Radical Focus

How do you inspire a diverse team to work together, going all out in pursuit of a single, challenging goal?

In Radical Focus, Christine Wodtke combines her hard earned experience as an executive at Zynga, Linkedin, and many of Silicon Valley's hottest companies to answer that question.

Wodtke first takes you through the fictional case study of Hanna and Jack, who are struggling to survive in their own startup. They fight shiny object syndrome, losing focus, and dealing with communication issues. The second half of the book demonstrates how to use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to help teams realize big goals in a methodical way, leaving nothing to chance.

Ready to move your team in the right direction? Read this, and learn the system of creating your focus — and finding success.

• Forward
  • Introduction
• The Executioner's Tale
  • Six Months Ago
  • Hanna Finds Another Great Customer
  • Hanna Suggest a Pivot
  • Jim is Holding Court at Starbucks
  • Jack Really Hates Starbucks
  • Hanna Announces the Pivot
  • Hanna Attends a Tasting
  • Jack Commits to Quality
  • Hanna Talks Numbers
  • Jack Eavesdrops
  • Jack Gets More News
  • Hanna Gets Advice
  • Hanna Gets More Bad News
  • Jack Makes a Call
  • Out of Time
  • Numbers
  • Hanna and Jack Meet a New Player
  • The Executive Team
  • Hanna, Friday, One Month Later
  • Happily Ever After?
  • Hanna, Six Months Later
  • Hanna, One Year Later
• The Framework for Radical Focus
  • Why We Can't Get Things Done
  • OKR Fundamentals
  • What Makes OKRs Work?
  • OKRs for Product Teams
  • Setting a Rythm of Execution
  • Connecting Company Business Objectives with Service Department OKRs
    • OKR Coaching Example Quantifying Engineering's Contribution to Sales
  • The Timning of OKRs
  • OKRs for MVPs
  • Improve Weekly Status Emails with OKRs
  • Common OKR Mistakes
  • OKRs and the Annual Review
  • Quick Tips on OKRs Use
  • A Little History and Credit Where Credit Is Due

This book started of as an excellent read. The introduction had me hooked. Then came the oh-so-popular story-telling (but it was fairly well done and gave some good insights in entrepreneurs workdays), then it weered of in small tidbits, that was hard to find any common thread in.

It is an OK book, but the worthwhile parts are in the first parts. The worst parts was that the absolute end was an advert for the authors next book, which I will probably avoid.