Welcome to Koan! In this guide, we're going to cover all of the features that you need in order to get your Koan instance ready for the rest of your organization. Each of the steps listed below links to articles that provide in-depth instructions on how to complete the described task.
If you have any questions as you get started, feel free to reach out to us through the messenger in the bottom right-hand corner and we'll get back to you as quickly as possible.
Koan was built for teams to work together towards a common goal. So while you can do some things in the platform solo, inviting your team members and working together to get set up is the best way to go. There are two ways to do this, you can invite users individually to a specific team, or you can invite users in bulk to the system altogether (and they can be added to teams later). To learn how to invite your team, go here.
Additionally, if you want to create more teams within Koan (which can be done before or after inviting users), you can learn how here.
Setting goals is made easier when your teams know how their work fits into your company's overall mission. We made it easy to keep your teams aligned with the company homepage.
From the left sidebar, select your organization's name to go to the Organization Homepage. You will see three widgets named "Mission", "Vision + Strategy", and "Relevant Links". To edit, select "Expand" on the widget you'd like to edit. From this modal, you can click "Edit" to customize each individual widget.
You can choose the icon and color combination, update the terminology in the company page (for instance, you'd prefer to dedicate a widget to your annual initiatives as opposed to your vision and strategy, you can do that), update your summary, and add longer, rich-text details and links.
For more details on how to customize your Organization Homepage, go here.
For a more in-depth guide on adding your goals into Koan, go here.
The best way to get started with creating your goals is to do it at the team level. You can add OKRs to your team by going to your team's Goals tab, and selecting "Add objective".
You will then be prompted to write the title and due date of your objective in-line, followed by the titles and due dates of its associated key results.
Once you have entered the titles and due dates of your objective and its key results, you must go back and add additional information. To do this, select the kabob icon (the three-dots icon) to the right of the due date of each of your objectives and key results, and then select 'Edit objective/key result'.
For every objective you will want do the following:
Include a description of the objective.
Link the objective to a parent goal (if there is a higher-level goal that your objective supports).
Add additional teams that may be working on this goal with your team.
Add a lead to the objective.
For every key result you will want to do the following:
Include a description for the key result. This is essential to help provide a game-plan or strategy of how you will achieve the KR. You can include a task list in this description, or better yet, if you use a project management tool, include a link to it in your KR description!
Include a metric (and specify if you would like your metric to be a percent, currency, or a number).
Add other teams that may be working on this goal with your team.
Assign one lead to the KR. This individual is responsible for facilitating the execution of this goal. Their confidence rating will be weighted more heavily than that of contributors.
Assign contributors to this KR. Both leads and contributors will be asked to rate the KR weekly. Only assign individuals directly working on this goal regularly.
For more information on entering OKRs into Koan, go here.
For a more in-depth guide on completing weekly reflections, go here.
Each week, you'll be asked to reflect on the important things you got done, are planning to get done next week, and the problems you've ran into or things you've learned. You can set custom questions as well, if you need to ask your team for additional details. You'll also be prompted to score your OKRs based on your confidence of the team's ability to complete each key result. This data helps to surface any issues before they become big problems and helps make sure that everyone's voice is heard.
After you've submitted your reflection, the team will be able to read and engage with each others' reflections as well as leave comments. To learn more about reflection best practices, go here.
Additional Resources
That's it! You're up and running with Koan and ready to set and achieve your goals. But that doesn't mean you can set it and forget it-- the best teams regularly check in on their progress and work together while closing out their goals.
For more free OKR content, check out our OKR Resource Center.