Hard Things

I’m in the middle of The Summer of Songbirds, a nostalgic summer read about best friends frenetically working to save their beloved summer camp from closure and discovering who they are in the process. But what most intrigues me about this story is the way the friends do each other’s hard things, that is, things that don’t come easily to them, but come effortlessly to their friends. The lawyer negotiates disputes, the event planner plans menus, the bookstore owner handles gift giving.

To celebrate the novel’s debut in the world this week, its author and Friends & Fiction cohost Kristy Woodson Harvey described the genesis of “hard things.” When Friends & Fiction was launching at the onset of the pandemic, the cohosts divvied up tasks according to what they were good at and enjoyed doing. Smart and sensical.

On Wednesday’s web show, the cohosts talked about what they find hard and would give each other to do. It surprised me to learn that one cohost enjoys outlining and plotting her novels but wouldn’t mind outsourcing the writing to her colleagues. Another cohost said finances give her trouble and would hand that to the cohost who used to work in finance. Another said doing taxes was her hard thing. Many can relate.

This week, I started to tackle a hard thing for me: learning how to set solid objectives and define key results (OKRs). How do you implement strategy and measure success in your organization amid change? I tend to circle between visionary thinking and day-to-day minutia. The interim step of writing down bite-size directional objectives, putting specific numbers around aspirational results, then returning after months, even a year, to accurately evaluate progress is a major challenge.

The workshop instructor helped me unpack the concept and showed me how to avoid common pitfalls. Principally, she explained that your focus should be on why an OKR matters for your organization — and the key stakeholders. Even better, she spoke my language by describing the purpose of setting and realizing OKRs in the first place: changing individual behavior to gain the most from work and maximize time spent living life. That can be a hard thing — but worth every minute.