Read These Books: Fully Embracing Business Methodologies
Is your organization dabbling in new frameworks or methodologies, but you’re unsure about their potential success? You're not alone. Many "trendy" frameworks often turn out to be underwhelming due to one major pitfall: superficial implementation.
As a community person, conference organizer, and coach, I've engaged in countless conversations about how companies implement various strategies. Time and again, I've noticed a worrying trend: they adopt frameworks and business methodologies in an incomplete manner, which leads to suboptimal outcomes.
The pitfall of surface-level implementation
Many organizations claim to adopt methodologies like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) or focus on "outcomes over output." However, their understanding and application are often only partial. Companies might update their PowerPoint slides with OKR structures or talk about being outcome-oriented but fail to incorporate the essential, transformative elements of these methodologies.
People who have successfully implemented these methodologies can spot the "OKR theater" or the "outcome theater" within minutes. In a single ten-minute conversation, I can tell if an OKR implementation is on the way to being successful (providing the radical focus everyone hopes for) or not. Let me unpack that for you.
Why full implementation matters
The real power of any business framework lies in its thorough implementation. Frameworks like OKRs are not just about setting goals or checking off accomplishments at the end of a quarter. They are about embedding a rhythm of regular check-ins, updated confidence ratings, reflections, and adaptations that drive momentum forward. They change a company's operating model.
When companies tell me they are using OKRs, I tend to ask about these weekly check-ins and celebrations. If they stare back at me with a question mark above their head, I know that nobody ever took the time to read Radical Focus or any of the other good OKR books.
Similarly, many companies claim their product organization is very outcome-oriented. Yet, weeks into coaching, I see the worst deadline-driven feature roadmaps, observe management meetings focused solely on shipped features without discussing their impact, and witness facilitators stopping valuable conversations just to tick off planned exercises. These are not the behaviors of an outcome-oriented organization.
The crucial role of deep dive learning
Here’s my candid opinion: If your company is serious about leveraging any new methodology, stop relying on brief overviews and summaries. Social media snippets and short blog posts are starting points, but they cannot convey the depth of knowledge necessary for successful implementation.
Experts like Christina Wodtke, John Doerr, Josh Seiden, and Jeff Gotthelf have distilled their extensive knowledge into books for a reason. Real mastery requires more than casual engagement. Understanding any framework entirely means not just knowing what it is but how to live it through every layer of your business practices.
When adopting frameworks, it's not enough to label initiatives differently. You must shift the entire corporate mindset. And that takes time and constant reminders of what good looks like —these nudges and reminders are in the books that many product leaders often tend to reference but don't seem to have actually read.
Effective learning strategies
Instead of encouraging a quick-and-dirty, fragmented approach to learning, focus your team's efforts on comprehensive, seminal works.
Find the source—the first book or the primary author who created the framework—authors who are first to talk about something often spend years developing and tweaking it. Learn from them, not from a random agency's "handbook" for lead generation.
Once you've identified the key books, start reading them, but don't do it alone. Facilitate discussions, workshops, and reading groups that dive into these texts. Ensure the reading group consists of people who have the power to influence the ways of working that need to be changed. If you do it the other way around, reading it with your team of PMs, for example, the individual contributors might be all fired up for a new way of working but won't have the time to try them, or if they do, they will not be rewarded or may even be questioned for doing so. And this is NOT a nice feeling. So ensure the right people in your organization are reading the right books. For example:
Empowered by Marty Cagan and Strong Product People by me (Petra Wille) for product leaders (people managing product people).
Transformed by Marty Cagan for a broader understanding across the organization.
Final thoughts: Making it work for your team
Adopting new methodologies is not about ticking a box; it's about fundamentally enhancing how your organization operates. Invest in these books, invest the time to understand them thoroughly, and integrate their lessons deeply into your business processes. For example, one of my clients commits to reading one book a year along with the whole org. This is a small enough goal that it's manageable, but committing to it with the entire org creates accountability and a shared language. This approach will enable your teams to not just implement a new methodology but to transform your organizational culture effectively.