Who Does What By How Much?: A Practical Guide to Customer-Centric OKRs
Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden
Sense and Response Press (2024)

Here’s a better way to measure organizational success 

Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden explain how any organization — whatever its size and nature may be — can use OKRs (i.e. objectives and key results) to ensure that the right people are doing the right work in the right way so that the right customer receives the greatest value.

According to Gothelf and Seiden, “Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a popular goal-setting framework that many people associate with the tech world. They were born at Intel, made famous by Google, and are widely used by tech companies. But OKRs are a powerful set of tools that can be (and are being) used by organizations of all shapes and sizes — certainly by tech start-ups and giants, but also by non-profits, hospital systems, and even, as you’ll see, shoe companies.”

There are three separate but interdependent components when implementing OKRs:

1. A simple but powerful goal-setting framework
2. A set of processes for using OKRs and getting work done
3. A workplace culture within which OKRs have the potential to create — and that they require — so that organizations can use them to thrive.

Gothelf and Seiden make brilliant use of several reader-friendly devices when organizing the abundance of information, insights, and counsel they provide. These devices include boldface and italics to increase impact, checklists, questions as well as direct responses thereto, dozens of mini-case studies, and most notably a set of “Key Takeaways” that concludes each chapter.

Which passages were of greatest interest and value to me? In Parts 1-3, they include:

o Introduction (Pages 1-7)
o OKRs Are a Culture (19)
o OKRs Put Customers at the Center (22-23)
o Th´Key Principles of OKRs (33-37)
o OKRs and Outcomes (42-44)

o A Closer Look at “Strategy” (55-57)
o How to Create a Strategy: A Lightweight Process (58-63)
o Plot the Customer’s Journey (73-77)
o Creating Your Team’s Objective (81-87)
o Self-Check Your Key Results, and, Setting Your Numbers (91-93)

o A Process for Top-Down and Bottom-Up Collaboration (102-108)
o General Questions About OKRs (108-111)
o Questions About [OKR] Teams (112-114)
o Questions About Customers (116-122)
o The OKR Cycle (127-132)

o The Process of Working with OKRs (139-142)
o Measuring results thus far to learn what to do…and what not to do (152-156)
o “Check In” meetings? (157-163)
o Revising Your OKRs (171-176)
o Build a Roadmap Driven by Key Results: Four Steps (185-190)

These are among Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden’s concluding thoughts:  “The most powerful predictors of success today are humility and curiosity. The organizations, leaders, and teams that will win are the ones willing to admit that they’re making educated guesses about how to best serve their customers and then go out into the world to test their ideas. The leaders who can stand up in front of their people and admit, ‘I was wrong,’ will build cultures of learning and agility that are able to respond to anything the world throws at them.

“Maybe it’s a bit ambitious to believe that a simple goal-setting framework can make all that happen. But hey, we’re optimists. And we’re rooting for you.”

Margaret Mead agrees: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

* * *

Here are two suggestions while you are reading Who Does What By How Much? : First, highlight key passages. Also, perhaps in a lined notebook kept near-at-hand, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to key points introduced within the narrative. Also, record your responses to specific or major issues or questions addressed or suggested in the material and pay special attention to the aforementioned end-of-chapter “Key Takeaways.”

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.