Radical Focus (Second Edition)

Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results

By: Christina Wodtke

Narrated by: Samantha Desz

Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

"Radical Focus is a must-read for anyone who wants to accomplish out-sized results. Christina does a great job showing both the why and the how of OKRs. Avoid the all-too-common mistakes by reading this book first." (Teresa Torres, author Continuous Discovery Habits)

The award-winning author of The Team That Managed Itself and Pencil Me In returns with a new and expanded edition of her landmark book on OKRs.

If you’ve ever wanted to know how to use OKRs, or why yours might not be working, Radical Focus teaches you everything you need to achieve your goals. The author pulls from her experience with Silicon Valley’s hottest companies to teach practical insights on OKRs in the form of a fable.

When Hanna and Jack receive an ultimatum from the only investor in their struggling tea supply company, they must learn how to employ Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) with radical focus to get the right things done. Using Hanna and Jack’s story, Wodtke walks listeners through how to inspire a diverse team to work together in pursuit of a single, challenging goal, and how to stay motivated despite setbacks and failures.

Radical Focus has been translated into six languages and sold more than 50,000 copies. Now, the second edition of her OKR manifesto proves that Wodtke’s business strategies are essential in a world where focus seems to be a more and more unreachable goal. The updated version includes 22,000 words of all-new material designed to help OKR users in larger companies create, grade, and manage OKRs in ways that accelerate success and drive rapid organizational learning.

Ready to move your team in the right direction? Listen to this book together, and learn Wodtke’s powerful system for attaining your most important goals with radical focus.

"This book is useful, actionable, and actually fun to read! If you want to get your team aligned around real, measurable goals, Radical Focus will teach you how to do it quickly and clearly." (Laura Klein, principal, Users Know)

Praise for the Second Edition

“Everything good I’ve ever learned about OKRs I learned from Christina Wodtke and Radical Focus.” (Jeff Gothelf, author of Lean UX, Sense & Respond, and Forever Employable)

“A master at getting things done, Christina offers a radically focused way to achieve one's goals through disciplined use of OKRs.” (Irene Au, design partner at Khosla Ventures)

“It has been five years since Christina published the first edition of Radical Focus. The book has gone on to become a favorite for thousands of product people working to learn how to empower their teams, and utilize the OKR technique.... I think you will love [the second edition.] It will inspire you.” (Marty Cagan, author of Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love)

"Together with Doerr, Grove, and Drucker, Christina Wodtke is one of the four people who shaped OKR into the powerful tool it is today. With Radical Focus 2.0, she continues to teach us that success is about having an impact, not checking a box." (Felipe Castro, founder, OutcomeEdge)

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Christina R Wodtke (P)2021 Christina R Wodtke

feels like the okr book mor than readical focus

overall good but i thought ot would be more general and less specific regarding okr. loved the narrator.

The Definitive Guidebook for Using OKRs

Radical Focus is the definitive guidebook for using Objectives Key Results (OKRs). Since reading the first edition of this book I have been using OKRs with Christina’s 4-Square dashboard and weekly setting & celebrating rituals. It’s completely transformed how our team work -we are so much more focussed and effective now.

The book is organised in three parts; Part 1 is a fable of a startup team as they use OKRs for the first time, you follow them through an initial not-so-great implementation and what they do to improve next time. Part 2 covers the basic theory of OKRs, what they are and what they’re not. Part 3 is covers common queries, questions & issues people have when using OKRs. Part 3 in particular is packed with new content about OKRs in large companies which I found especially relevant.

The first time I read this the simplicity of the approach stood out to me, and how setting an OKR is really only the first step, using regular confidence check-ins, and end of term evaluation is required as well to really make them work. Reading the second edition after 18months of practise, the things that stood out to me most were the description of end-Q grading, the differentiation between roadmaps (activity-based plans) and pipelines (lists of candidate hypotheses).

This book is packed with insights about team dynamics as well as organising work, all centred around the brilliantly simple but hugely powerful Objective and Key Result system. It is one of the most practical management books I’ve ever read and the one I use the most often to drive how I lead teams on a day-to-day basis.

Great book on OKRs and beyond.

Easy listening with tons of useful insights. Highly recommended. I like the practical approach of the author. The narrator did a great job keeping the story interesting.

Great for anyone interested in OKRs

Part 1 is OKRs taught through a story of a hypothetical start up. Provided in this “applied” manner, it makes internalizing the ideas behind OKRs much easier to digest.

With that knowledge base established, part 2 of the book discusses the tactical aspects of implementing an OKR process in a variety of settings and to achieve a variety of strategic goals.

Overall, an excellent resource for those interested in learning about how OKRs can help their business and how to put them in place.

Radical Focus, Objectives and Key Results

This is a book that was better than I had anticipated. It is split into two parts - the first being a fictional story of two founders trying to advance their company, going through the ups and downs, and eventually learning and applying OKRs. I love this kind of business-novel style writing which reminds me a lot like Eliyahu Goldratt's The Goal. The second part is more of a guide, teaching readers how to implement OKRs and the reasons behind them.

The best way to avoid common OKR mistakes is to read this book

Great book easy to listen. I would recommend you to take notes while listening to put everything into practice. The fable part is great for an audio book.

Implementing OKRs in a way that doesn’t help and even frustrates team is easy and common. By reading this book you will learn how to set OKRs and more importantly how to follow up.
The biggest benefit that OKRs can give you is to be sure that all your organization is FOCUSED on the most important goals. This book will teach you how to use them for that.

Liked the examples, for someone who knows OKRs

Good book for whom already knows OKRs, as it gives you a few good examples in the form of a story of a startup. I didn't like the links being read fully tho, it disconnects your brain in a small laughter whenever it happens.

Definitely a VERY useful book

I absolutely enjoyed this book!

This is a GREAT companion book to read with Measure What Matters of John Doerr and also Andy Grove's High Impact Management!

I do recommend this book for any serious business animal.

Very good starting point for Applied OKRs

While I generally don't care for 'story' business books, the first half did help the concepts land better for me. This book helped me understand how to apply OKRs.

My only complaint is the narrator reading off URLs (www dot word dot com slash....). Please put the URL references in a downloadable . PDF file and refer by number or something.

Great narrator and organization

The TeeBee story can get a little long-winded at times, but overall does a nice job of outlining the problem without OKRs, the difficulty of implementing them, and the benefits of sticking with it. The How-To section after the story is great with practical advice, such as implementing lightweight OKRs and experimenting before committing to a technology solution.