Hello dear friend,

I will be moving to Lisbon very soon, and I believe it'll open up new opportunities in my life. On the other hand, I have to deal with many daily tasks. That's why this newsletter is filled with more news and conference notes. I hope you like it.

The Culture of Thinking Outside the Box

I think it's critical to track whether an organization is moving in the right direction or not. I believe that this has been the subject of analytical and numerical measurement methods for years. I thought that if we set up the necessary measuring systems and created dashboards, we would soon begin to understand where we were going. As time passed, I faced the realities of life. I learned that establishing a system and, most importantly, getting meaningful results is wholly related to an organization's culture.

Last week, I attended the OKRX Summit 2022, and this finding struck me again. The summit's motto was "Unlock the Culture of Thinking Outside the Box and Setting Results-Oriented Goals with OKR!" It was all about OKRs: Objectives and Key Results. Let me briefly share my takeaways:

I attended seven different talks and all of the speakers mentioned that OKR transformation was a cultural transformation project. Suppose an organization's culture doesn't provide a safe environment for speaking freely and learning by making mistakes. In that case, an OKR transformation will most probably fail.

Bite-Sized Learning

I liked Christina Wodtke's short and direct answers. She was not trying to be politically correct, and I loved it.

If there is a trust issue in the organization, don't start the OKR process. Go deal with the real stuff and solve the trust issue.

Cool Definition for OKR

I liked Sure Köse Ulutaş's OKR definition. It’s simple and worth thinking about.

OKR is a critical thinking framework.

Most Radical Suggestion

Don't have more than 1 objective and 3 key results for a company or a team.

This is from Bart den Haak, author of the book "Moving the Needle." He is trying to make the process as lean as possible, and I really liked his approach.

NFTs on Instagram

Instagram announced that they started to test the NFTs of selected creators in the United States. The creators will be able to showcase their NFTs as digital collectibles on Instagram. This is just a "read" function. The users will not be able to mint (create or write) NFTs through Instagram at this time, but it's a significant start. Let me tell you why:

There are now 21-million monthly active users of Metamask. It's 1 billion (48X) for Instagram.
After Facebook's Libra fiasco, Meta developed a better understanding of web3. (If you want to hear more about that, please search the statements of the founders of Polygon. They're pretty impressed with the approach and the knowledge of Meta's web3 team.)

NFTs on Spotify?

Another player will step into the ring. The streaming service is testing a feature that will allow artists to promote their NFTs. It's not as exciting as the Instagram announcement, and it seems like some of the users don't like that. You can read the details here.

How to Track my Goals Status?

You may remember that I've been tracking my goals. I mentioned that in the second issue: "When I decided to get into tech, I realized that I needed to set smart goals and define a tracking system to evaluate whether I was going in the right direction, so I started to look for a solution (a free one, if possible) to create a dashboard and reports to track my progress. After an exploration phase, I decided to move on with a Google Sheets and Google Data Studio combo. I'm working on the dashboard and graphs, which I'll embed on my website when they're ready."

I've finally managed to embed it on my website. I like updating the figures and thinking about my progress by looking at the graphs. You can jump here if you want to take a look at them.

Please let me know if you want to hear more details about any of these. I’m ready to share more.

Stay curious until next time ✌🏼

Tolga

Journey of a Non-Tech to Tech

#004 Instagram ❤️ NFTs. Thinking Outside the…