Inside the Labyrinth

With the major shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re seeing an increase in companies implementing surveillance and tracking software, believing that it would improve team productivity and efficiency while everyone was working from home. But ramping up the use of software to monitor what your employees do all day isn’t the answer.

We’ve been working hard on new product features to help you become more productive and efficient within Koan. Take a look at some of the recent improvements.

For our latest Koan Book Club selection, the team picked up Caroline Criado Perez' “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men,” which inspired a thoughtful discussion and introspection of gender bias at Koan and beyond. In her book, she argues that the world we all inhabit is designed with a male-default point of view which puts women at a severe disadvantage. We’ve recapped some of the discussion highlights from our virtual book club meeting. 

Teams are where your organization’s work gets done and great things happen. With the expansion of remote working, increased isolation and challenges to productivity, teams are more important than ever. Fostering teamwork and communication among teams enhances productivity, transparency and alignment.

Koan was created to help leaders and teams become more efficient by providing them with a simple, collaborative platform to manage goals and OKRs across organizations. With collaboration at our core, Koan offers value to organizations through three fundamental pillars: Teams, Reflections, and Insights. These lead to our core value propositions: Transparency, Alignment, Accountability.

The first step in keeping remote teams productive is to make sure everyone is connected. But then what? It’s important to think beyond just basic communication and look for ways to keep employees motivated, engaged, and productive throughout this disruptive time.

Koan’s OKR Examples Worksheet is a great tool to use as you’re preparing for an OKR planning cycle. Uncover OKR examples by various departments, and get started drafting your own with an OKR worksheet.

The following blog is reposted from our friends at Wizikey, who hosted an AMA with our CEO, Matt Tucker, about managing OKRs with remote teams. He provided recommendations for handling OKRs during a time of crisis, book suggestions, and answered questions from the group.