Hi Reader,

(Has anyone told you lately how hard it is to get books in front of their audience? It's *hard.*)

But, I've had enough people I don't know read it and tell me they love it, or it's been helpful—and my business collaborator and friend, LB from SCBiz keeps literally lifting up her dog-eared copy and reading me stuff she's written from the margins during our calls—that my worst inner critic voice is starting to get quieter about it. (And when I say that guy is a jerk, you have no idea.)

So when one of the top-SEO-ranking list creators replied to my pitch, read my book, then said that he loved it so much he put it at number two—right below Measure What Matters—it gave me some feels. That's pretty cool. (He even translated the review to German to increase accessibility!)

Second: I just got off the phone with a software creator in the OKR space who told me he reached out because I'm "one of the top two highest-profile OKR experts."

(My instinct was to correct him and tell him who the top two highest-profile OKR experts *actually* are, but I stopped myself and just listened instead.)

In my head, I'm still the little-known "new kid" in my space, struggling to even get seen in the sea of overwhelming paid advertising spends by specialty software platforms and more established agencies in my competitive set.

But after I got off that call, I was curious, so I went to chatGPT and asked who it would say the top ten "highest profile OKR experts" are...

... and I came in at number 3 on its list. So I guess I'm not the new kid, anymore.

One of the things I emphasize with clients (and sometimes forget, myself) is the power of leading indicators.

If you're only focused on major outcomes—downstream results like closing deals, or landing revenue—you're missing important information that could help you make better decisions (or, like this week has done for me, boost your confidence that you're making progress even if you're not seeing it yield the results you're hoping for...

... yet.

In a rough revenue year or a down market, it's tempting to make sudden changes. To abandon what might be working, because the lagging metrics haven't caught up yet.

What this week reminded me:

The progress I'm making toward actual impact takes time to show up in lagging indicators.

These moments reminded me that the work I'm doing is landing and making progress—just not always in terms of the metrics flowing into my business dashboards, or in the ways or on the timelines I expect.

The leading indicators are there. I just have to listen for them.

Framework of the Week: The Bottom-Up One-Pager

Speaking of things that are landing—I've dipped my toe into the wild west of answering questions on Reddit lately, and one framework keeps coming up in my answers to real-people questions:

The bottom-up one-pager.

I developed this structure after the book was published, and I haven't even created a real downloadable about it yet... I've just been using it, quietly, with clients.

The problem it solves: most organizations work with OKRs in a top-down way; and I typically work with organizations at the top level (for cross-functional, topline clarity and alignment) and at one level of localization or cascading (for function-by-function clarity). Old school cascading would keep on going down down down... which sells software seats, but in my experience, generally yields a whole bunch of activity plans called "key results" and the term "key results" loses all meaning.

My approach is to do that two layers of localization, then switch to a bottom-up approach for the rest of the organization.

That much was in the book; but this part wasn't.

I've developed a one-sheet that works for that bottom-up approach to building clarity.

It's a way for people and teams to create clear expectations for themselves—in draft form—that they can then align with leadership through an alignment review.

Here's how it works:

You create a single-page document that includes:

1. What you think you're being asked to achieve (your interpretation of the strategic priorities)
2. How you think your progress and success might be measured (your proposed key results and mandatory goals)
3. What you think you need to do, to make that happen (initiatives with success criteria, milestones, and experiments with learning objectives)

Then you can take that draft to leadership and have a conversation. Not a presentation—a conversation. You're essentially saying:

"Here's what I think you need from me. Am I close? What am I missing?"

This surfaces any misalignment early, and it distributes the cognitive work of translating strategy into action across the people doing the work... who often have important information leadership doesn't.

I have a YouTube video about it in final edit, but since I keep talking about it on reddit, I finally put together a temporary resource page, where you can subscribe to my YouTube, see a sneak peek of the rough draft of the video, and download a copy of a PDF example bottom-up one-sheet.

If you want to see how this works in practice, watch the rough-cut video here and download a rough draft of an example one-pager.

Coming up: The OKR World Summit

I'm speaking at the OKR World Summit on October 30th (the event runs the 30th-31st). It's not too late to join me—tickets are still available! If you aren't able to join live, I will be attending some of the sessions myself, and you can bet I'll be at Doug Hubbard's session on How to Measure Anything... that book is within arm's length at all times.

Want an update on what I learn? Keep an eye out for a recap after the event!

I started this email talking about leading indicators ...

... the signals that tell you something's working before the big metrics catch up.

Your stories are my leading indicators.

They tell me the work is landing in ways I can't always read the label of from inside the bottle.

So if you've been thinking about hitting reply since that ask earlier in this email—now's the time. Even a sentence helps.

And if you're not ready to share yet, that's okay too. Just know that your progress matters, and I'm grateful you're here doing this work alongside me.

I hope to see you next week at the OKR World Summit!

P.S. My slots for year-end strategic planning support are getting snapped up, one by one. If you're scratching your head at how to plan beyond the tip of your nose given how chaotic the operating environment is: for real, that's what I'm best at. Drop me a reply, or schedule a quick chat here, and let's talk about what you're up against and whether I might be able to help.

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