Leadership and management productivity applications developer Workboard introduced the general availability of its Goals & Metrics app, which helps managers set goals, define success metrics and engage their teams in goal achievement.
The app, an add-on to the company’s Team Velocity app, allows managers to link team priorities and execution to business goals and metrics.
“Managers are continuously balancing real- time priorities with the larger objectives and outcomes they’re trying to achieve over a quarter or a year. What often happens is that objectives get eclipsed by day-to-day actions and reactions and goals are quickly forgotten after the presentation at the beginning of the year,” Deidre Paknad, CEO of Workboard, told eWEEK. “Everyone gets lost in just doing, and loses sight of why they’re doing it or where they’re heading. Our customers tell us they wanted a way to make goals evergreen and ever present and to have more capacity to adjust priorities to achieve their goals.”
The app can help managers define and chart multiple metrics for each goal and choose from several chart options to graph progress.
Team members tasked with metric updates get reminders while everyone’s charts are automatically updated. Goal dashboards show days remaining and progress to target.
Users can also see the execution status of work to support goal achievement, including red flags and delays.
“One of the first principles of Workboard is that we help people be better managers and leaders,” Paknad said. “It’s not just convenience or time savings, but really improving the skillfulness with which they manage their teams and business function. The app has to help them operate at a higher level. A significant advantage of the mobile app is access to data that changes minute-to-minute, which is key to helping people work their priorities instead of their inbox, Paknad added.
The app’s refined transparency settings let managers selectively share goals and metrics with up-line managers, direct reports, internal and external collaborators, plus navigate the chart to see cross-organization goal achievement.
“Workboard closes the fractured relationship between goals, priorities, work and feedback in a single app,” Paknad said. “It’s wholly integrated with email so actionable messages are moved to Workboard and alerts and recognition flow out via email.”
The Goals & Metrics app costs $50 per month for managers and their team members. The optional free-forever Team Velocity app, available for Web, Android and iOS, helps managers and their teams prioritize work, share and track action items, and automate weekly status reports.
“We push new features every 21 days, so the Goals & Metrics app will be enhanced almost continuously,” Paknad said. “We will add a variety of analytics capabilities and more apps that help managers lead their teams to great achievement over the next few months as well.”