Christina Wodtke: disagreement

Transcript context

…Maybe that's a symptom of the meeting, they're really boring, but yeah. Well, the symptom, it's really wrong. Yeah, it means that you're in the weeds, man. You're fiddling with the little tiny bits. You got to let go of those. You have to trust your people. So, if we do the five why's, okay, why don't you trust your people? Is it you or are you hiring horribly? Okay, if you're hiring horribly, why are you hiring horribly? Is it because you can't find the right people? Is it because you're rushing through it? You have to keep chasing it down. OKRs are a great diagnostic tool because they tell you something's broken. So, if your OKRs are going sideways, something's broken deeper. There's also the problem with psychological safety. You need your teams to be able to say, "This isn't working. We're doing something else." Instead of just saying, "This isn't working, tell us how to fix it." People are coming to you and saying, "How do we fix this problem?" Something's broken in the company. You're doing something wrong as a leader. You have to think about, if somebody doesn't know what to do and you're like, "Well, I have a strategy. I told you what my strategy is." And they don't know how to make decisions, it means something's wrong with the strategy or you aren't being clear, because the conversation always has two people. There's an old joke that I think about a lot, which is, if during the day you meet one asshole, he's probably an asshole. But if all day long you meet nobody but assholes, you might be the asshole. And I think that's very true. If your entire company's confused, you might be the asshole. You have to think about, how can I get more clear? If people are constantly bringing you little things, it's not because they're scared, it's because you're scary. So, a lot of times your OKRs breaking are speaking to something else happening, and if your OKR process isn't working, then you have to step back and go, "Okay, how far deep do I have to go before I figure out what's wrong with my management team?" And it could be the CEO, but it could actually be some weird group dynamics, and you've got to focus on that. I really love Patrick Lencioni. Five Dysfunctions of a Team is his most famous book, and I would recommend that if you like the fable style book. But it's the same thing. You got to fix things at the top, you got to do your own work, and then everything else runs a little better. This episode is brought to you by writer. How much hype have you been hearing about generative AI? So much. But how do you take it from a shiny toy to an actual business tool that helps you do your actual job? Writer is an enterprise grade generative AI platform built specifically for the needs of businesses, and already widely deployed at world-class brands like Uber, Spotify, HubSpot, and UiPath. With Writer, you can break through content bottlenecks across your organization, from marketing webpages to sales emails and product messages, to creating high quality on-brand content at scale. And unlike other AI applications, Writers' training happens securely on your data and your style and brand guidelines that you provide specific to your organization. The result is that you get consistent content in your brand voice at scale. Get AI that your people will love. For a limited time, listeners to Lenny's Podcast can get 20% off if they go to writer.com/lenny, that's writer.com/lenny. If you think back to what most often is the issue, in your experience, is it something at the top? Is it a middle manager doing something wrong? Is it just misunderstanding how to use OKRs? What do you think is usually the issue with OKRs not working well?…

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