I recently watched Christina Wodtke author of Radical Focus and now Radical Focus 2.0 in a lean-product meetup.
Christina talked principally about OKRs and how people prioritize and take things in hand. As she points out, steady state is often skewed by the noisiest stakeholders. The Eisenhower foursquare serves a purpose but she presents a different way of thinking about prioritization and focusing on what matters that transcends the noisy, the easy, the fast.
It is also worth taking a watch of The importance of a compelling mission and a user-focused strategy by Johannes Mayer an older piece from ProductTank Vienna October 2020 and part of the Mind the Product series accompanied by reflection on events from 2018.
Both press us to consider why we do what we do. So considering purpose and how that is different from business goals. Buy In and Focus are articulated as important accompanied by an evidence based approach.
I liked the definitions of Purpose as the raison d’etre – accompanied with thoughts on “why do we exist?”, mission is how we execute on the purpose and the vision is what the world would look like once the mission is completed.
At the center is the people with purpose, mission and vision. Significant in the monologue is the question of the “Why?” – followers of Simon Sinek will know that’s a favourite question.
Wodtke talks about missions as being very similar to objectives but emphasises that these should excite and be nicely encapsulated in the timeframe of perhaps a quarter.
Wodtke’s angle is a little different, because she is focused on OKRs and her question, is not the Why?, but rather, How do you know? As is pointed out, not everyone needs OKRs – they should be focused on growth and strategic outcomes.
Take a watch and let me know what you think.
