The ultimate guide to OKRs | Christina Wodtke (Stanford)
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
Lenny Rachitsky
5 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2023
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Christina Wodtke is an author, Stanford University professor, and speaker who teaches strategies for building high-performing teams. She’s also the author of Radical Focus, which some consider the de facto guide to OKRs. In today’s episode, we dive into OKRs and how they can be used to help your team achieve better results. Christina shares her expertise on crafting OKRs, how she uses them in her personal life, and common mistakes you should avoid when you sit down to write your own. She discusses effective goal setting and outlines a systematic approach to achieving key results. Finally, Christina gives some specific tips on how to improve your storytelling and drawing skills and explains why it’s smart to set ambitious goals.
Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-okrs-christina-wodtke-stanford/
Where to find Christina Wodtke:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cwodtke
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinawodtke/
• Website: https://eleganthack.com/
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
Referenced:
• OKR worksheet template: http://eleganthack.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/OKR_Worksheet.pdf
• Yahoo’s peanut butter memo: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116379821933826657
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fable/dp/0787960756/
• Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Focus-Achieving-Important-Objectives/dp/0996006087
• Pencil Me In: https://www.amazon.com/Pencil-Me-Christina-Wodtke-ebook/dp/B075Z8J35G?
• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures: https://www.amazon.com/Back-Napkin-Expanded-Problems-Pictures/dp/1591842697/ref=sr_1_1
• The Minto Pyramid Principle: https://www.barbaraminto.com/
• Lane Shackleton’s guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-coda-builds-product
• The Product Trio by Teresa Torres: https://www.producttalk.org/2021/05/product-trio/
• Ken Norton’s website: https://www.bringthedonuts.com/about/
• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth: https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Organization-Psychological-Workplace-Innovation/dp/1119477247
• The Overstory: https://www.amazon.com/Overstory-Novel-Richard-Powers/dp/039335668X/
• Cloud Atlas: https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Atlas-Novel-David-Mitchell/dp/0375507256
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9114286/
• The Team That Managed Itself: A Story of Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Team-that-Managed-Itself-Leadership-ebook/dp/B07ZG5Y689
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Christina’s background
(04:54) How Christina uses OKRs to manage her personal life
(07:42) The purpose of OKRs
(16:15) Mission, vision, roadmaps, and OKRs
(20:57) How strategy ties in
(22:39) Why OKRs should be kept simple, and the ideal way to express key results
(23:45) The importance of customer satisfaction and why you need a qualitative researcher
(24:58) Common mistakes people make when writing OKRs
(26:14) An example of writing OKRs for an online magazine about interior design
(29:28) The importance of repetition
(33:17) The 5 whys
(36:40) Why you should start OKRs with your best multi-disciplinary team
(38:44) Christina’s book, Radical Focus
(40:26) The importance of storytelling and drawing (even badly!)
(43:21) Tips to become a better storyteller
(44:29) Using the Minto method for storytelling
(46:02) The cadence of OKRs and the importance of celebrations
(51:09) A different kind of approval process to get OKRs done more efficiently
(53:01) Why the focus on learning is more important than grading
(54:29) Why you should set ambitious goals
(57:47) Where to start
(1:00:48) The overemphasis of UX in product management education and the importance of business sense
(1:03:01) Advice for people seeking a career in product management
(1:05:44) Lightning round
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | People do not value celebrations enough. |
| 0:04.0 | I've had CEOs who said, well, it was the middle of the quarter, |
| 0:07.5 | so we didn't start OKRs, but we did start Friday celebrations |
| 0:10.1 | and oh my God, things are already changing. |
| 0:12.1 | Things are already getting better. |
| 0:13.7 | The simple act of getting together and saying what was the most awesome thing |
| 0:18.0 | that happened to you this week? What's the most awesome thing that happened in marketing? |
| 0:20.8 | What's the most awesome thing that designed it this week. |
| 0:23.1 | It makes people feel like they're part of something really special, you know, and it's super exciting. |
| 0:30.1 | Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts |
| 0:35.3 | to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. |
| 0:40.1 | Today, my guest is Christina Woodkey. Christina is a multi-time author, speaker, and lecturer at |
| 0:46.4 | Stanford, where she teaches product management, game design, and a few other topics. She also |
| 0:50.8 | consults with companies on their product development processes and in particular their OKR process. |
| 0:57.0 | Before getting into teaching and consulting, she was a product leader at LinkedIn, MySpace, Zinga, and Yahoo, as well as a founder of three different companies, |
| 1:05.5 | plus an online magazine called Boxes and Arrows. |
| 1:08.7 | In our conversation, we go deep into OKR's. |
| 1:11.6 | What is the atomic unit of an OR? What might be broken about your OKR process? Why you may want to roll out OKR's or change how you approach them. Also how the best companies leverage OKR's, the most common rude causes of OKRs going wrong, |
| 1:25.0 | the elements of a healthy OKR cadence, how OKRs fit with Mission Strategy and Roadmaps, |
| 1:31.0 | we also touch on the skill of storytelling and she also shares her most contrarian perspective on what new product managers should be focusing on. |
| 1:39.0 | Christina is a wealth of knowledge and is super interesting and fun and I know you will learn a lot from her. |
| 1:45.2 | With that I bring you Christina Woodkey after a short word from our select sponsors. |
... |
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