100 Managers doing 1-on-1s & getting feedback
by AbhinavWe opened up our Manager's Tool (https://peoplebox.ai) for all a couple of weeks ago. Today we have over 100 managers doing their 1-on-1 meetings, exchanging feedback with their team and taking critical actions on Peoplebox.
Our vision is to build a tool for Managers to help them unlock their teams potential. Managers today struggle to develop highly engaged teams that can give their personal bests to achieve overall objectives. They also want to grow their teams, retain their best performers and transform their average or low performers.
Yet, there is hardly any support/ tools available to help them achieve these. To make it worse, people are becoming managers earlier than ever and have to manage a demanding millennial workforce. The result, 50% of Americans have left a job to “get away from their manager at some point in their career.”
Our goal is to empower managers to help their teams grow and succeed through meaningful 1-on-1s, continuous feedback and most importantly, actions that matters.
Why 1-on-1s? We are often asked, do managers look for a one-on-one tool? What's wrong with Apple Notes/ Google Doc? Is it a big enough market?
There are two distinct things about 1-on-1 meetings . One, its a consistent behavior in today's managers across organizations, very under-utilized and can be significantly improved. Second, it plays an extremely important role in manager's ability to improve their team's engagement & performance.
From interesting warm-up questions, to smart suggestions on what to discuss, collaborating talking points, taking shared/ private notes and most importantly tracking action items, Peoplebox helps both managers and team members in making their one-on-ones really meaningful.
Keen to get indiehackers to try it out and provide some feedback :)
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This field is definitely starting to show more and more interest (I'm in the same space).
HR tools have been around since long, but recent years show a trend towards proper SaaS tools (the non-SAP kind).With https://fellow.app being in the lead with their recent 6M USD investment. So your market is validated, now get to grow it. Fast. And let me know how you're doing :-).
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Thanks a lot @axtg. Yes, majority of the tools are HR related and aimed to help HR in capturing engagement pulse or manager OKRs. The new age SaaS tools are for managers and aimed to help them close the feedback loop through real actions on the ground. We believe they should be off the shelve for any manager to just sign-up and start using. The result is not a report or dashboard but increased engagement, performance and retention. I agree, the space is becoming interesting.
I see you are building ratemymeeting.co. I'm curious, What kind of meetings generally people use your app for? Is it mainly for internal purpose or external meetings as well?
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So far people use ratemymeeting mostly for internal meetings. Recurring stand-ups or internal workshops. I guess it's a preference of the organizer, but as a sales rep or consultant I would definitely see value for doing it externally as well. But that is another topic :).
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I agree. As a sales rep, it would provide a huge value to me or my boss to know how did the meeting go, though not sure that value does it provide to the client by providing feedback. People generally don't want to tell you negatively on your face. But it also depends on how you frame questions.
Internally, Do managers use it for 1-on-1s? Would love to hear any insights or feedback you have got from your users
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Man, the space is interesting but the product, IDK...
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There are millions of HR feedback talk supporting tools out there and I tried at least a dozen
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most are useless or utter crap, doing good feedback talks is about many things but not about a support system; they create a formal notion which isn't the right approach imo; I mean giving feedback is an art and tells maybe 80% of your leadership skills
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most of these tools are integrated in big HR solutions which have this tool as an addon, tbh it's also not the most sophisticated piece of software for which I am willing to get myself into a tedious enterprise sales process
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finally your pitch here and your landing page, so much text (here) so little info why your system is good, or how it works, or is special, or is based on some psychological voodoo, nothing, just some forms who remind me to do 1 on 1s in a guided way, hm...
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Thanks a lot @Cass1 for your detailed feedback. Its super helpful. Will definitely work on the website and pitch.
You mentioned, you tried out many feedback support tools. Can I ask you what was the pain point you were trying to solve? What would you have liked the tool to help you with? In case you regularly do 1-on-1s with your direct report, did any of these tool made those better? If a tool does that (make your 1-on-1s better), would you use it (considering money is not an issue) or you don't consider it a problem at all?
Sorry for bombarding with questions. I'm trying to understand the pain points (if any) and how they perceive different solutions. Thanks a mill again
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Thanks mate for the detailed answer. Not sure why you deleted it but just wanted to say, the insights were super super helpful. :)
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago.
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Your tool is a perfect example oh how technology can assist behavioral aspects of an organization too. So glad that AI is being used to improve organizational relationships and behavior.
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Some feedback: I just signed up to try it out but didn't get very far. There doesn't seem to be a way to complete on-boarding and try out the features without inviting my direct reports. At this point I stopped, because I wasn't comfortable inviting my reports before I kicked the tires. I was expecting that I could try the product out as a single user before getting extra features from connecting my calendar and reports.
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This is very valid @adamstep and tbh a lot of our users have told us this. The thing is, if you don't add your reports, the value you get out of the product is pretty less. You won't be able to share agenda with each other, you won't be able to get smart suggestions. you wont be able to collaborate on notes or track each other action items. Having said that, it will still be better than if the user decides not to add it at all, like in your case.
Our fear was, if we make it optional, thats what most of people will end up doing. But its a very fair point and we must re-think on it.
If I may ask, when you signedup to the product, was there any specific pain point you were facing that you hoped to solve using the tool. More specifically, is there anything you would like a tool to help you with your 1-on-1s?
Thanks again mate for the feeedback and insight
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When I signed up, I was hoping the tool could help me stay on top of action items that come up during my 1:1s. I just use a notes app right now, so it's easy to forget tasks until my next 1:1. My expectation was that I'd be able to add reports in the tool manually, and then get a link that I could share with them manually on Slack. The link would have shared notes and prompts for feedback.
Don't be afraid to experiment at this stage of the product! You can always try making the connection piece optional, and if it doesn't work out make it mandatory again. You may find more people stick with it and get value immediately, and then they're more open to connecting their reports. Good luck!
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