Creating a Learning and Iteration Culture Connecting Lean Strategy and OKRs
Creating a Learning and Iteration Culture Connecting Lean Strategy and OKRs
An interview with Jeff Gothelf, covering uncertainty, alignment, bottom-up goal setting and much more!
Hey! Nacho here. I’m continuing the series of podcast episodes in which I interview thought leaders about hard strategy topics. In past weeks we released conversations with Teresa Torres, and John Cutler, and in upcoming episodes, we will feature Marty Cagan, Bruce McCarthy, Dan Olsen, and more!
So, if you are not a subscriber yet, this is a great time to join :)
There are infinite ways to define strategy. Most involve finding a critical challenge and defining the big strokes of how to solve it.
This can be an intimidating task to any leader! Furthermore, if we spend the high effort involved in putting it together, and communicating it as our brilliant strategy for the next 12 months, chances are that the organization will not be super receptive to feedback, learning and iteration on this critical strategic bets.
This is a very complex and nuanced topic, but I had the fortune to speak with Jeff Gothelf, not only an expert in the topic, but someone who can articulate complex problems in simple ways.
We covered how Jeff defines a “lean” strategy, how connecting strategy to OKRs help you learn fast about your hypothesis, and how leaders should take a more humble (and smarter!) approach to explicitly calling out uncertainty and willingness to learn.
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Google, and YouTube, and read on for my takeaways and highlights of the episode.
Takeaways
Jeff suggests a lean take on strategy, defining it as “an opinionated approach to addressing an important challenge”.
We covered the topic of selecting and aligning, for which Jeff suggest framing as “we focus on this now, we can focus on the others later,” creating a backlog of challenges we can select in the future (more on this post).
We discussed at length how sometimes as leaders we believe we need to create the “perfect” strategy, when in reality it would be smart to say we can’t predict the future, and allow teams to challenge our strategic hypothesis as they learn.
Once leads select strategy, teams should be defining goals. They have a deeper understanding of what levers they can move and by how much. Since there are multiple opinions on what teams could pursue, it’s important that teams create compelling stories based on facts, and we move conversations to “why” we are tackling this path rather than solution discussions.
Leaders can have a good way to challenge teams and assumptions, by funding initial parts of the full “required” investment, and ask teams to show value to “unlock” the next funding and time allocation.
Where to Find Jeff’s Work
JeffGothelf.com, where you can find the newsletter
Jeff’s upcoming book, “Who does what by how much”
You can see a list of all episodes to date here.