REVIEW: Josh Seiden and Jeff Gothelf — Who Does What By How Much (BOOK).
“The book that you’re reading now almost didn’t exist,” Josh Seiden and Jeff Gothelf write at the beginning of their new book, aptly titled Who Does What By How Much?. “After all, there are a lot of other books on OKRs and we debated whether the world needed another one. But the more we looked at those books, the more we realized that we had to write our own book. Because as good as some of those books are, they are missing something that we think is important: the idea that everyone — yes, everyone — has a customer…
People only respond positively if you’re delivering something valuable to them. So your success depends on understanding your customers and figuring out how to produce things that are valuable. And that’s hard to do, because people, as wonderful as they are, are strange and unpredictable creatures. Solving their problem means dealing with uncertainty and change. It means answering a few key questions that unlock the value equation. These questions are so important that we decided to use them as the name of the book.”
The latter statement displays a level of integrity, and a genuine quality to boot. It also, true to form, solidifies the sense Seiden and Gothelf are confident in what they preach, and can earnestly vouch for what they’re selling. Specifically, in a nutshell, the concept of the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Sounds simple, but look at any organization in crisis and what would be considered de-facto implementation of OKRs is surprisingly lacking, across a wide scale. That kind of amateurish disorganization is something one wouldn’t expect of a bonafide company. But reveals aside, Seiden and Gothelf are able to cut through the muddied waters and excess foliage, carving a matter-of-fact path to surefire success with as few hiccups as possible. “OKRs, if you use them correctly, are built around this value equation. Objectives are your
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Who-Does-What-Much-Customer-Centric-ebook/dp/B0CYDH8R71
high-level goal statement. Key Results are your measures of success, which we write using our simple value equation: who does what by how much? In other words, OKRs are built around a set of questions — if we’re going to achieve our goal, who are the people we must serve, what do they want to do and how can we help them, and how can we quantify this?” Seiden and Gothelf write. “These questions give you customer-centricity. They provide focus and clarity. And they are deeply, deeply practical. Older management systems made the assumption that organizational leaders knew the answer to these questions at the start of every project. But as we said above, people are strange and unpredictable (and OK, wonderful too.) That means that we usually don’t know these answers. To deal with this, we need a way forward that helps us figure out these answers, and that unlocks the smarts of everyone in the organization. Objectives and Key Results are that way forward.”
Seiden and Gothelf are also able to flesh out their own credentials in the process. “We have worked as a team for years and have written two books together before this one, the award-winning Lean UX (now in its third edition) and Sense & Respond, which was published by Harvard Business Review Press and nominated for a Thinkers50 distinction in Innovation. Josh is also the author of Outcomes vs. Output, and Jeff is the author of Lean vs. Agile vs. Design Thinking and Forever Employable,” the duo writes. “…It’s a manual for understanding who your customers are, how your work affects what your customers do, and how all of that will create results that matter — to you, your team, and your organization. This book is a deeply practical handbook for you, no matter where you sit in your organization.”
Colin Jordan
