Book Review: 3/5 Impact On Me (Book By Christina Wodtke)
Read more about the book here
I recently read this book on OKRs while I was in the middle of setting them for my employer. It felt timely and relevant. I appreciated the author’s storytelling—it was simple and concise but effectively conveyed the core ideas. The story format made the concepts easy to remember.
The book highlighted 3 stages of working with OKRs:
1 initially, you might not have any and could head in multiple directions. (been there, done that)
2 Later, you might set OKRs but struggle to follow them consistently.
3 Finally, the author suggested a simple framework—drafting OKRs on a paper napkin. One side contains the objective, and 3 sides represent the key results.
The explanation of objectives was helpful - objectives should be inspiring and can be quantitative, while the key results should be measurable and qualitative. This book was a reference guide for me to understand these ideas in more depth.
I liked this book more than John Doeer's Measure What Matters, which became autobiographical in some ways, especially regarding guidance to Google.
However, I struggled to fully grasp the examples of good and bad OKRs in the book's reference sections. I wish the story and examples were more detailed to help me apply OKRs effectively in a startup setting. Right now, I’m unsure if I’m implementing them correctly.
Overall, I would rate the book’s impact on me as 3 out of 5. It was helpful and insightful but not entirely actionable. I still feel there are gaps in my understanding of building effective OKRs.