Ep 33 - Sneak Peek of My Upcoming Book: You Are A Strategist (not just an OKRs book) - Thinkydoers®

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to Thinkydoer Shorts,where we embrace anti-perfection
and dive straight into the messymiddle of strategy, leadership,
and personal and career growth.
I'm your host, Sara Lobkovich, creatorof No-BS Objectives and Key Results,
host of the Thinkydoers podcast,
and I'm a strategy coach, big timegoal nerd, and board certified

(00:23):
health and wellness coach witha focus on work life well-being.
And in the next few minutes, we'llexplore a current topic or insight to
spark your curiosity and provide you apragmatic starting place to take action.
Let's dive in.
Hello and welcome to an unconventional,maybe not so short, Thinkydoer Short.

(00:47):
the purpose for this is I'm recording theintroduction to my upcoming book, You Are

A Strategist (00:53):
Use No BS Objectives and Key Results to Get Big Things Done today.
The information about the book isin the little pop up on the little
banner on the screen right now.
You can find more information atyouareastrategist.com, and all
material in this recording is copyrightSara Lobkovich for Red Currant

(01:14):
Collective LLC, all rights reserved.

You Are A Strategist (01:20):
Use No BS Objectives And Key Results To Get Big Things Done.
By Sara Lobkovich.
This book is dedicated to introverts,ADHDers, people with autism and autistic
traits, trauma survivors, strategy brainsquare pegs, frustrated changemakers,
Rebelutionaries, and Thinkydoers.

(01:42):
To everyone who's ever heardthe words, "You need to be more
strategic, or you're over complicatingthis," You are not alone, and
together we can change the world.
Think of yourself, and those who workfor you, and those you work with.
How would you or theyanswer all these questions?

(02:04):
Is it important to you foryour work to have purpose?
Are you curious, sometimes to a fault?
Do you tend to challenge thestatus quo, in big or little ways?
Do you intuitively make connectionsthat other people don't?
And are you comfortable with therisks of intentional experimentation?

(02:25):
If you lead people who would say yes tothese questions, you may recognize them
as some of your most challenging reports.
High potential, perhaps,and also hard to manage.
If you yourself are saying yes to thesequestions, this could explain why you
might be experiencing challenges in yourcareer, especially with authority figures.

(02:49):
You may have left jobs or even beenfired because of a mismatch between
your leadership or organizationalculture and what you need to feel
engaged, empowered, and successful.
You may also have been broughtinto roles with the promise of
innovation and transformation, onlyto find the organization doesn't
really have the appetite, stomach,or culture to make it happen.

(03:12):
You may begin each role excited,highly motivated, and sure that
this time will be different, onlyto end disillusioned, disappointed,
and wondering what you did wrong.
What's running through your headright now as I read that to you?
If you're a leader who's thinking,"How could anyone live like that?"

(03:35):
then I'm really glad you're here.
A significant percentage of the peopleyou lead or work with live exactly
like that and need your understandingand support to do their best work.
These pages will give you a set oftools to maximize the folks described
above as powerful agents of growth,innovation, and transformational

(03:56):
change for your organization,if you have the stomach for it.
On the other hand, if you're oneof the many people thinking, "I
thought it was just me," then I'mhere to tell you, it is not just you.
We are everywhere.
The list of questions above encapsulatesmy own early career experience, and I

(04:18):
now hear those concepts echoed day inand day out, over and over, from those
in my courses and workshops and thefolks I work with as a strategy coach.
So, how do I know you're a strategist?
The profession of strategy is a funny one.
Very few people decide, "I want tobe a strategist when I grow up."

(04:41):
And aside from Mad Men, it's not likethere are many role models in the space.
And while Mad Men is an easy job, eerilyaccurate depiction of agency life in any
era (which I know is shocking), it's notexactly the model I want to perpetuate.
So, let's talk for a minute aboutwhat being a strategist is not.

(05:05):
First, strategy is not being smart.
For too long, leaders and workplaceshave conflated strategic and smart.
Thanks to Rob Estreitinho, the founderand head of strategy at Salmon Labs,
and one of my favorite sources on modernstrategic thought, we now have this

important clarification (05:25):
The job isn't to convince people that you're a smart
person; it's to clarify situationsso everyone can do the smart thing.
Second, having a strategist jobtitle is not being a strategist.
In my three-decade-plus career, I'veheld and hired for numerous roles with

(05:49):
strategist in the name that were purelyexecutional, and where strategic thinking
was sometimes even wholly unwelcome.
So, just having a strategist jobtitle does not make you a strategist.
Being a strategist is completelyseparate from your job title or industry.
You may be a strategist who worksas a dishwasher, playing word games

(06:13):
in your brain while you wash dishes.
You may be a strategist who teacheselementary school, observing your
students and adapting your teachingapproaches based on the data you take
in about each kid and how they learn.
And yes, you may be a strategist whosits in a chair in an office with the
title Chief Strategy Officer on thenameplate outside the door, for sure.

(06:37):
But here, we're democratizingthe role of strategist.
You are a strategist if you gather factsand observations about the world around
you and use them to fuel insights.
And insights are truths that resonatewith a person or group of people
and spark them to think differentlyor take some kind of action.

(07:00):
You may have come pre-programmed with acognitive style that does this naturally.
If you read books and research papersfor fun and delight in spotting ways
that wildly disparate informationconnects to create new ideas and
approaches, that might be you.
If you came pre-programmedwith a strategist brain,

(07:20):
that's only part of the puzzle.
Now, you have to learn how to communicatethose unique insights in ways that
other people who are not wired the wayyou are can understand and engage with.
To recruit others to your causes,you must somehow help them understand
how you connected the dots, whichcan be harder than it sounds.

(07:43):
If you're thinking you did not comepre-programmed with a strategist brain,
I hope this book provides a set oftools and practices to help you poke
around inside yourself and meet andunblock your own inner strategist.
Because if you think back to anearlier point in your life, before
school and society conditionedit out of you, you probably had a

(08:07):
chapter where you were curious andquestioning like it was your job.
That little you asking, "why?"
So many times that your parent finallysnapped back, "Because I said so," and
slammed the door on the conversation.
That little you is still inside of you.
And that little you, before thatdoor slam, is who this book is for.

(08:30):
Any person can wield the toolscoached here to enable their inner
strategist to speak up for changewith a higher likelihood of success
when that's what's called for.
The strategist in me recognizesthe strategist in you.
So, now that we agree that you area strategist, this book is designed
especially for you to enable you tocommunicate the insights from your book.

(08:54):
beautiful brain in waysothers can rally behind.
Because if you're going to change theworld as only you can, the odds are
very low that you can do it by yourself.
You need a team.
The folks who relate to the fivequestions at the start of this
introduction are traditionally criticalbehind-the-scenes players, playing

(09:16):
a large role in the actual gettingstuff done of many organizations.
Someone has to dive into the detailsto do the research, make the plans,
design the products, spot and predictwhich issues might turn into a crisis,
and figure out how to mitigate them.
Then calmly and thoughtfullymove those crises.

(09:38):
Then calmly and thoughtfully movethrough those crises that do happen,
playing while running all the possiblescenarios and making the best decisions
they can with the information they have.
A lot of this work has been invisible.
In fact, in the field of advertising,to say about a piece of creative
that the strategy is showingmeans someone didn't do their job.

(10:01):
Good strategy makes the work better,but you don't see the strategy itself.
The strategy is the scaffolding thatthe stuff you ultimately see rests on.
The strategy is created, andthen the visible work begins.
So let's talk for a minuteabout the role of ideas.
In the corporate environment,ideas often get all the glory.

(10:25):
Big, shiny new thinking can be theright tool for the job, especially when
there are work challenges for whichit makes sense to gather together and
ideate, to develop and build out anidea through something like improv, a
"yes, and" process of exploration, jointcreation, and collaboratively building

(10:45):
alignment that is more imaginativethan necessarily having to be logical.
The team creates and iterates togetheruntil they arrive at a finished product.
The decision-maker gives theirfeedback, changes are incorporated,
and the work is produced and published.
But each idea is a gamble.
You might win big, or you might lose big.

(11:09):
Often, the methods for evaluating andtesting ideas are largely subjective.
"Do I like this idea?
Do you think this idea will work?
What does the focus group say?
Do we have the right focus group?"
And on and on.
In a business environment where peopleand organizations are doing more with

(11:29):
less, with the need to build nimble,adaptable organizations to keep up
with a world changing faster than everany of us can keep track of, having
the best idea is not good enough.
It's hard to ignore the role thatpower and privilege play in the
subjective assessment of ideas.
When ideas are made the hero,opportunity, rewards, and recognition

(11:53):
are not equally accessible to everyone.
Increasingly, it's the folks whorelate to the earlier five questions
who are stepping out from theshadows and into the spotlight.
If anyone is to have any hope ofsolving the major organizational,
cultural, and existential problems weall face together today, insightful,

(12:14):
curious, linky brains are an asset.
Today, leaders and individuals alike mustbe able to show their work to strategize
a path that establishes processes andgoals to make those ideas a reality.
So let's unblock your inner strategist.
If you are a CEO responsible fordelivering specific performance to

(12:37):
a board or the market, you cannotafford the risk of making important
decisions about your product, service,or business based on ideas alone.
You, my friend, must do your homework.
You must be able to trace your ideasback to data that is reasonable,
logical, and can be understood by others.

(12:59):
If you're a business leader, you maysit six levels or more from the person
implementing your business's core work.
You need a way to facilitate collaborationand performance through communicating
clear expectations with enough contextto enable people you may never even sit
in the same room with to deliver on yourvision without them having to be psychic.

(13:23):
If you're an implementer, you may beresponsible for delivering empirically
measurable results that have never beencommunicated to you as clear expectations.
You can wing it, doing your best tomind-read and follow the directions that
you have been given by your leaders,or you can take the steering wheel and

(13:43):
accept responsibility for identifying yourown potential measurable contributions
to the organization's strategy.
If you are self-employed or pursuinga big vision in any area of your life,
you'll exhaust yourself by runningwith every idea that comes to mind.
In entrepreneurial and visionarybrains, ideas are like balls coming at

(14:06):
you from a pitching machine without aregulator, flying at you so fast you
can't even manage to swing at every one.
You need some way to corralyour big ideas and possibilities
down to a workable direction.
An aligned set ofexpectations, and a plan.
Those are the skillsyou'll learn in this book.
You'll learn how to create your visionand identify objective metrics that

(14:30):
indicate progress toward that vision.
You'll learn how to think big,how to develop insights based
on strategic inputs, facts, andobservations that pinpoint how you
and your organization can do better.
Few, if any, strategists or strategicleaders come pre-programmed with
these skills and competencies.

(14:52):
Learning this straightforwardtoolkit, including a simple, usable,
Connected Strategic One-sheet, andNo-BS Objectives and Key Results,
will get you where you want to go.
If you aren't yet a leader in strategicdevelopment, the practices you'll
learn here will arm you to operate morestrategically, to make better choices

(15:12):
so your time is focused on outcomes,not just activity, and to ask and
answer important questions, enablingyour team to align with your vision.
What impacts or results aremost important to achieve?
Why do they matter?
Why do they matter now?
What might be possible to achieve?

(15:33):
What could it mean to succeed wildly?
How will you know empiricallythat you're making progress?
What have you learned,or what are you learning?
You'll build your strategic skillset based on iteratively answering
important questions like the above,which yield greater focus, clarity, and

(15:55):
confidence, alignment, and less unhealthyconflict and wasted time, energy, and
frustration for everyone involved.
And that is how you unblockyour inner strategist.
There is a reason this book iscalled You Are a Strategist,
not Are You a Strategist?

(16:15):
In today's market and work world, everyperson can operate strategically, no
matter how senior or tactical your role.
Strategy is clear expectations.
Companies spend millions of dollars everyyear on in-house labor and consulting
services to build elegant, lengthy,smart strategy decks, only to have them

(16:38):
promptly saved to a file-sharing sitewhere they are rarely ever opened — until
the company begins the process all overagain in one, or three, or five years.
The company might then spend countlesshours and dollars on project management
systems and operational consultingin their efforts to become more agile

(16:58):
and to increase their effectiveness.
They might spend days in off-sitesand more dollars on HR consultants
to try to learn how to improvetheir culture and impact.
But somehow, when they get back tothe office, the momentum evaporates
and it's business as usual.
Those well-intentioned project plansgenerate a lot of activity and output,

(17:20):
but they may never yield the strategicoutcomes the organization needs.
How do I know?
I spent the first act of my strategycareer working for companies that
fit that description, and sometimesbeing part of the problem myself.
My colleagues and I were the ones craftingthose compelling stories, building those
beautiful decks, then working with ourcollaborators to deliver the work itself.

(17:45):
Almost every time, though, we weremissing a critical piece of the puzzle:
clear, objective alignment with theclient on what success actually meant.
Sometimes, that becameapparent at the beginning.
We'd gather for our kickoff and findout that the client's real world was
significantly different than whatthey'd told us during discovery.

(18:07):
The work we'd pitched andwon looked nothing like the
work that needed to be done.
Sometimes, we'd have a little honeymoon ofalignment, and then during implementation,
we'd become mired in round after roundof review with increasingly unhappy and
frustrated clients whose unspoken orunclear expectations were not being met.

(18:30):
Sometimes, we'd get all the way throughthe creation to launching the work.
We'd pat ourselves on the back fora job well done that would make a
beautiful case study for our portfolioand win industry awards, and the
client would let us know that they weredissatisfied because the work didn't
achieve the outcomes they imagined,but had never clearly communicated, or

(18:54):
even didn't know how to communicate.
My motivation and confidence dippedwith each passing day whenever
there wasn't an agreed empiricalmeasuring stick for our work together.
The more this happened, the more Ifelt there had to be a better way.
And I was right!
Over years of exploration, study,experimentation, and trial and error,

(19:17):
I've developed that better way.
And as of now, it's worked with clientorganizations that have a combined
annual economic impact of over 15 billionin revenue, along with an additional
300+ organizations implementingsome elements of this approach
based on my trainings and workshops.
And those numbers are and counting.

(19:39):
The better way explained in this book,The Connected Strategic One Sheet and
No BS OKRs Process, enables changemakerslike you to pave a clear path to impact.
Unlike other approaches that cantake weeks or months to implement,
My workshop participants routinelycomplete the exercises in this book
from start to finish over the courseof three to maybe six hours absolute

(20:04):
max during a one- to two-week period.
It's really usually between 90 minutesand three or four hours these days.

So, that's right (20:12):
in two weeks or less, you can lay the foundation
for increased strategic impact andcareer satisfaction and fulfillment.
While you're at it, you're about tobecome the strategist Your organization
and career has always needed.
These pages contain two bigshifts that you need to know.
First, how to create a single-pageconnected strategy that distills

(20:36):
your organizational strategydown to one usable page.
And second, how to fill gapsin your strategic vision by
implementing a coherent alignmentlayer to benefit your organization.
The first shift means creating aconnected strategic one sheet, the
tool that I started using with clientsto make their organizational strategy

(20:56):
actually useful on a day-to-day basis.
The second shift includes a specific newapproach to the widespread methodology
known as Objectives and Key Results, andthat approach is what I call No BS OKRs.
No BS OKRs are a straightforward, simpleapproach to creating and achieving
Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs.

(21:19):
No BS OKRs have two parts.
First, clear, visionary,directional objectives.
And second, empirically measurable keyresults, progress and outcome targets
that align us on what success means andreveal whether we're on or off track.
No BS OKRs transform innovation-drivenenvironments where performance

(21:43):
hinges on improving human experience,not just making numbers look good.
When you put into practice what you learnhere, you'll clear the path for impact
by yourself and your collaborators.
You'll be able to empower change,skip the chaos, and dive straight
into effective, impactful goalsetting, boost innovation, foster

(22:05):
culture that values experimentation,creative solutions, and learning.
You'll also be able to quantifysuccess, communicate expectations, and
measure impact far beyond the businessmeasures you're thinking about today.
So this book is your invitation into aninnovative, rewarding, often misunderstood

and highly gatekept area of business: the world of organizational strategy. (22:25):
undefined
Strategy is your goals.
If you're already a professionalstrategist, you might be scratching
your head about why this book is sofocused on goals when goal setting is
not always part of a strategist's remit.
The explanation is motivation science.

(22:47):
During my career as a creativeagency strategist, every pitch I
worked on started with goal setting.
A lengthy discussion would thenyield the same two goals: first,
win the work, and second, do workthat would get the client promoted.
The problem was, even doing ourvery best work, our influence on

(23:08):
those two goals was unbearably low.
An agency can win the work in thesales room and lose it due to red
tape in the procurement process.
There are countless factors unrelatedto our work that go into our
client's performance evaluation.
Those goals didn't give us clarityabout what was important with this

(23:29):
particular pitch or alignment on ourpurpose with this particular work.
I found myself in a deep,demotivated burnout.
I loved my work, but the profoundsubjectivity was incompatible
with my brain chemistry.
I started to wonder, what ifwe identified some other goals?

(23:49):
What if we identified some selfish goalsthat mattered to us as professionals,
that got us excited and motivated?
So that even if we lost the work forsome reason beyond our control, we still
had a chance at satisfaction on our ownself-motivated goals, over which we also
might have a little bit more influence.

(24:11):
So, I tried it.
Working in line with those earlyexperimental self-set goals, I
started to feel a strange new senseof confidence and self-esteem.
My engagement with my work rebounded,my frustration diminished, and my
collaboration with colleagues andleaders became less stressful.
At the time, I didn'tknow what was happening.

(24:32):
I just knew that the more Ifocused on self-set quantifiable
goals, the happier I was at work.
Fast forward nearly a decade, and now,after years of specialty work in goal
setting, operationalizing for goalattainment, and professional training
in the art and science of humanbehavior change, It all makes sense.

(24:52):
Now I know that those early spontaneousexperiments were consistent with
decades of motivation science on goalsetting and human behavior change.
And strategy achievement, at itscore, is human behavior change.
Psychological research in the motivationsciences fields shows that human
behavior change relies heavily onthe creation of specific, actionable

(25:15):
goals and a learning-focused approach.
In this book, you'll learn my methods forcreating goals that increase learning,
problem-solving, self-efficacy, intrinsicmotivation, engagement, the duration of
goal pursuit, and other benefits thatultimately lead to higher performance.

(25:35):
I'm a firm believer in the powerof the practices in this book, not
only to set goals, but to transformthe very mechanisms by which you'll
achieve them, no matter what yourindustry, your organization size,
or the stage of your career.
Strategy is non-linear,and so is this book.
This book is divided into threeparts, providing a fully connected,

(25:57):
complete toolkit for creating andachieving important strategic goals.
Every chapter ends with aTL;DR of strategic takeaways.
This book explains how todistill your strategy down to a
single page to hold yourself toachieving what's most important.
How No BS OKRs, the specificimplementation approach I created
and work with, can improve yourleadership and career effectiveness.

(26:22):
to create clear, focused, aligned OKRsfor your team and yourself, as well as
advanced skills for the big thinker?
By learning those skills, you'll becomebetter acquainted with your own inner
strategist and be ready to lead from theback or any other chair in the office.
In today's ever-changing business world,if you follow the pattern my clients

(26:45):
do, you'll do so while increasingemployee engagement, your own career
impact, and your own career fulfillment.
Alright, that's the introduction.
Thank you so much for tuning infor this little experiment in live
broadcasting the introduction of the book.

(27:06):
If you'd like more information aboutmy upcoming book, You Are a Strategist,
you can visit youareastrategist.com.
And don't forget, the companion workbookis available right now as a PDF download.
You can find that on my main website,the easiest way to find a shortcut
to it is to go to findrc.co I

(27:27):
All right, friends, That's it for today.
stay in the loop with everythinggoing on around here by
visiting findrc.co/newsletterand joining my mailing list.
Got questions?
My email addresses are too hard tospell, so visit findrc.co/contact
and shoot me a note that way.

(27:47):
You'll also find me at@saralobkovich on most of your
favorite social media platforms.
For today's show notes,visit findrc.co/thinkydoers.
If there's someone you'd like featuredon this podcast, drop me a note.
And if you know other Thinkydoers who'dbenefit from this episode, please share.

(28:08):
Your referrals, your word of mouth,and your reviews are much appreciated.
I'm looking forward to the questionsthis episode sparks for you, and I
look forward to seeing you next time.

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