Five Effective Ways to Quiet a Room After a Workshop Exercise
Getting a room of workshop participants or students to settle down after a lively exercise can be tricky. But with...
Praise for Radical Focus Second Edition:
- “A master at getting things done, Christina offers a radically focused way to achieve one's goals through disciplined use of OKRs.”
- “Together with Doerr, Grove, and Drucker, Christina Wodtke is one of the four people who shaped OKR into the powerful tool it is today. With Radical Focus 2.0, she continues to teach us that success is about having an impact, not checking a box.”
- “Christina has taken my favorite book on OKRs and deepened it by answering all the hardest questions people run into putting it to work in the real world. Thank you once again!”
Radical Focus – Second Edition
The award-winning author of The Team That Managed Itself and Pencil Me In returns with a new and expanded edition of her landmark book on OKRs.
If you’ve ever wanted to know how to use OKRs, or why yours might not be working, Radical Focus teaches you everything you need to achieve your goals. The author pulls from her experience with Silicon Valley’s hottest companies to teach practical insights on OKRs in the form of a fable. Now, the second edition of her OKR manifesto proves that Wodtke’s business strategies are essential in a world where focus seems to be a more and more unreachable goal. The updated version includes 22,000 words of all-new material designed to help OKR users in larger companies create, grade, and manage OKRs in ways that accelerate success and drive rapid organizational learning.
Ready to move your team in the right direction? Read this book together, and learn Wodtke’s powerful system for attaining your most important goals with radical focus.
Present Yourself
Present Yourself, co-authored by Christina Wodtke and Women Talk Design’s CEO Danielle Barnes, doesn’t just talk about how to create a presentation—that’s only one piece. The book starts by walking you through why you want to speak, what you want to say, and who you want to say it to. Then, it teaches you advanced skills:
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weaving stories into your presentation
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specific tools to engage your audience, and
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creating your own rituals to prepare for (and celebrate!) speaking over the long term.
No longer do any of us have to dread and put off public speaking. Now, just like the 11 brilliant speakers featured in the book, you can harness the power of your authentic voice, and be heard.
The Team that Managed Itself
An Actionable Leadership Book in the Form of a Fable
In The Team That Managed Itself, Christina Wodtke teaches leaders how to build and lead high-performing teams based on her long career in the trenches in Silicon Valley. Her book is engaging, actionable–and built around a story you’ll want to read. After her boss leaves suddenly, Allie finds herself responsible for the casual gaming titan Quiltworld and the dozens of people working on the highly dysfunctional team. Can Allie learn to competently hire, fire, and give feedback in time to make the product’s big sales goals? Or will the team, the buggy code, and the beloved game fall apart while Allie’s job goes up in smoke?
Learn to lead a team along with Allie as she tackles one challenge after another while the clock ticks down.
How do you build the right team and choose the goals to pull them to greatness, even if you’re dealing with a toxic environment? How do you keep your people moving in the right direction without burning out or burning it all down? As Allie finds out, even in the face of overwhelming pressure it’s about setting expectations, giving good feedback, checking in against goals, and learning as a team… Leading so well that your team learns to manage itself? That’s no fable. Learn how from Christina Wodtke.
Pencil Me In
Want to get better in business? Learn how to draw.
There’s no faster, cheaper prototype in the world than a sketch on a sheet of paper. What’s unclear in words is suddenly crystal clear in a sketch, and you—and your team—can tackle problems in entirely new ways. Play around with ideas. Document your process. Think on paper. Visual thinking brings a whole new power to work.
Think you can’t draw? Don’t worry! The simplest sketches are the most effective at communication and problem solving, so you can begin drawing in less time than your average coffee break. Pictures and visual communication harken back to the stone age for good reason–they’re natural, they’re quick, and they work. And they’ll work for you.
If you’re looking for the next tool to help you solve your hardest (and most interesting) challenges at work, try a paper and pencil. This book teaches you how to use them well–and have a bit of fun along the way.
Information Architecture – Blueprints from the Web
This book introduces the core concepts of information architecture: organizing web site content so that it can be found, designing website interaction so that it’s pleasant to use, and creating an interface that is easy to understand. This book helps designers, project managers, programmers, and other information architecture practitioners avoid costly mistakes by teaching the skills of information architecture swiftly and clearly.
101 Theses on Design: And Other Essays on the Design of Digital Things
This special Kindle edition is a vital sampler of new thinking on how to design for, and see, the digital age. Wodtke’s essays range from career advice to insights on the future of the internet.
Why is homogenization of the internet a bad thing?
What are practices you can put if place to help you to design better digital “things”?
How and where to find a job?
Why are compassion and pragmatism important, and how can you get yourself some?
Wodtke offers didacticism, irreverence, humor, and humanity in this collection of essays on how to make the online world a better place.
(Essays previously published on Wodtke’s eleganthack.com and other online sites, as well as the eponomous 101 Essays on Design)
From the forward: “So why buy this book? Maybe you’d like all the essays in one place, preferably on your Kindle. Or maybe you’d like to buy it in order to say thanks for all my writing. I’d be good with that.” — Christina Wodtke”
Essays
The Easiest Way to Start Working with OKRs
If you’ve ever found yourself knee-deep in a project and wondering, “What the hell are we really trying to do...
The Product Journey: From Concept to Exit
A product’s journey from inception to decline involves several distinct phases. Understanding these phases is crucial for anyone involved in...
Fast Ways to Estimate Capacity
Estimating the capacity of your organization or team quickly is crucial for setting realistic goals and effectively planning projects. Here...