2021-06-09

Check-in with your team on what matters most

New in Range: Automated nudges to get key project updates from your team and reinforce culture and values

It’s hard to stay on top of everything that’s going on when you’re leading a team! It can be especially challenging to get relevant information from your teammates, at the right time.

Whether it’s hassling people for project updates to aggregate into a weekly team report, or remembering to celebrate successes — reminding people to share the right information can feel like a major chore.

We’re thrilled to announce Check-in prompts — automated nudges which help your team write more relevant check-ins, while reinforcing what matters most for your team.

We built Check-in prompts with managers who want an easier way to get important updates from their team in mind — Range provides automated Check-in prompts that help teams write better updates. Managers can use Check-in prompts to:

Automate collecting project updates
Reinforce team culture and values, such as sharing gratitude or lessons learned
Get regular status updates on OKRs and goals

Teams at Twitter, CircleCI, Flexport, and hundreds of other companies have been using Range to check in asynchronously with their teams. Check-ins take the effort out of keeping your team updates, helping to build the transparency and alignment necessary for effective teamwork.

One of the top feature requests we've received from these teams has been the ability to customize what goes in a Check-in. Managers are responsible for collecting and aggregating information from their team — a task which is time-consuming and can feel naggy — and they saw an opportunity for Range to help. We listened and built Check-in prompts.

Check-in prompts provide just enough structure to easily get important updates from your team — without feeling like you’re constantly nagging them.

Unlike slack standups, Check-in prompts make it easy to both ask for specific updates, and find those updates for easy consumption.

Prompts don't only help track goals and projects, but can be used to help reinforce cultural norms and habits, such as sharing gratitude and lessons learned, or even normalizing acts of self-care.

Get exactly the information you need, without having to remember to ask every day or every week.

Checking in on what’s important

Teams in the Check-in prompts beta have been customizing their prompts to ask questions such as:

What project updates do you have today?
What notable movement on our metrics should people be aware of?
What new outcome or output should we highlight?
What ideas do you have about improving how we work?

As for our team here at Range, we use these prompts every week to stay aligned and reinforce our team values:

Monday: What’s your main focus for the week?
Tuesday: What’s something you’re doing for yourself this week?
Wednesday: What’s something or someone you’re thankful for this week?
Thursday: Is there anything the rest of the team should be aware of?
Friday: What’s something we should celebrate?

Even on days when we have few meetings, Check-in prompts create moments for us throughout the week to celebrate together, share gratitude, and remind each other to schedule some self-care.

Set up custom Check-in prompts for your team

To make the most of Check-in prompts, you can customize them to focus on what’s important for your team.

Take some time upfront to think through what values, updates, or reflections are important for your team — perhaps you’d like to reinforce a specific company value, get regular updates on a certain metric, or remind your team to celebrate their successes.

Then, go ahead and customize Check-in prompts for your team. We’ve also included sample prompts below that you can use throughout the week, centered around different goals.

Goal: create a culture of celebration and gratitude

What is your main focus for the week?
Who or what are you thankful for this week?
What’s something to celebrate from this week?

Goal: encourage team accountability for key projects

What is your main goal for this project this week?
Do you need help with anything you’re working on this week?
What progress did you make on this project this week?

Goal: build team best practices and excitement for learning

What is your main focus for the week?
Share one of your favorite best practices, tips or tricks!
What’s one thing you failed at recently - big or small?

Once you’re done customizing, sit back, and let Range do the work for you. You’ll be able to see all the responses to Check-in prompts in the team summary card each day.