:56,310 I have dog-eared it, highlighted it,

1056 00:44:56,310 --> 00:44:58,520 quoted it my friends

1057 00:44:58,520 --> 00:45:01,000 but maybe haven't revisited it recently

1058 00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:04,250 and now this new edition is gonna come out.

1059 00:45:04,250 --> 00:45:06,320 What's new, what's juicy.

1060 00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:07,570 What does it address?

1061 00:45:07,570 --> 00:45:09,900 What's your pitch for why I should go out

1062 00:45:09,900 --> 00:45:13,193 and get the latest copy and keep learning from you?

1063 00:45:16,290 --> 00:45:21,290

• Well, it's 22,000 words more

1064 00:45:21,790 --> 00:45:25,242 so you know there's new stuff in there.

1065 00:45:25,242 --> 00:45:28,470 Some of the things that didn't work for enterprises

1066 00:45:28,470 --> 00:45:31,700 and bigger companies has been crossed out and adapted.

1067 00:45:31,700 --> 00:45:33,870 So it says, if you're a startup, you can do this

1068 00:45:33,870 --> 00:45:36,900 but if you're a bigger company, you might wanna do this.

1069 00:45:36,900 --> 00:45:40,410 Connecting with strategic thinking, connecting it,

1070 00:45:40,410 --> 00:45:44,600 OKRs with navigating change,

1071 00:45:44,600 --> 00:45:47,240 there's just all those questions,

1072 00:45:47,240 --> 00:45:48,870 actually, there's a simple way to say this.

1073 00:45:48,870 --> 00:45:51,210 So at the end of the five years,

1074 00:45:51,210 --> 00:45:52,980 I wrote my mailing list and I said,

1075 00:45:52,980 --> 00:45:56,190 I'd love to talk to a few people who struggled with OKRs

1076 00:45:56,190 --> 00:45:57,860 in their company.

1077 00:45:57,860 --> 00:46:00,360 I got 250 answers back.

1078 00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:03,590 I did so many interviews and I put them on mural

1079 00:46:03,590 --> 00:46:06,310 and I moved the little post-it notes around

1080 00:46:06,310 --> 00:46:10,130 like a good design thinking person and I saw patterns.

1081 00:46:10,130 --> 00:46:11,670 People were running into the same problems

1082 00:46:11,670 --> 00:46:12,860 over and over and over again.

1083 00:46:12,860 --> 00:46:15,900 And to be honest, those patterns were mapped very closely

1084 00:46:15,900 --> 00:46:18,660 to the problems that I saw in my work.

1085 00:46:18,660 --> 00:46:22,080 And then I just wrote until I solved the problems

1086 00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:25,120 based on work that my clients had done.

1087 00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:30,120 And so the new edition dives deep on those hard questions

1088 00:46:30,240 --> 00:46:33,190 like all the ones you covered,

1089 00:46:33,190 --> 00:46:34,713 who shouldn't use OKRs,

1090 00:46:35,590 --> 00:46:37,953 what do we do when not everybody can do OKRs,

1091 00:46:37,953 --> 00:46:40,250 what do we do when we don't have product market fit?

1092 00:46:40,250 --> 00:46:41,850 What do we do when we have projects

1093 00:46:41,850 --> 00:46:43,460 that are longer than a quarter?

1094 00:46:43,460 --> 00:46:45,010 Those are all the common questions

1095 00:46:45,010 --> 00:46:47,900 and I made sure that I gave their answers.

1096 00:46:47,900 --> 00:46:50,300 The only problem is people love the book

1097 00:46:50,300 --> 00:46:51,600 'cause it's a little book.

1098 00:46:52,620 --> 00:46:55,920 So I promise you, not every answer on earth is answered,

1099 00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:58,840 but the big ones are, the big ones.

1100 00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:00,854

• Does 22,000 words,

1101 00:47:00,854 --> 00:47:05,800 how much bigger does that make a little book in centimeters?

1102 00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:07,720 Did anyone measure on that?

1103 00:47:07,720 --> 00:47:09,570 Speaking of important metrics?

1104 00:47:09,570 --> 00:47:14,150

• My designer said, go find a book that's 250 words long ish

1105 00:47:14,150 --> 00:47:15,790 and see how you feel about that.

1106 00:47:15,790 --> 00:47:16,710 And so I did,

1107 00:47:16,710 --> 00:47:19,150 I went over into my bookshelf and I was like, Oh, okay.

1108 00:47:19,150 --> 00:47:20,056 I'm okay with this.

1109 00:47:20,056 --> 00:47:22,040 You can still stick it in your pocket

1110 00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:24,150 or your purse or your backpack on the way

1111 00:47:24,150 --> 00:47:26,210 to a flight that I think you can still read it

1112 00:47:26,210 --> 00:47:27,390 on the way to Seattle.

1113 00:47:27,390 --> 00:47:30,280 Although I don't think you can read it on the way to

1114 00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,450 LA anymore from San Francisco from SFO.

1115 00:47:33,450 --> 00:47:34,810 That's often how I think about books.

1116 00:47:34,810 --> 00:47:37,820 It's how long do I have to fly to finish this book?

1117 00:47:37,820 --> 00:47:39,000

• Got it. I love that.

1118 00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:42,410 Okay, you are an advocate

1119 00:47:42,410 --> 00:47:45,700 of the outcomes over outputs mindset.

1120 00:47:45,700 --> 00:47:49,400 So what are the outcomes you hope to achieve

1121 00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:50,650 with this latest edition?

1122 00:47:53,110 --> 00:47:54,873

• I'm more than anything else.

1123 00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:59,270 I just don't wanna see people using OKRs

1124 00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:03,323 to beat their people into submission.

1125 00:48:04,460 --> 00:48:09,450 I see too often people setting ridiculous goals

1126 00:48:09,450 --> 00:48:10,780 'cause they're trying to get a little more blood

1127 00:48:10,780 --> 00:48:12,980 out of a stone, so to speak,

1128 00:48:12,980 --> 00:48:16,040 or they set it for absolutely everything

1129 00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:18,120 'cause they want command and control.

1130 00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:20,980 Individual OKRs, I think I'm ready to call it,

1131 00:48:20,980 --> 00:48:22,170 they don't work.

1132 00:48:22,170 --> 00:48:23,790 You can do personal OKRs,

1133 00:48:23,790 --> 00:48:27,650 you for your own self, but no boss can set individual OKRs

1134 00:48:27,650 --> 00:48:30,720 unless the individual is actually a business unit

1135 00:48:30,720 --> 00:48:33,780 so to speak, like an SEO guy, he's the entire department.

1136 00:48:33,780 --> 00:48:36,630 You might be able to set OKRs for him or maybe not.

1137 00:48:36,630 --> 00:48:40,700 So I'd really like people to be more thoughtful

1138 00:48:40,700 --> 00:48:41,600 about their company.

1139 00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:44,770 I'd like people to spend a little time

1140 00:48:44,770 --> 00:48:48,340 thinking about the well-being of their human beings,

1141 00:48:48,340 --> 00:48:50,000 not their human resources.

1142 00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:52,660 I'd like people who read it

1143 00:48:52,660 --> 00:48:54,710 to ask, what do I really want?

1144 00:48:54,710 --> 00:48:57,450 What actually matters instead of scattering themselves

1145 00:48:57,450 --> 00:48:58,800 in 20 different directions.

1146 00:49:00,420 --> 00:49:04,260 And it's gonna be hard to figure out how to measure that

1147 00:49:04,260 --> 00:49:06,100 but I love figuring out how to measure things.

1148 00:49:06,100 --> 00:49:09,310 And I think it might have something to do with,

1149 00:49:09,310 --> 00:49:12,740 some surveys, some visits and maybe some reviews.

1150 00:49:12,740 --> 00:49:15,670 I'm gonna be looking for certain key words so.

1151 00:49:15,670 --> 00:49:18,330

• Well and let me throw a suggestion into the ring.

1152 00:49:18,330 --> 00:49:21,470 So one of the things I get asked this a lot in

1153 00:49:21,470 --> 00:49:24,151 classes and workshops, when I teach them

1154 00:49:24,151 --> 00:49:24,984 and it always comes back to

1155 00:49:24,984 --> 00:49:27,800 how do I convince my boss that blah, blah, blah.

1156 00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:29,340 I think what I'm hearing you say

1157 00:49:29,340 --> 00:49:32,020 to all of the potential readers of your book is,

1158 00:49:32,020 --> 00:49:35,190 if you run into management that is using OKRs

1159 00:49:35,190 --> 00:49:36,600 for the wrong reasons,

1160 00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:39,990 they have your permission to personally email you

1161 00:49:39,990 --> 00:49:43,280 and give their bosses a talking to prevent.

1162 00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:45,000 And so then that could be the metric.

1163 00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:49,350 Numbers of emails that you have had to intervene with

1164 00:49:49,350 --> 00:49:51,440 difficult leaders.

1165 00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:53,643

• I may have to not put it out tomorrow.

1166 00:49:53,643 --> 00:49:56,910 I may not have to take it home and rewrite it again

1167 00:49:56,910 --> 00:49:59,270 but yes, that would work out really well.

1168 00:49:59,270 --> 00:50:00,310 I already have that.

1169 00:50:00,310 --> 00:50:02,800 I have so many people emailing me and saying

1170 00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:04,140 how do I convince my boss?

1171 00:50:04,140 --> 00:50:06,470 And I'm like, well, you can throw the book at his head

1172 00:50:06,470 --> 00:50:10,020 but I'm not sure that's gonna end well.

1173 00:50:10,020 --> 00:50:12,000 It just, yeah show success.

1174 00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:13,680 But yeah, emailing is great.

1175 00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:14,670 Tweeting is great.

1176 00:50:14,670 --> 00:50:16,700 I am a little too addicted to Twitter.

1177 00:50:16,700 --> 00:50:18,383 So I'm always looking for,

1178 00:50:19,235 --> 00:50:21,080 I'm looking for people who say,

1179 00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:22,010 I don't know how to do this

1180 00:50:22,010 --> 00:50:25,290 because then I have a short answer situation.

1181 00:50:25,290 --> 00:50:27,390 So yeah, I think that'd be great.

1182 00:50:27,390 --> 00:50:29,130 If I see communication

1183 00:50:29,130 --> 00:50:31,620 about things that I actually wrote about,

1184 00:50:31,620 --> 00:50:33,960 I will consider that a failure of communication on my side,

1185 00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:34,793 for sure.

1186 00:50:36,230 --> 00:50:37,063

• All right.

1187 00:50:37,063 --> 00:50:38,200 We're coming to the end of our times.

1188 00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:40,610 I've got just two more questions for you, Christina.

1189 00:50:40,610 --> 00:50:44,580 The first is we are doing our author series

1190 00:50:44,580 --> 00:50:47,240 and you are the first guest in this series.

1191 00:50:47,240 --> 00:50:49,868 So its so exciting to have you help us kick it off.

1192 00:50:49,868 --> 00:50:54,868 What are some of your favorite product management books

1193 00:50:55,330 --> 00:50:58,210 or authors and they could be like,

1194 00:50:58,210 --> 00:50:59,570 maybe they're not even conventional

1195 00:50:59,570 --> 00:51:01,800 product management books, but you would say,

1196 00:51:01,800 --> 00:51:04,330 if you're a product manager, you need this.

1197 00:51:04,330 --> 00:51:05,163

• Oh gosh yeah.

1198 00:51:05,163 --> 00:51:08,323 I love non-conventional books in particular so thank you.

1199 00:51:09,180 --> 00:51:11,147 I would recommend Amy Edmondson's,

1200 00:51:11,147 --> 00:51:12,770 "The Fearless Organization."

1201 00:51:12,770 --> 00:51:14,300 It's all about psychological safety.

1202 00:51:14,300 --> 00:51:16,340 It's a great read.

1203 00:51:16,340 --> 00:51:18,130 Her first book on teams was invaluable

1204 00:51:18,130 --> 00:51:19,590 but it was a little harder going

1205 00:51:19,590 --> 00:51:22,140 but "Fearless Organization" is a delight to read

1206 00:51:22,140 --> 00:51:25,460 from beginning to end, no filler and incredibly important

1207 00:51:25,460 --> 00:51:28,600 because product managers don't do anything

1208 00:51:28,600 --> 00:51:30,600 by telling people to do it.

1209 00:51:30,600 --> 00:51:33,083 They do everything through persuasion.

1210 00:51:33,940 --> 00:51:35,387 There's the "Classic Influence

1211 00:51:35,387 --> 00:51:39,773 "Without authority," from David Bradfield.

1212 00:51:40,810 --> 00:51:43,560 There is of course, Marty Cagan's new book "Empowered."

1213 00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:46,040 Marty and I have a conversation with

1214 00:51:46,040 --> 00:51:48,668 both our books and our personal conversations

1215 00:51:48,668 --> 00:51:52,470 about how do we create more humane workplaces.

1216 00:51:52,470 --> 00:51:55,863 And it really is about empowering teams at its very heart.

1217 00:51:57,202 --> 00:51:58,580 And then there's just

1218 00:51:58,580 --> 00:52:01,930 my the product is such a great home for so much knowledge.

1219 00:52:01,930 --> 00:52:05,880 The founders have written books that are wonderful.

1220 00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:09,410 The talks from the conferences, the articles,

1221 00:52:09,410 --> 00:52:11,730 I mean, I just think it's such a grand resource,

1222 00:52:11,730 --> 00:52:14,500 which I suppose your readers probably have figured out

1223 00:52:14,500 --> 00:52:17,500 but I can't help but mention it again.

1224 00:52:17,500 --> 00:52:20,670 And then the dow of coaching

1225 00:52:20,670 --> 00:52:23,360 or inner game of tennis

1226 00:52:23,360 --> 00:52:25,960 or inner game of stress, if you prefer,

1227 00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:28,655 I've gotta say it has taught me so much

1228 00:52:28,655 --> 00:52:33,590 about talking to people and not telling people things

1229 00:52:33,590 --> 00:52:37,180 but letting them come to their own conclusions

1230 00:52:37,180 --> 00:52:39,880 and teach me and come up with better solutions

1231 00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:41,640 that I can live with.

1232 00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:45,065 So there's a simple model called grow

1233 00:52:45,065 --> 00:52:48,340 and if you use the system,

1234 00:52:48,340 --> 00:52:49,950 it'll be great for your one-on-ones

1235 00:52:49,950 --> 00:52:53,630 and it will really help you learn to trust your people

1236 00:52:53,630 --> 00:52:54,820 and your teams.

1237 00:52:54,820 --> 00:52:58,630

• Yeah I love there's clearly so much value

1238 00:52:58,630 --> 00:53:00,150 that you place on

1239 00:53:01,620 --> 00:53:04,500 really I think like the spiritual aspects of succeeding

1240 00:53:04,500 --> 00:53:07,750 in team constructs, communication and the ability

1241 00:53:07,750 --> 00:53:10,950 to transact that effectively and again,

1242 00:53:10,950 --> 00:53:15,380 just creating environments where people can feel

1243 00:53:15,380 --> 00:53:17,430 able to talk about what's wrong

1244 00:53:17,430 --> 00:53:19,300 and then actually work towards solutions.

1245 00:53:19,300 --> 00:53:20,580 So all great recommends.

1246 00:53:20,580 --> 00:53:23,080 And we'll put those up in the show notes for our listeners.

1247 00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:25,663 Last question Christina Wodtke,

1248 00:53:26,610 --> 00:53:30,470 what has been your biggest COVID revelation

1249 00:53:30,470 --> 00:53:32,600 as things are starting to reopen

1250 00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:35,740 and we're having to maybe adapt again

1251 00:53:35,740 --> 00:53:39,860 to what has been a kind of wild time for us all.

1252 00:53:39,860 --> 00:53:42,720 Anything that you have learned about yourself,

1253 00:53:42,720 --> 00:53:46,750 your career, your interests over this period

1254 00:53:46,750 --> 00:53:48,190 that you would love to share

1255 00:53:48,190 --> 00:53:50,040 with our listeners as a parting note?

1256 00:53:51,060 --> 00:53:54,430

• I think the biggest learning was

1257 00:53:54,430 --> 00:53:57,090 technology is not always the answer

1258 00:53:57,090 --> 00:54:00,780 and it has proven true across so many things.

1259 00:54:00,780 --> 00:54:03,740 like we shower too often and we have this horrible dry skin

1260 00:54:03,740 --> 00:54:04,990 so we have to put moisture on it,

1261 00:54:04,990 --> 00:54:06,530 those are both technologies,

1262 00:54:06,530 --> 00:54:08,313 but if you shower just once a week,

1263 00:54:09,370 --> 00:54:12,175 then your skin becomes amazingly healthy.

1264 00:54:12,175 --> 00:54:16,680 If you spend all your time on email

1265 00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:19,150 and teaching classes online

1266 00:54:19,150 --> 00:54:22,930 and responding to Twitter all the time,

1267 00:54:22,930 --> 00:54:25,540 you end up being worn through a little bit,

1268 00:54:25,540 --> 00:54:27,140 I became very weary.

1269 00:54:27,140 --> 00:54:30,410 It's fake socialization and it's fake work

1270 00:54:30,410 --> 00:54:32,960 and I realized I really had to

1271 00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:34,740 make my screen time a lot less,

1272 00:54:34,740 --> 00:54:37,730 which meant I had to figure out what to do

1273 00:54:37,730 --> 00:54:38,970 and I live in a little condo.

1274 00:54:38,970 --> 00:54:41,710 So what I had to do was leave the condo safely

1275 00:54:41,710 --> 00:54:44,850 but go out into nature and guess what nature is awesome.

1276 00:54:44,850 --> 00:54:46,970 And it's healing and it's wonderful.

1277 00:54:46,970 --> 00:54:48,740 And all these kids have been playing outside

1278 00:54:48,740 --> 00:54:50,080 because their parents couldn't stand

1279 00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:52,180 being cooped up with them while they were trying to work

1280 00:54:52,180 --> 00:54:53,710 but the kids are doing better.

1281 00:54:53,710 --> 00:54:56,090 And so I think when we leave COVID

1282 00:54:56,090 --> 00:54:57,800 I think we have to ask ourselves

1283 00:54:57,800 --> 00:54:59,730 how many things are we doing

1284 00:54:59,730 --> 00:55:01,820 just because somebody told us to do it.

1285 00:55:01,820 --> 00:55:03,260 Just because somebody said,

1286 00:55:03,260 --> 00:55:06,350 it's better if you use this shampoo or the skin washer,

1287 00:55:06,350 --> 00:55:09,090

this moisturizer or this website

1288 00:55:09,090 --> 00:55:10,640 or this product management tool

1289 00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:13,570 or this project management software.

1290 00:55:13,570 --> 00:55:16,860 I just wanna ask, maybe it's just okay to use a piece

1291 00:55:16,860 --> 00:55:18,450 of paper and put it on the wall.

1292 00:55:18,450 --> 00:55:21,123 Maybe it's okay just to take a walk. That's all.

1293 00:55:21,990 --> 00:55:23,220

• Beautiful, we love that.

1294 00:55:23,220 --> 00:55:26,050 Christina thank you so much for being part of our show.

1295 00:55:26,050 --> 00:55:27,540 Congratulations on the book.

1296 00:55:27,540 --> 00:55:29,740 We'll make sure that all of the listeners have links

1297 00:55:29,740 --> 00:55:31,070 for where they can find it

1298 00:55:31,070 --> 00:55:33,500 and best of luck to you in the coming weeks.

1299 00:55:33,500 --> 00:55:35,650

• Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

1300 00:55:38,530 --> 00:55:41,150 Thank you for listening to 100 PM.

1301 00:55:41,150 --> 00:55:42,737 The official podcast for

1302 00:55:42,737 --> 00:55:45,770 https://www.100 productmanagers.com.

1303 00:55:45,770 --> 00:55:48,800 If you enjoyed the show, please help us get discovered

1304 00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:51,810 by leaving a five star rating and review

1305 00:55:51,810 --> 00:55:54,360 right from your podcast app.

1306 00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:58,140 Our mission is to help you excel at product management.

1307 00:55:58,140 --> 00:56:00,630 If you haven't been to our site, please check it out.

1308 00:56:00,630 --> 00:56:03,330 We have so many great free resources

1309 00:56:03,330 --> 00:56:05,160 to help you on your path,

1310 00:56:05,160 --> 00:56:07,440 including all of the recommendations,

1311 00:56:07,440 --> 00:56:10,330 from our fabulous guests week over week.

1312 00:56:10,330 --> 00:56:12,670 I'm your host Suzanne Abate,

1313 00:56:12,670 --> 00:56:15,329 we'll be back next week with an all new episode.

1314 00:56:15,329 --> 00:56:17,912 (upbeat music)