What are Reflections?

Every week, Koan will prompt you to complete your reflection.

In a nutshell, you can think of Reflections as a weekly update (you might refer to it as a status report 😀) on the important things you got done, are planning to get done next week, and any problems, issues or blockers that you might have faced. The great thing about doing this in Koan is gathering these insights in one, transparent location. You can review past updates, have conversations in the context of the work, and flag progress towards important goals.

You can access your reflection by going to your team page, and selecting Reflections > Author reflection.

Weekly status reports are a great way to improve team communication, but only if they're clear, concise, and focused on what really matters. That means being deliberate about what goes into them—but also what you leave out. As you’re wrapping up your week, here's how to make sure your report as impactful as possible.

What to include?

Progress made during the previous week
Updates on critical Objectives and Key Results
Priorities for the week ahead
Any issues or concerns that may slow forward momentum
Valuable things pertinent to teammates

What to leave out?

Routine emails, calls, and meetings
Every ticket triaged, handled, or closed
Data or analysis beneath your top-line metrics
Any other details that don’t impact your team

Get more guidance on writing great status updates here.

Update goal progress

Checking in on the progress of your critical goals every week is an important positive behavior and at the core of how to use goals to set the cadence of your team. When completing your reflection, you can update the metric and share your confidence rating.

Updating Your KR Metric

By updating your KR metric, you are able to show your team's quantitative progress towards the goal.

Under "How are we tracking towards our key results?" select the metric below the goal you are looking to update.
Update the Current Number variable. Additionally, you can change the symbol associated with the metric if you would like (number, percentage, currency, etc).

Entering a Confidence Rating

By submitting a confidence rating and associated comment, you are able to share your thoughts with the team around goal progress.

Select a square on the ten point color scale to express how confident you are that the goal will be achieved.
Write a comment to give your team context behind your confidence rating. Are there any additional details they should know about the goal's progress?

Tagging Key Results

As you fill out your reflection, you'll also have the option to tag individual line items in the top three sections to your Key Results. To learn more about how to tag Key Results to your weekly reflection, go here.

For a deeper look at how we do this process at Koan, check out The Heartbeat of Great Teams.