I help changemaker leaders, teams, and other Thinkydoers understand their strengths, increase their quantifiable impact, and become fulfilled in their careers (without masking or mind-reading). My "how?" Accessible, efficient approaches to strategy creation, alignment, and operationalizing for goal achievement, with a special focus on Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). The approaches I coach and teach today build on well-honed expertise leading adult learning, instructional design, marketing, creative strategy and strategic operations at some of the worldβs largest enterprises, and in public sector and political roles. In my individual coaching work via Thinkydoers, I help people who are "wired differently" (or otherwise "not from Leadership Central Casting") build authentic, rewarding careers as the leaders of change our world needs today. When not working with Red Currant Collective, my "other life" is in professional motorcycle racing. ποΈ
Two more "sneak peeks" of No BS OKRs (starts next week!)
Happy Friday, all!
I'm finally back to the home office from Canada after a really delightful leadership team offsite for a client that turned into a travel delay saga.
There are few places I'd be more delighted to spend much of two days unexpectedly stuck in airports than Canada -- not only did I meet some lovely fellow travelers along the waits; I also had an incredible Malaysian meal for dinner during my unexpected overnight in Vancouver. (The extra road time also gave me some uninterrupted development time for the Thinkydoers group program we're getting ready to beta test, which I'm really excited about.)
In reflecting on this week's offsite, I have a couple of big takeaways:
- One of the most important capacities in a leader's toolkit is an appetite for learning. Earlier in my practice I worked with leaders who were interested in implementing OKRs to improve everyone else's performance, but had no appetite for that kind of accountability and clarity of expectations for themselves. Now, I specifically work with organizations where the senior-most leader is ready to walk the talk themselves, and boy is there a difference. This week's LT was thoughtful and asked great questions, and they walked into the room ready to learn and try something new. And I heard from the senior-most leader yesterday that they're already observing changes in behavior among the leadership team: questioning activities when there isn't a clear outcome identified.
β - βTo quote John Cutler (a product enablement professional whose LinkedIn content I find super valuable): The benefit of frameworks is that they create shared language. Shared language helps people learn and collaborate with each other. In this offsite, I went in with a handful of specific words and phrases that the team worked with and learned over the course of the day (including a literal script here and there). The OKR methodology feels complicated until you distill it down to a few key words with well-defined meanings and examples. And while this team wasn't specifically creating OKRs, we were working on building the muscle to shift thinking from "activity" to "outcome," so they literally practiced a specific phrase (and it stuck):
Go ahead and incorporate that into your own mental shortcuts and see if it helps facilitate the mental shift from activity to outcomes? And let me know how it goes.
No BS OKRs starts on Tuesday!
In my last email, I shared the first two "sneak peeks" of the No BS OKRs workshop that starts next week: here are the last two!
It's always a good challenge to distill big concepts down to LinkedIn-post-size "how to's" that are actually useful. I'm looking forward to a small cohort next week: I've heard back from a lot of you that the dates, competing priorities, and budget concerns just don't work in January, so I'm making a note to do something that's fully asynchronous (at a lower price point) at the start of next year, given that feedback. For the folks who join, it's going to be a great cohort since with the smaller number each person receives more individual feedback and attention (which isn't always possible with larger cohorts)!
So if you can't join me for this course, given how important this time of year is, I hope these little sneak peeks help you take a few minutes to stop what's urgent, and make some time to think about what's important.
Here are the four steps I did a "sneak peek" for via LinkedIn:
- π Gather your Strategic Inputsβ
- π€ Complete a "Big Think"β
- π§ Create your Objectivesβ
- π― Key Results (in 500 words or less)β
IF you're able, join me for No BS OKRs starting Tuesday, January 22nd. This cohort is appropriate for leaders AND localizers -- if you're creating OKRs for your organization, AND if you're creating OKRs for a team based on upline strategic inputs.
And while this is a course that has the option of live workshop attendance, it is also asynchronous-friendly if you need to time shift. In every cohort we have asynchronous participants, and so far the feedback from them has been equally high as the live attendees. So if time zone or timing is an issue, that's an option!
Have a restorative weekend, and I hope to see you in workshop next week!
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Rebelutionary Leadership & Career Fulfillment for Thinkydoers
Hosted by Sara Lobkovich
I help changemaker leaders, teams, and other Thinkydoers understand their strengths, increase their quantifiable impact, and become fulfilled in their careers (without masking or mind-reading). My "how?" Accessible, efficient approaches to strategy creation, alignment, and operationalizing for goal achievement, with a special focus on Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). The approaches I coach and teach today build on well-honed expertise leading adult learning, instructional design, marketing, creative strategy and strategic operations at some of the worldβs largest enterprises, and in public sector and political roles. In my individual coaching work via Thinkydoers, I help people who are "wired differently" (or otherwise "not from Leadership Central Casting") build authentic, rewarding careers as the leaders of change our world needs today. When not working with Red Currant Collective, my "other life" is in professional motorcycle racing. ποΈ
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