Rolling out Koan to Your Team
Last year on a return flight from an international trip I quite suddenly threw out my back. Lugging our one year old and several large suitcases, my wife still babied me through the 90 minute customs line. She did, however, prod that maybe it was time to start a regular yoga practice. I knew she was right, but the usual crux applied — starting a new practice is hard, even when you know it will be good for you. That’s doubly true for a whole team.
Teams that use Koan have almost universally positive things to say. They feel more in the loop, priorities are clearer and they’re giving one another better feedback. But how did they overcome the hurdles and decide to get started?
Almost all of us feel overwhelmed at work — too many messages, too many projects and a million tools vying for our attention. We get that asking your team to adopt Koan can be a hard sell. Others have been in your shoes. In fact, a very kind Koan customer put together a set of slides to help other managers that were in her same situation. We thanked her profusely, and hope that you find the slides useful!
We’re working hard to make Koan an easy and positive choice for your team. And though we still have a lot of room to improve, we carry a set of design principles into every product discussion:
- Users should spend equal or less time in Koan vs. their existing process but get massively more value.
- We believe valuable team data is trapped in email and spreadsheets, leaving it un-leveraged. We can do better and still keep things simple.
- All else being equal, make it fun.
How are we doing? We’d love to hear from you! Oh… and incidentally, though both help you stay centered and focused, Koan is way easier and arguably more fun than Yoga.
