What is Slack?

In case you aren’t as familiar as we are (we use Slack to communicate internally - and it’s amazing!), Slack brings all of your communications together in one place. You can use Slack for instant messaging, file sharing, calling other Slack users, and notifications through their many integrations. Start conversations with channels, private channels, or individuals within your company, eliminating the need to use internal emails. If you don’t use Slack for internal communications yet, I highly recommend trying it out. It’s completely free to use for as long as you want, with optional upgrades to their feature-heavy paid plans.

Share Klips and dashboards with the new Slack feature

With our new Slack feature, it’s easy to start a discussion about a Klip or dashboard you are looking at in Klipfolio. The new feature gives you the power to share individual Klips or entire dashboards with your channels and individual Slack users. Use the new feature to spark a new conversation or to provide context around an important discussion.

Want to start sharing your key metrics and data in Slack? Connect your Slack account with Klipfolio to enable the new integration. Follow these step-by-step instructions and start sharing your data with your Slack channels and users.

Step 1: Enable Slack integration

1. In Klipfolio, head over to your Account Settings
2. Select General Settings from the options
3. Click Edit next to Slack integration
4. Click Authorize with Slack. A Slack authorization dialog will display.
5. Select the Slack Team you want to authorize.
6. Click Authorize to allow Klipfolio to send Klips and dashboards to Slack. When Slack is authorized, the Slack Integration in Klipfolio is automatically enabled and you can start sharing.

Note: You can authorize with one Slack Team at a time. If you decide you want to authorize with a different Slack Team, you must remove the Klipfolio app in Slack. In Klipfolio Settings, click Check Authorization to remove the authorization and go through the enabling process in Klipfolio again.

Step 2: Share a Klip with a channel or user in Slack

1. Find the Klip you want to share and click on the Klip menu
2. Select Share from the menu and then Share Klip with Slack
3. In the Share this Klip with Slack screen, select a channel or user from the dropdown list. Note: You can select one or more channels/users. Or just start typing and Klipfolio will auto-complete the name.
4. If you want to provide more context for your Klip, write a message in the Add Comment box.
5. Click Share to send the Klip. If you share with a user, they will receive a notification (if they enabled notifications in the Slack app). Sharing with a channel will show as a new message in the Slack channel.

Step 3: Share a dashboard with a channel or user in Slack

1. To share a dashboard to Slack, click on the dashboard menu.
2. Select Share and then Share dashboard with Slack from the More Actions menu.
3. In the Share this Dashboard with Slack screen, select a channel or user from the dropdown list.
4. If you want to provide more context for your dashboard, write a message in the Add Comment box.
5. Click Share to send the dashboard. If you share with a user, they will receive a notification (if they enabled notifications in the Slack app). Sharing with a channel will show as a new message in the Slack channel.

Watch the video to see the new Slack feature in action

Spring has come to Ottawa and it's an especially happy time for all of the runners and cyclists in the office. A lot of us walk or cycle to and from work, and we have a variety of clubs and groups focused on different activities: run club goes for runs at lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and there’s a group that does “Yoga on the hill” (Parliament Hill, that is) on Wednesdays. Some of us just cycled the CN Ride for CHEO, and a lot of us are signed up for the CHEO 5K Run in June. We also have a soccer team that plays Tuesday nights. Seems like a pretty active office right?

What’s great about our group is that, though a lot of us are at different fitness levels, and we all have individual exercise preferences and goals, we also enjoy exercising and achieving fitness objectives as a group. We set goals like: “everyone in this group is going to run the CHEO 5K in June without walking”, and we put together an exercise plan to achieve that goal. Setting milestones is an important part of the process. For example, on week one our objective was to run 1 minute, then walk 1 minute, for 30 minutes. On week two we set out to double our running time between walks...And so our plan has continued, with our goal to have the whole group running together for 5 km by the end of May. The experienced runners in the group are motivated to coach and support the novice runners. The novice runners are motivated to become better runners, and to keep up with the group. It truly becomes a team goal, and a team win when we make progress.

Of course, at Klipfolio, we’re united by our love of data, and of metrics, and of data tracking tools (aren’t all offices? ;) So there was never any question that run tracking tools and dashboards were going to be part of this process. And they have been a great part of the process.

We built a group running dashboard with data from MapMyFitness, Under Armour’s Running App. One of us in the group runs with an iPhone in hand, with the app tracking our time and splits as we go. When we get back to the office, our run data displays on our shared dashboard, and we can bask in our achievement for the day, and see our progress week to week. Reporting our group stats at the end of each run has become a reward and a ritual. We don’t want to see any regressions in performance on the dashboard. We don’t want to see a bad result. We like to see gold stars and positive sloping lines on the dashboard. Nerdy? Maybe. Effective? Yes, definitely.

So if you’re motivated to motivate your team, and to get your office moving, I highly recommend an approach that includes goal setting, and performance tracking. If you’re interested in our dashboard and the MapMyFitness dashboard integration we’re using, I’ve created a quick video tutorial on how to connect below.

You can start with a free trial, but if you’re looking for a bit of change to fund the purchase of the dashboard, here are the bullet points for your HR team:

“Dear HR, I would like to help:

• Promote an office culture of health and fitness
• Improve teamwork
• Increase productivity
• Increase retention”

Whether you go the dashboard route or not, group exercise is a great way to get your team going this Spring, so get out there!

Here’s the demo:

And here’s a concept for a group training dashboard:

Meggan King is manager of support services at Klipfolio. Though she’s worked in tech for 17 years, she’s always been the only female in her office until she came to work for us.

That experience of being the only woman – and the feeling that the high-tech industry is not very welcoming to women (a feeling many other women share) – led her and other women in our company to get involved in Technovation, an international entrepreneurship program for girls.

Earlier this year, Meggan and three other Klipfolio employees – developer Lianne Sit, senior content developer Tamsin Douglas and technology partnerships manager Nikta Kanuka – volunteered to mentor two teams from a local high school. For 12 weeks, from February to April, they worked closely with their teams as the girls developed app ideas, learned to code, analyzed market opportunities and even devised pricing strategies for their apps. Eventually they would present their app along with a business plan, to a panel of judges.

The mentors (who volunteered their own time) were energized by the experience of guiding the girls and watching their ideas take shape.

In this post, our mentors talk about the Technovation challenge – and why programs like this are key to changing the technology landscape for women.

What’s the idea behind the program?

“The idea is to expose girls to technology and entrepreneurship,” says Nikta. “They need to realize that there are many different avenues that can lead to careers in technology, not just computer science or engineering.

“The girls in the program were not necessarily planning to go into business or the tech field. Many had not decided what they want to study. Some were interested in other things altogether, like design.

“I’m really passionate about women in technology,” says Nikta. “How many times have we gotten together to talk about women in tech! Enough talk!”

“The students joined Technovation either out of interest or at the request of their teachers, who thought they would get something out of it. ”

Why are girls reluctant to get into tech?

“Too many girls think that going into tech means becoming a developer,” says Meggan. “One girl on my team was very afraid of being labelled a programmer, because she said being a programmer is not cool. I spent quite a bit of time talking to her and helping her overcome this anxiety.”

“I understand where they are coming from,” adds Nikta. “When I was in high school, I had no idea I could make a living doing what I do right now. Even four years ago, I remember being totally panicked at the thought of what I was going to do with my life. I didn’t know I could build a career in tech without being a developer.”

How did it go, considering the girls didn’t have a background in tech or business?

“One girl on my team loved graphic design so much she spent hours creating a logo. She even created an animated video that totally blew me away,” says Nikta.

“I brought her into the office and introduced her to Miru Alves, a digital designer here at Klipfolio. I wanted to let her know that if she has the passion, she can become a Miru.”

“One kid who left an impression on me was only in Grade 9,” adds Tamsin. “She was really good at problem-solving. She impressed me so much I told Allan we ought to hire her – once she is old enough, of course.

“Overall, I could not get over how poised these kids were – even under pressure, when they did their pitch to a group of judges. I was so proud of them.

“My girls didn’t win, but they remained positive. They learned things going through the process, and they felt proud of what they had accomplished. They recognized that they had achieved something.”

Do you think the girls will pursue a career in tech as a result of participating in this program?

The Klipfolio mentors all hope that the girls will consider technology when they are making decisions about education and jobs.

“We’re not sure we changed their minds about a career in tech,” says Lianne. “But we wanted to show them it was possible.”

“By virtue of our presence and interaction with the girls, we hopefully showed them that not only is it possible, but it also rewarding to work in technology.,” adds Meggan.

“We invited them to stay in touch, and some of them have,” adds Tamsin. “Meggan is helping one girl with her résumé. We told them we would have them back in the office in the summer.”

Parting thoughts??

“We took action to start bringing more young women into technology,” says Meggan. “And we had Klipfolio’s support to do it.”

“We are lucky, we had the support and encouragement of our colleagues (men and women) when we took on this project. That meant a lot to me personally,” adds Tamsin.

I want to thank Meggan, Nikta, Lianne and Tamsin for participating in Technovation. I hope some of their protégées will one day work beside them at Klipfolio – or even become our competition.

Meggan King, the manager of support services, is a problem-solver. When she’s not building formulas and helping customers at Klipfolio, she’s spending time with her husband, son and dog at the cottage.

Lianne Sit is a front-end developer with a mission to write game-changing code. She is often spotted wearing cute T-shirts and never misses a Zumba class unless hockey’s on.

Nikta Kanuka manages technology partnerships at Klipfolio. She loves talking to strangers, thinking about puppies and eating burritos.

Senior content developer Tamsin Douglas is an avid cyclist. Outside the office (and sometimes inside), you’ll find her doing yoga, enjoying nature or obsessing over her fitness stats in Strava.

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.

Productivity vs. Activity: It shouldn’t be a compromise

Are you concerned about what sitting all day at the office is doing to your body and health? I love my midday workouts as much as the next person, and feel completely comfortable in our open concept space here at Klipfolio, but if you’re looking at this image and laughing at the thought of you squatting and doing leg lifts in a skirt or trousers at your desk...you are definitely not alone. And this post is 100% for you. Let’s look at some less awkward alternatives to get your fitness fix shall we?

Step 1: Forget everything you were ever taught about work ethic. KIDDING!

Think back to the last time you or someone you know said “I just can’t sit still!” Where were you? Was it at your desk? In a meeting? On your lunch break? That feeling you have to get up for a walk or stretch in the middle of your workday has for a long time been, and in too many work environments still is, looked down upon. Why? Because there is a looming misconception that productivity means sitting down at your desk and focussing on the task at hand. From medium to small offices like us at Klipfolio, to multinational corporations like American Express, this misconception is being disproved by more and more offices each day.

It’s been proven through countless studies that encouraging employees to engage in a healthy active lifestyle both in and out of the office is beneficial for productivity, creativity and mental health. I’m not going to repeat those stats, you’ve already heard them! So why are you still stuck in your seat? Read on for more valuable tips to get you moving.

Who put that glue on your chair

Leah Eichler wrote an article for The Globe and Mail last month about office fitness that started off describing her kindergarten-aged daughter coming home from school complaining that her legs were tired from standing all day--and Eichler was delighted. For today’s workforce, this is nothing like our primary school experience where working meant sitting down at your desk, and gym class meant 30 minutes to release any bottled up energy; but this time was eventually removed entirely from your day as you moved up the education ladder and in time to your career.

What this means is that breaking the habit of sitting at your desk, having meetings in a boardroom and leaving your passion for cycling to weekends, will not be easy to break. Carol Toller, former Canadian Business Executive Editor was featured in an article by the magazine about what it’s like to work at a pedal desk. Toller talks about the somewhat strange transition from stationary to active working, but one of the best results of her new pedal desk was the playful taunting encouragement she received from her colleagues to keep pedaling at times when it slipped her mind. At Klipfolio we enjoy the same friendly banter before our lunchtime run-walk club twice a week, you can often hear our team jokingly tease one another saying, “Bring your running shoes today? “Forgot” them?”; but, above all Toller’s story raises a particularly important factor in successful office fitness: inclusiveness. As the only high-top desk among rows of cubicles, some may find it awkward to bring in a pedal desk, which is why it is so important that everyone has the same opportunity to adjust their setup.

There’s no “I” in TEAM. There is in fitness though, so remember it’s about your comfort level.

If pedal desks aren’t for you, try out a sit-stand desk. At Klipfolio everyone has a sit-stand desk so that no one feels uncomfortable going outside traditional office habits to improve their health while working. Ever heard sitting is the new smoking? It’s true! According to StandDesk, sitting more than 11 hours a day increases your risk of dying prematurely by 40%. That’s a pretty rattling statistic, but this post will help to counter it don’t worry. That 11 hours includes your 8 hour work day, commute and nightly “relaxation time”. Yes, we are all guilty of that few hours lost on Netflix every night. So why not mix it up? Sit-stand desks are a great way to encourage a healthy and active workforce by increasing people's heart rates and improving posture. The best part, sit-stand desks don’t impact your schedule AT ALL! They’re a great way to seamlessly improve your health.

Many offices join recreational sports leagues, at Klipfolio we have a soccer team, but organized sports teams aren’t the only way to foster teamwork: your office is a team anyway, right? When outside is not an option, some offices have fitness instructors like Julia Scodie, Founder of the award winning UK business Fitness in the City go into all sorts of workplaces to teach classes like pilates, circuits, yoga, zumba and more.

Hang·er /ˈhaNGər/ = A lethal combination of hunger and anger, the result of waiting too long to eat. Impairs your mood and judgment, can occur often if you consume foods that do not adequately satisfy your hunger.

How to avoid hanger. One of the most important things to remember is that a healthy and active office is much more than fitness. A proper diet is extremely important and unfortunately often forgotten amidst the hecticness of work and life. If it’s in your budget, some offices provide lunch for their employees to combat the temptation of store bought sandwiches and junk food. Others provide their team members with a lunch budget once a week to be put towards a healthy meal. At Klipfolio we make sure our kitchen is stocked with healthy snacks and have a well equipped kitchen to encourage everyone to pack a lunch that they can keep cool in the fridge and heat up later.

Don’t wait until your office holiday party to dance with your colleagues!

Fitness doesn’t have to be all serious--you can have a lot of fun while you get active! In 2015, Perrier and Flavorpill launched Lunch Break: a one hour mid-day party that invites office dwellers to spend their lunch time dancing to famous DJs, drinking signature cocktails (in moderation of course) and enjoying surprise guest appearances. At the end, each guest leaves with a classic bagged lunch to bring back to the office! This event series that attracted people from Wall Street to the creative industries in New York is spreading to Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia and more….hopefully Canada soon, or at least we can hope! This isn’t to say you should head to the bars at lunch hour, the InTrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum’s Special Events Team gets active by implementing Friday Dance Parties in the office! You’re already on your computer, why not crank the music for a little?!

What do you get when you combine data nerds and fitness freaks?

As our team at Klipfolio continues to grow it’s become increasingly harder to keep up with our personal and collective fitness goals. We know that a healthy business is just as important as a healthy team, so why not keep up with both? Take a look at the Training Dashboard to learn more about how our team at Klipfolio stays active and how your office can too!

Your customers. Your employees. Your board members. Friends. Family. All of them are more enlightened than ever before. With a few clicks, they can find answers to the most tangible questions.

The world is going digital. The internet is making everything more transparent. From intangible to tangible. That’s what we are getting used to.

You see it everywhere. Uber will tell you how the driver who is picking you up normally performs. Airbnb tracks your apartment and your ability to behave when staying with others. On Upwork, they can tell you how the app developer did the last time he built something. And so it continues. How is that movie? Let’s check IMDB. How is that restaurant? Let’s check it on Yelp. We are getting used to transparency everywhere.

This comme il faut has widespread consequences.

Below, I will highlight a few as I see them before offering you some tangible advice on how you can begin your own transparency revolution.

Employee retention

Even now, some businesses and leaders do not default to transparency. Some for lack of understanding of its importance. Others for not having realized how easy sharing data has become these days.

This holds a potential risk for you as a company.

As your employees get increasingly used to having access to most information in most instances, they will expect this from their workplace as well. Companies who neglect to embrace this will potentially see a decrease in employee motivation and a connected increase in employees leaving the company.

Make your decisions data-driven

Try. Measure. Rethink. Repeat. More than ever, businesses have an opportunity to track and learn from their actions, so it would be a vast mistake not to do so. Build your ideas on gut feeling and passion, make decisions on data.

It’s everywhere these days, data. You should proactively exploit this potential. However, it must be done carefully. Too much information can be demotivating and the wrong data can be misleading. What you focus your teams on must be chosen carefully. The marketing team needs one set of data. Customer service, another. Developers, a third, and your sales staff, a fourth. What’s most important is that you focus the teams on what’s core to the overall strategy of your company.

Knowing the score is important

Moving a company in the right direction is a result of a lot of people's individual action. In recent years, OKRs (objectives and key results) have been a popular management tool, especially amongst tech companies, to ensure this.

Objectives are what you want to accomplish and are aspirational. Key Results, on the other hand, are concrete and specific. They describe how you will accomplish an objective, as well as measure whether you accomplished the objective or not.

To increase your employees’ motivation is to achieve these key results, both at an individual level, but also in the name of friendly competition within the team. Displaying these key results transparently, instantly, and continuously is also a great way to hold people accountable. Who is performing well? Who could improve their performance? It should not be a secret. It’s the truth and it should be disclosed and talked about.

How to take the first steps towards transparency

Luckily, it doesn’t have to be so hard to act more transparent. It can actually be quite easy and you can start today. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Create a free trial with Klipfolio
2. Sign up for a workshop to learn how to build your own dashboards in Klipfolio
3. Purchase Airtame to display your dashboards on monitors around your office
4. Follow the simple step by step guide to set up your Airtame in minutes

About Airtame

Airtame is a small wireless HDMI device that plugs into the HDMI port of any screen or projector. Unlike other wireless HDMI devices, nothing is plugged into your computer or smartphone. Simply download our app and stream your content to the screen from any major computer platform, tablet, or smartphone. When you connect it to a WiFi network, everyone can connect to the Airtame too. We think that’s pretty cool.

And when no one is streaming to the TV, you can set the default display to show a website or dashboard (like Klipfolio) for something functional, like sales numbers, or just to show something easy on the eyes, like your company logo. But that’s just what it does now. We have a very ambitious plan for a wireless future.

Learn how easy it is to track your data now

I sometimes hear people debate the meaning of basic concepts like monthly recurring revenue, churn rate or conversion rate.

As far as I am concerned, there is no debate possible. Concepts like these have very clear meanings – particularly for software-as-a-service companies.

I want to review and explain five fundamentals we use at Klipfolio to understand how we are doing. They can be applied to any SaaS business.

Let’s start by limiting ourselves and focus only on growth as opposed to efficiency. By doing this, there are really only two fundamental values we need to know.

The first is the number of accounts; the second is recurring revenue. Together, these figures tell us how many customers we have and how much they pay us on a recurring basis.

These two bits of information are the fundamental building blocks necessary to understand how a growth-oriented company like ours is doing. You should know these numbers in your sleep.

The number of accounts is straightforward: It’s the number of customers you have – the sum of existing accounts and accounts gained, minus cancellations.

Recurring revenue is the money generated on a regular basis by the customers who have signed up for your service. It’s usually reported as either monthly recurring revenue (MRR) or annual recurring revenue (ARR). I’ve found the SaaS or startup community talks in MRR, while the financial world leans towards ARR, which can be easier to associate with annual revenue numbers.

There are only four things that can happen to your recurring revenue: you get new MRR from brand new accounts; existing accounts upgrade and pay you more MRR; they downgrade and pay you less; or they cancel altogether.

Both of these basic building blocks - accounts and recurring revenue - can be looked at over time (for example, we added 10 new accounts today but lost two for a total increase of eight), or in their totality, as in ‘We have a total of 5,000 accounts as of today.

Now that these two basic values are locked in stone, we can move on to understanding how the business is growing.

We’ve identified three metrics that are crucial to understanding what’s happening with our accounts and recurring revenue:

1. Recurring revenue growth rate
2. Churn rate for both number of accounts and recurring revenue
3. Net recurring revenue retention

Recurring revenue growth rate measures velocity, by taking the net increase in the amount of money we take in from subscriptions each month/year (New + Upgrades - Downgrades - Cancellations) and dividing this by your total recurring revenue at the beginning of the month or year. This tells us how quickly we are growing and what kind of a growth curve we’re on.

The bigger you get, the harder it is to grow (doubling $50K MRR is very different from doubling $500K MRR). I’ve heard it said that a company’s recurring revenue growth rate should go like this over its first five years of operation: Triple, triple, triple; double, double. (Sounds like an order at Tim Hortons…)

Example: 6.5% Month-over-Month MRR Growth, or 110% YoY MRR Growth

Churn rate is the rate at which you lose customers. A subscription service can lose customers very easily, and it can be bad news if you lose even a small number of customers regularly. With a monthly account churn rate as low as 4%, you’ve lost half your business within a year.

This is one of those metrics that will catch up with you as your base grows and can, in the worst of cases, mean that you’re losing more customers than you are able to win.

Churn rate needs to be calculated both for accounts and for recurring revenue. And by the way, churn rate is often also expressed as retention rate - which is simply how many customers you retain versus how many you lose.

Example: 2.4% monthly account churn or 14.7% annual account churn

Example: 1.9% monthly MRR churn or 9.2% annual MRR churn

The final metric is net recurring revenue retention (usually just called net revenue retention or dollar revenue retention). It’s a bit more complex, but basically it’s a way to measure whether your base revenue is growing. Again, we measure it over a time period – a month or a year – and it is the total change in recurring revenue from your existing customers with upgrades, downgrades and cancellations factored in. The best-in-class companies have a model where upgrades from existing customers outpaces downgrades and cancellations. Do that, and growth will be much easier.

Example: 100.5% monthly net revenue retention or 130% annual net revenue retention.

The SaaS model is relatively new, so it’s perhaps understandable that many people don’t easily grasp how it works. We’re not like a clothing store that sells you a sweater and may never see you again; we’re more like a newspaper that sells you a renewable subscription. We want to retain customers, and grow our base. And the fundamental metrics explain how we keep track of how we’re doing.

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.

We had a chance to test out the Airtame in our own offices. Our marketing team used the Airtame on our wallboard to stream our Marketing Performance Dashboard. But before we talk about our own experience, we’ll give you a little background info on Airtame.

What is Airtame?

Airtame is a small wireless HDMI device that plugs into the HDMI port of any screen or projector. It’s used to stream data from your device to a screen or monitor. What’s really unique about Airtame, unlike other wireless HDMI devices, is the fact that nothing has to be plugged into your computer or smartphone. All you have to do after connecting the device is download the Airtame app and stream your content to the screen from any major computer platform, tablet, or smartphone. Airtame is wireless HDMI streaming for dashboards, meeting rooms, and classrooms.

What we thought of Airtame

Let’s just start by saying we were hooked.. Wireless streaming for our very own dashboards? Yes please.

We started this entire process by hooking up the sleek Airtame to our very own marketing wallboard monitor. Is was simple, the Airtame was placed into the HDMI port and fit nicely against the wall. Step one, done.

After hooking up our Airtame, we followed along with the simple Airtame instructions for dashboards. Step two of the whole process is connecting the Airtame to our WiFi, just a few clicks and we were all connected. What’s really cool about the Airtame, is that you can create a new dedicated Airtame WiFi that allows guests to easily display their own screens without having to use office WiFi credentials. Step two done, piece of cake.

Last step in the process was to select the dashboard we wanted to display on our tv. We used one of our Private dashboard links to display our daily Marketing Performance Dashboard. Step three, complete. The results? Our Marketing Performance Dashboard was displayed on our wallboard and looked absolutely perfect. It was as easy as that.

Our marketing wallboard now displays our Marketing Performance Dashboard without any wires or casting from our end. This was the biggest benefit to me personally since I used to volunteer as the team’s dedicated Chromecaster. I no longer have to have a separate tab open and when I’m away in meetings, the dashboard is still up for the team to see. Even when I walk into the office in the morning, our screen is automatically displaying our Marketing dashboard. Talk about making a team data-driven! Overall, the Airtame has been a huge success. Our team is incredibly happy with the performance of the device and the fact that there is no work to be done on our side. That being said, there are a few items on our “wishlist” that would make this product even better!

Our Wishlist

1. Rotating through dashboards - Right now, we can only have one dedicated dashboard url linked to the Airtame. It would be great to have the ability to rotate through a number of marketing dashboards. Good news is the Airtame team is currently working on this function. Can’t wait to see the results!

2. Better branding control - There is a small bar that displays at the bottom of the dashboard which takes up about two inches of the dashboard. It would be great to have the choice to hide the bar. Again, the Airtame team is on top of this and is planning on releasing the feature shortly.

If you depend on your dashboards as much as we do, you understand how important it is to have visibility into your metrics at all times. The Airtame device has dramatically improved our marketing wallboard experience. If you’re interested in trying Airtame out for yourself, they are offering Klipfolio customers $100 (USD or Euro) off an Airtame.

Just click here to order your Airtame and start driving your business forward! Don’t forget to use discount code Klipfolio at checkout.

Build a knowledge-sharing culture with Lightning talks in six easy steps

It’s Friday and we are all looking forward to another Lightning talk. Mark, our CTO, and one of the new team members, Chris, are each giving a talk this week. Mark’s talk is on our data layer and some tricky parallelism and concurrency problems he’s had to solve for our platform to scale in the cloud. While Chris’s talk is on how to use the new log builder library that he’s put together to make everyone’s life easier and our logs consistent across the platform. I already know I am going to learn a lot in this one but that’s not unusual as I always learn something new in our Lightning talks.

It’s one hour later… and although we have a team lunch to go to, everyone is still engaged, asking questions and brainstorming. OMG, I learned even more than I thought I would… I am so excited that I am getting goosebumps. I mention to Mark: “this was a great talk, you should make this public and give a variation of the talk at the university to software engineering and computer science students…” and then we head out for the team lunch.

This is very typical of how things unfold every other Friday in Klipfolio’s R&D department. If you want to have your own Lightning talks and promote an engaging knowledge sharing culture, read on.

Why information sharing is important?

When a team forms and grows, it’s composed of members from a variety of educational and work backgrounds. And each person comes to the table with something different to offer. Teams, as form and grow and mature, face many challenges including:

• Sharing knowledge and information
• Finding and using similar terminology to avoid communication breakdown
• Solving the same problems over and over again (reinventing the wheel) not knowing who is the expert or who they can ask for help
• Not having a formal channel to communicate their ideas

Knowledge sharing in organizations, it’s problems and challenges, has been studied in depth, as discussed in this article in the Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences. The benefits of knowledge sharing as summed up in this paper based on numerous research studies are:

1. Fostering innovation and creativity by keeping the information flow and therefore achieving competitive advantage
2. Improved productivity and performance as well as advancement towards the mission
3. Keeping the knowledge in the organization if/when the people leave
4. Organization’s self-awareness of the knowledge residing in the organization
5. Eliminating redundant and unnecessary work.

I would also like to add the following point:

• Learning and mastery of various topics go a long way to keeping knowledge workers engaged and happy (as I discussed in another post on organizing hackathons).

It’s fair to ask if all the benefits are geared toward the organizations, what do I get out of this as an individual?

As the person who attends:

• You learn things
• You get to know people who know things you don’t know
• By hearing new ideas, you remain creative

As the person who presents:

• You will be known as an SME (Subject matter experts)
• You build credibility to become a technical leader
• You practice public speaking
• You get to bring your ideas to the table and influence the team

The problems and benefits as discussed above are especially important in fast moving environments with knowledge workers. Having a semi-formal channel for communicating what’s happening in the organization and allowing team members to share their thoughts and know-how, in addition to the usual product demos, can be very helpful for everyone. We’ve been using Lightning talks in this way and they’ve been a great for us to helping us to keep information flowing in the team.

What’s a Lightning talk?

A Lightning talk is a presentation that takes about 5 to 15 minutes with the goal of sharing insightful and clear knowledge or persuading the audience to take an action. Organizers usually combine a number of talks into 1 or 2 hour sessions on related topics, which are sometimes called a data blitz. The term was first used by Mark Jason Dominus back in 2000. The practice was used prior to that in 1977 at a Python Conference.

The other famous term for technology presentations is Tech Talk. These are usually longer taking somewhere between 45 and 90 minutes. While Tech talks are also great, they require more of a time investment from the presenters and therefore, are harder to organize and keep going especially in smaller organizations where there are fewer resources with time to commit to that kind of preparation.

Our Lightning talks journey started in early 2015 and the dev team has been holding the sessions consistently every two weeks. This has resulted in lots of great short talks and shared reference slide decks on many related topics and relevant challenges. We’ve found lighting talks to be a great method for sharing knowledge within the team in an environment where people’s main job is not presenting content and information sharing is more of a means to an end. In addition to knowledge sharing, this is a good team building activity and public presentation practice for the team members. I’m passing on the following tips based on what we’ve learned during the process. It is my hope that this will help others take advantage of our experience. following tips are what I’d like to pass on as what we’ve learned during the process to help others take advantage of our experience.

Six tips for making Lightning talks successful

1 - Give a Lightning talk on Lightning talks:

Obviously, if the concept is new for the team, introduce it by putting a short talk together as the first example. Try to use this talk to also establish some ground rules such as:

• Template for the talks: a simple slide deck will do...
• How long they should be? 5 - 15 minutes
• Expectations such as level of preparation: not much required
• Why are talks important? See above sections
• How do the talks help the teams? Ditto
• How do the talks help the individuals? Ditto

2 - Have a simple registration page

Have a central document in place, list the potential topics and the candidates for those topics to get the team excited. Make the process for registration like everything else in this process lightweight and simple. In our case, people just write their name, the topic, and the presentation date in a table and that’s it. Even if they don’t register and just show up at the session ready to present, they can always go at the end when everyone else is finished.

3 - Make it easy and lower the bar

Use every opportunity you have to emphasize that these are not formal presentations and do not require much preparation time. In addition, save the team members time by having a template and tooling for the talks, in place. Make it clear though that they don’t have to use the template if they just want to present the content they have ready to go. Team members can present what they’ve been up to during the weeks leading to the talk, if they feel the content could be useful for the team. For instance, someone can open up their code editor and show the code for how they solved a recent problem that the team was facing or show the best practices for using the new log builder…

While the Lightning talks are supposed to be 5 - 15 minutes, don’t limit yourself and the team to that timebox. There are two reasons why allowing longer talks is a good idea: 1) Some more in-depth topics that are worth sharing won’t fit in 15 minutes. 2) Some people may have a hard time communicating their message in a 5 to 15 slot. While this is a good opportunity for them to practice that skill and they should, neither they nor their team members who are eager to learn, should be penalized. Remember the goal is information and knowledge sharing, not staying true to the definition of Lightning talks. Call them Tech Talks if you are a perfectionist :) but get it done and make it super easy for people to get it done.

4 - Lead by example and find champions

First of all, be the champion in the beginning and lead by example, by giving a 5-10 minute presentation on topics that you think would be valuable for the team. This is very important to keep the blood flowing in the first few weeks and months until the Lightning talks become part of the team’s DNA.

Obviously, you cannot do it all by yourself so find other champions who are eager to share knowledge and help them give more presentations by giving them ideas in conversations and asking for their help to fill in the gaps. You’d be surprised how much people are willing to share and help with this kind of team event.

5 - Keep it going and make Lightning talks addictive

Remind people a few days before (ideally 1 week) the talks that they are coming up and ask them to sign up. If nobody jumps on the bandwagon, start reaching out to people and ask for their help. Target at least 1 or 2 talks per session. Do what you can to make the talks a regular part of your team’s activities. For instance, if you don’t have any internal team presenters, try to find an external speaker or find a few relevant short talk on youtube or a TED Talk. In other words, do what it takes to keep the idea of the Lightning talks alive. Knowledge workers quickly get addicted to learning. Trust me. After a few months, you don’t need to do push it anymore, it just happens organically.

6 - Pass the torch

When the Lightning talks are part of the team’s culture and they happen without much effort, it’s time for you to step down. You may ask why should I since I just made something great happen? Why would I step down and pass on the torch? Well, for one thing, this will free up your time to come up with other new initiatives. Also, given that you think you created something great, you may have blind spots and not see what can be improved. New people bring new perspectives and inevitably make things different, keep it interesting, and improve them along the way. This also gives other people in the team the opportunity to build up their leadership and organizational skills.

Wrap up

Information sharing is important in any workplace but it is a must have in workplaces with knowledge workers. Knowledge workers produce new insight and learn new technologies as they work on new projects. Invariably, there is value in sharing this knowledge among team members and having a platform in place for this is crucial. We’ve used Lightning talks at Klipfolio to build this platform and we’ve made it successful. Feel free to use our tips and drop us a comment. While we like to learn from each other, we also like to learn from others’ experiences, as well.

When customers sign up to use Klipfolio, they do so with every intention of being able to do so successfully.

But not every customer is successful.

And although this is close to inevitable, it does concerns us, naturally.

Our user experience team has put a lot of effort into understanding what makes for a successful customer.

After gathering a lot of hard data through interviews, surveys, and studying user behaviour within our application, we’ve been able to come up with a roadmap to customer success. We are using what we have learned to educate our own sales and support teams about the things they need to do to make sure new customers succeed.

Although I’m sharing what we’ve learned about our own application, user behaviour and successes, the same principles can be applied broadly to the early customer journey in any company like ours.

Our research has determined that there are three main pillars to customer success.

1. The first thing a new customer needs is a vision of what they expect to use Klipfolio for.

That means they have to understand what our service offers, and how it can help them.

The vision phase begins before a customer begins a trial and ends when they kick off their first project as a new customer. This means all lead generation activity needs to be working to properly educate prospects as early as possible

For us, this means that the customer has to understand that Klipfolio is best suited to monitoring business data. They need to know that they will have to dedicate time and effort to learn how to use Klipfolio. In fact, they should identify a dedicated champion in their company to work with us.

This phase is all about the prerequisites. After all, leads that are not aligned with what we have to offer are not really leads. In this phase we make sure our key features and differentiators are communicated early, so the customer knows that they can use a mix of pre-built and custom widgets, for example. An important question we often ask in this phase is about the data sources or applications they expect to hook up to Klipfolio. This is a pretty black-or-white one, and the answer has a direct impact on future success. They should also have a project in mind, with a deadline. That keeps things real.

Finally, they need to know we can help. Customers who engage with us during the vision phase are twice as likely to succeed as those who don’t.

2. The second pillar of customer success is what we call impact. Customers need to have a clear idea of how the things they do with our service add value or meaning to their business.

This phase involves implementing best practices in the period leading to the initial roll-out.

To understand impact, a business needs to involve all of its stakeholders. In our case, it needs to know what problem the dashboards are intended to solve, who the dashboards are built for, and how they will be used.

Customers benefit greatly from understanding basic dashboard principles and, right from the start, involving the people who will use them in the process of creating the dashboards. They need to be specific about what they want to measure (forget vanity metrics!) and get people into the habit of checking the dashboards frequently by refreshing the data all the time and using wallboards and mobile devices to increase visibility and access. Habit-building early in any project is very important.

One of the best ways to create impact is to use a dashboard to replace an existing monitoring or reporting process - for example, having our dashboard automate an existing process that take a lot of manual effort. We have a much higher rate of success with customers who do this.

Customers should also focus on just one dashboard first and get it right before moving on to another. That means getting feedback and using that feedback to improve things. Successful customers start small!

3. The final element of customer success involves their ability to make it happen. They have to have one or more people with the technical ability to create the dashboard, let alone access the required data.

Do they know where their data is and how to connect to it? Do they know how to write formulas? Do they know what well-formed data looks like? Do they know about data visualization? We can guide them. We can point them to webinars or we can do live chat. But evidence shows that successful customers not only have a picture of what they need, but also the ability to pull it all together.

Why do we worry so much about customer success?

We’re a subscription service. It’s easy for customers to walk away. So the onus is on us to keep customers – and to keep them happy. Customer success is critical to our growth.

Customer success, in fact, is an important factor for every SaaS (software-as-a-service) company. And every SaaS company worth its salt is putting a lot of effort into customer success. It’s really not optional any more.

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.

Consider the following situation:

We bring out a new feature, and the next day our help desk gets a panicky email from a customer who’s having a problem with it and doesn’t know what to do.

A series of email exchanges - each exchange separated by a day or so - takes place between the help desk on the one hand and the increasingly frustrated customer on the other.

The situation is not resolving. What to do?

The answer is simple, yet a lot of people never think of it. Stop emailing; instead, pick up the phone and talk to the customer.

It’s surprising how quickly customer anxiety can be calmed – and how simply problems can be solved – with a simple phone call.

In our email-based culture, we seem to have forgotten the power of human-to-human conversation, be it on the phone or face-to-face.

My experience has shown that there are times when human-to-human exchanges not only get better results, but they get those results more quickly than electronic exchanges.

And learning to recognize when you should ditch email for the sound of a voice can actually increase the speed at which you do business, and produce better results.

It’s all about using the right communications tool for the situation.

There are plenty of occasions when an email is just fine.

It’s tremendously valuable inside any company as a way of keeping employees informed and for handling routine exchanges of information.

And when you are looking for a very specific and concise piece of information, an email is just the ticket.

But if the question you want answered is open-ended or requires a back-and-forth discussion, then an email may not be your best bet.

And it’s definitely not ideal if you are trying to build a relationship with someone, develop trust, defuse tension or do damage control.

In these cases, face-to-face meetings and phone conversations will produce better results.

Face-to-face meetings, for example, are an easy way to solve office frustrations.

I’ve seen cases where employees exchange emails internally and the dialogue escalates and gets emotional. A face-to-face meeting is an almost sure-fire way to resolve any kind of frustration or tension among employees.

Why?

Because you can read each other’s body language, and you come away feeling you are both working on the problem together – as members of the same team.

There are other situations where phone calls produce great results. In fact, real conversations can speed up the resolutions process considerably.

Take sales or account management. It can take time to reach the person you want to talk to. But I’ve found that once you engage that person in a live conversation on the phone, you can get as much done in 15 minutes as you can in a week of back-and-forth emails.

The same is true in customer relations. Any time you have a frustrated customer, the instinct should be to call them. Chances are you will resolve the problem much more quickly than you would by sending emails back and forth.

An email may seem quick, but there are times when you can achieve real velocity through phone calls and face-to-face meetings.

Here is a scenario of how tools can work well together: It’s Monday afternoon here in Ottawa and I want to connect with a prospect in Europe. I send them a short email with the call to action being setting up a time to chat on Tuesday (I suggest two possible times that might work well and state that I’m able to call them. Doing this removes unnecessary back-and-forth to find a time, and removes the question of who will call who). I then use the call on Tuesday to learn more about the prospect, build trust, and move the discussion forward more efficiently. I then follow up with details or instructions that are best handled in an email.

Yet too many people are reluctant to pick up the phone. They have to be prodded to do so. Email should not be the default communications method.

It’s just one tool among several. And for best results, it’s best to pick the right tool.

At Klipfolio we use a number of tools to communicate within our four walls with employees and externally with our customers. Here is a chart I put together that ranks five common communications methods against speed, efficiency and effectiveness.

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.

I’ve never believed I should spend all my waking hours at the office. Even though I love what I do, and even though I am very passionate about my work, it’s really important to take the time to do other things.

I don’t believe for a second that time away from work is time wasted. In fact, I find doing non-work things actually makes my time at the office more productive. Pulling out of my office routine gives my mind a break. That break allows new ideas and insights to bubble to the surface, enables me to see patterns I wasn’t seeing before, and casts work problems in a new light.

Here are five non-work activities that can make you a better worker. I know, because they all work for me.

1. Get physical

Everybody who knows me knows that from March to November, I will cycle to work most days, rain or shine.

It’s a 35 to 40-minute commute each way, and for me the benefits go way beyond just exercise.

Cycling shifts my brain into a different pace or cadence. I don’t necessarily get inspired as I pedal along, but cycling give me time to let my mind wander, uninterrupted and free of office stresses. When work issues come to mind – as they often do – I find myself thinking about them in a different way. And that leads to insights.

One added benefit: When I get to the office, I feel great – energized and awake and focused.

Other people will have other passions. But I think doing something physical has payoffs at work.

2. Feed your mind

Taking the time to read, listen to podcasts and watch movies with my family also helps - in surprising ways.

And I’m not talking here about reading books on business or technology – I’m talking about anything, on any topic.

My daughters and I share a ritual. On Saturday nights, we often watch a movie at home. Recently, we saw the animated movie Inside Out. The film is an incredible study of human emotions and human interactions – and its insights are applicable to life at the office and life in general.

Anything that tells a story is useful as well – books, podcasts, newspaper articles. I found Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, for example, to be tremendously inspirational.

3. Be involved with people

My wife coaches girls’ soccer, and sometimes I help her out. I’ve had to learn how to communicate my messages clearly, motivate eight-year-olds to do the right thing, and create lessons they will listen to and remember (not an easy task).

I think those lessons can be learned through any activity that has you involved with people in your community – sitting on a condo board, for example. And they are incredibly useful at work.

4. Experiment

I love to cook, but I rarely follow a recipe. Instead, I like to experiment with what’s in the cupboard or fridge.

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But the point is, freeing my mind up to experiment reminds me that sometimes, two very unlikely ingredients can produce a dish that is both delicious and unusual. And that is something to remember at work.

(Sometimes the experiments don’t work – like the time, when I was about 10 years old and I tried to concoct a dish with chocolate and chicken noodle soup. Nothing you can do will make that combination taste good. That, too, is a lesson worth remembering.)

5. Discover

When I travel to a place I’ve never been before, I’m often stuck by the strangest things. When I first went to Disney World, for example, I was blown away by how fanatically spotless the place was. In Switzerland, I’ve found myself wondering how it was possible for the country to have thousands of trains all running on time.

Travel makes me realize that even though we do things one way at home, there is always another way to do them as well. In other words, it causes me to question assumptions and see new ways of doing things.

You don’t have to travel to a foreign country to make those kinds of discoveries. All you need is to do something you’ve never done before – like go camping, drive a stick-shift or try a new food. Many insights gained can be applied at work.

I encourage all of my employees to have interests and activities outside the office. Everyone needs life experience. The more life experiences you have, the better you will be able to understand what you do at work and how to do it better.

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.

Case Study: LiveData Enables Custom Dashboards on Mobile Devices

Here’s an excerpt of the study to get you started

Company Background: LiveData builds affordable, realtime, custom dashboards for mobile devices for a wide range of organizations. These dashboards are delivered within a week, and allow organizations to easily track their financial information and core business activities, such as daily customer churn and customer acquisition costs.

Business Challenge: LiveData wanted to deliver custom dashboards for a wide range of businesses without developing its own software – a process that would be time-consuming and cost-prohibitive. Since the business would be working with many different types of organizations, it needed to find a solution that could easily integrate data that looks very different—and comes from very different sources.

Download the LiveData Case Study To See How Klipfolio Partner Quickly Delivers Mobile Dashboards to Clients

Case Study: Iotum Gets the Pulse of the Business with Klipfolio

Here’s an excerpt of the study to get you started

Company Background: Iotum, with offices in Toronto and Los Angeles, is an international company with roots in VoIP, telecom switch development, and innovative voice and mobile services. The company provides several audio and web conferencing options for small businesses to large enterprises, individuals, and nonprofits, serving millions of users worldwide.

Business Challenge: Iotum’s sales and marketing departments were faced with a great deal of data from different sources, and that provide valuable information for different sales and marketing funnels. The types of information includes the previous day’s conversions, website signups, ratings for calls and other services, and details on telecom services versus online/webbased services. Adding to the complexity was the fact that Iotum had made several business acquisitions over the last few years –bringing even more sources of different types of data into the mix. The sales and marketing team wanted one unified view of this data.

Download the Iotum Case Study To See How Klipfolio Customer Gets the Pulse of the Business

Our mission was simple: We were to investigate the potential for Klipfolio of NetSuite, a cloud-based suite of software services used to manage a business’s operations and customer relations.

NetSuite has, among other things, a service that supports office operations such as human resources, finance, orders, inventory, shipping and billing, and another that manages customer relations by supporting sales, marketing and customer insights. These services replace spreadsheets (which are error-prone) and management programs that operate independently of each other.

Are the NetSuite services right for Klipfolio? The company will eventually decide. But whether the company implements NetSuite or any other similar service, we learned some valuable lessons about how these services work; the lessons will be of use to any company looking to bring in new business management systems.

1. Get executive buy-in

It was made very clear to us that the company’s managers have to support the implementation of business management software if the project is to succeed.

We were told that there should be at least one vice-president championing the project. If not, a company may struggle to get all departments onside.

Having a high-placed champion gives you the traction needed to push things through. The last thing you want, for example, is a cancelled or incomplete project because you couldn’t get enough time from your research and development people to make it work.

2. Look to the cloud

There’s a reason companies like NetSuite are having success with cloud-based products. A cloud-based system has a number of advantages, especially for smaller firms. You don’t have to manage servers, for example, and if the system goes down, it’s not up to you to fix the problem.

Data has also be accessed much more easily, by everyone in the firm. And because information is in the cloud, errors can be easily fixed. For example, if a missing invoice is found after month-end, it’s no problem to add it in and automatically generate an updated report.

So a cloud-based service can help a business grow without it having to build its own infrastructure. The onus is on the company you are paying.

3. Don’t let the data bog you down

“Grow big,” we were told, “but act small.”

In other words, use automated business processes to help yourself overcome growing pains, but don’t lose your agility.

In our case, we need more accurate and timely data to help make decisions as we see an increasing number of transactions, customers, employees and stakeholders. (We learned that from our recent pricing model change.)

We were warned, though, that even with a lot of solid data, it can be extremely difficult for big companies to make similar decisions because they are no longer nimble. So while automated business processes can help, they shouldn’t stop companies from being creative, innovative, and agile.

4. Start small

We were told that the clearest path to successful implementation of a business management system is to start small, usually with one department. Companies that try to do everything at once have a harder time succeeding.

Why? Because you have to establish a plan to migrate your data to the new system. That means mapping all your software requirements, business practices and processes. That is not easy to do. Once you have a workable migration plan in one department, it can be applied to others.

5. Consider the service’s partners

One thing we learned from SuiteWorld16 is that NetSuite has created its own ecosystem. In the same way there are apps designed to run with Apple products, so there are services designed to function with NetSuite. Within the expo hall, we saw 40 or 50 booths staffed by NetSuite partners that are provide add-on products, consultation services and implementation services. And not all NetSuite partners were present.

In NetSuite’s case, their partners provide services the company itself does not. So as we consider process management systems, we have to look at their whole ‘eco-system’ and not just the systems alone.

Those are the lessons we learned, but we have one other take-away from the conference – something that has particular meaning for us, but will be of interest to others.

Business management services generate data. Companies should get as much use as they can out of that data.

Klipfolio depends on data to generate dashboards. So it’s a sure bet that once we adopt an automated business process management service, we’ll be using the data the service generates to improve the way we generate our own internal dashboards.

Yan Kong is an accountant and guitar player. Patrick Begley is a business systems developer. When he’s not managing projects and integrating systems, he’s playing hockey, brewing beer and enjoying life.

I meet with our board of directors four times a year, at the end of each quarter.

It’s customary to prepare a package of information for board members in advance of each meeting.The first time I put together that package I scrambled to figure out what it should contain.

I did a lot of research, and took a lot of advice about what a board needs to know – and how it should be presented. And the feedback I am getting from our board members – who also sit on other boards – tells me we’re doing a good job of giving them the essentials.

Here are my tips on preparing a good information package for your board of directors.

1. Customize the board package for your company

As I found out, there’s a lot of material out there on what to give a board of directors. But some of it is for public boards, and some of it is for multi-billion-dollar companies. Much of what I read did not apply to Klipfolio. I needed to create a package that would suit a quickly growing company with annual revenues between $1 million and $10 million. That’s what I’m describing here.

2. Send it in advance

We send the package out four to seven business days ahead of the board meeting to give board members a chance to read and digest it. Then I call them individually to see if they have questions and to hear their initial comments. The reason: I don’t want any surprises at the board meeting and nor do the board members. If there’s a concern, I want to know about it beforehand so I can arrive prepared.

The package goes not only go to the board (which consists of me and three others) but also to members of the executive and any observers we have invited. The actual board members, however, are the ones I call in advance. Usually. I find it’s good practice to keep people in the loop who need to be in the loop, and often that means calling an observer too.

3. Make sure it’s complete

With time, I have learned that a good package for Klipfolio’s board contains the following items:

• the agenda;
• a narrative that includes an executive summary (written and signed by me), and a departmental summary that explains what’s happened during the last quarter;
• the minutes from the previous board meeting, signed by the secretary;
• a waterfall chart of our performance metrics that provides rolling budget estimates and actual figures per quarter. We include this as the first page of the “Financials” section, as it provides an easy to read overview of how we’re tracking;

An example of Waterfall reports, check out this article to learn more

• financial statements that include the quarter being discussed, comparative statements for the previous quarter, and a statement comparing the quarter to the budget;
• the cap table - a table that shows who owns shares in the company as well as any changes in ownership;
• a statutory declaration, signed by me, that declares that all items for which the directors can be personally liable, such as employee payroll and vacation time, taxes, and any environmental activities, are current and being managed properly;
• a list of any employee option grants that need to be approved or that fell back into the pool; and
• any other material as needed – a report from the compensation or the audit committee, for example.

Financials aside, the most important item on this list is the second item, the narrative.

It is the story of how we’re doing, told according to specific guidelines. I have each department prepare a one-page summary of activity over the last quarter. The summary contains performance metrics specific to that department, and answers three questions: What happened? What’s next? What are the challenges?

Having each department prepare the summary is a good way of getting them to own their own story. I then take the information from each department and prepare an executive summary that looks at the entire company from a high-level point of view.

The narrative helps educate the board – and the employees. We share it with all employees (except for material on human resources) after each board meeting. It puts everyone on the same page as to where the company is going. It also forces department heads (and me) to take some time to look at where things are headed.

The result is a picture that is more complete than any financial statement can give you. Even the best financial statement won’t tell you that a new competitor has entered your market, or that you’ve just shipped a great new feature.

All this is in advance of the meeting.

There are some important things to do at the meeting itself. Here is what works best for us.

4. Craft a board deck to focus the meeting

Our board meetings last for two hours. Everyone arrives prepared. I act as chair, and as chair I set out a five-point agenda that moves things along smoothly.

• First, with only the board and observers present, we take 15 minutes to deal with approvals. These are administrative issues that are necessary from a governance perspective. We approve the minutes of the previous meeting, options grants, compensation packages, significant budget items, financing engagements and meeting schedules.
• Next, I present an update on the company and a report on our performance to board members, observers and members of the executive team who come in at this point. This presentation is based on a deck I have prepared but not sent out in advance. It looks at highlights and challenges; key performance indicators; the status of board-level action items; financial performance and guidance; and our hiring plan and current organizational chart. This part of the meeting is all about reporting. It lasts about 45 minutes, and follows to some extent the story in the narrative.
• Next comes a discussion. For our business, it’s important to ensure we understand the competitive landscape, so we start with a short discussion on key movements, acquisitions, and financing within our market. We then invite a member of the executive to lead a deep dive on a specific topic - such as our product strategy and roadmap, a discussion on financing options or our go-to-market initiatives. Although we are often the subject matter experts, the forum is a valuable sounding board and often leads to important insights. This lasts another 45 minutes or so.
• Just before closing, we have a look at our rolling list of action items and add to it as needed.
• Then I leave and the three other board members meet in-camera to talk amongst themselves, including my performance, since as CEO I am responsible to them. I am invited back in and debrief with them. Together the action items and in-camera session last about 15 minutes.

Then we’re done and I sync up with my management team for a retrospective.

In my experience, a board meeting that turns around a free-form discussion doesn’t lend itself to building the confidence the board and the CEO need.

A board of directors works best when it and the CEO trust each other. If you put the right structure in place, present a clear package of information and create a process to elicit proper feedback, board meetings go more smoothly and more quickly, and the board will have more confidence in you and your company.

A confident and informed board of directors will help your company continue to grow.

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.

On October 10, 1492, Christopher Columbus was taken to task by angry crew members. They’d been sailing for five weeks and were frustrated and frightened. They demanded to know when they were going to reach land.

Columbus had no idea, but he put on a brave face. He lied about the distance they’d covered (it was actually further than he let on) and told them to buck up. Some historical accounts say he even promised to turn around if they didn’t reach land in three days.

Two days later, Columbus’s ships made landfall in what is now The Bahamas, and the course of history was changed.

Columbus was an entrepreneur. He had vision. But if he hadn’t persevered, he would not have succeeded.

Today’s entrepreneurs need that same stick-to-it-ness to clear the three major hurdles that keep startups from succeeding.

Facing family & friends

Family and friends are your biggest supporters – but they can also undermine you.

When you tell them of your plans, friends will shake their heads and ask: ‘Are you really sure? I don’t get it. It sounds risky.’

Your family, meanwhile, will worry about money. A spouse, a parent or an in-law is bound to suggest you’d be better off taking a nice steady job with the government or a big company.

If you believe in your venture, stick to it.

Listen to your friends. They will likely raise legitimate questions you haven’t considered. Get your head around these, and then convince them you’re on the right path.

Get your immediate family on board, particularly your spouse. Be frank about the expected financial hardship as you begin your start-up. (They all like Kraft Dinner, right?) Have a plan to deal with their fears. Make sure they know what to expect.

And don’t sugar-coat it: It’s going to be tough.

Facing financial issues

This is one huge hurdle to overcome. Best to face it head on.

Expect at least two years of financial hardship right at the start. Have savings to draw on while you build the business, and have a plan to cover your living expenses while you work at turning your dream into reality. If you have a spouse with a regular salary – great! Figure out how you and your family will be living on that salary alone. You are not likely to make any money from the business the first year, and not much the second. When we started Klipfolio, I had to dig deep into my personal savings to survive. My co-founder at one point sold his car to put food on the table.

And don’t think that your financial woes go away when you finally start earning some cash; they merely change shape. That’s because as soon as you have employees, you’ve got to worry about meeting payroll.

Smiling bravely in front of staff when you’ve just seen all the red ink in the company books is crazy hard.

But keep at it.

There usually are solutions, even if they are not ideal.

Maybe you max out your credit card one month to pay salaries. Or take on Joe jobs just to generate some income. Or ask your landlord to wait a while for payment because times are tough. We’ve done all of these things. And for those who helped us along the way, such as our landlord, I am very grateful. Eventually he was paid.

At the same time, stay realistic. If costs need to be cut and employees let go, don’t delay. And at all times - especially when you’re in the red - make sure you and your business partner are on the same page.

Facing fear

Every new business starts out in a burst of optimism; entrepreneurs are by nature an optimistic lot.

But at some point in the process, fear creeps in.

You haven’t sold as much as you’d planned. You’re having trouble meeting payroll. Your savings are dwindling. Should you call it quits?

Even in the face of fear, persevere.

Look for that little glimmer of hope – the early adopter who says your product is fantastic, for example – and dine off that hope for as long as you can.

Reset your expectations to take account of newfound realities.

Keep your eyes and ears open, but be brutally honest with yourself.

And if your product is not working, adjust it until you find your niche.

Klipfolio started out as a consumer product. When that didn’t work, we tried to reinvent ourselves as a tool sold to publishers. When that failed we targeted big companies. That generated some revenue but not the success we were looking for. So we put our service in the cloud and started targeting small and medium-sized businesses. And that’s when things took off - big time.

It takes time to succeed.

In my experience, it always takes longer than you’d planned, and the reality is much more difficult than you’d anticipated.

But if you stick to it, keep your eyes open, and surround yourself with lots of support, it will pay off.

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.

Earlier this year, we lost two employees. It was a first for us and it got me thinking: Was there a problem somewhere? Were our employees secretly unhappy?

I needed to find out. So a few weeks ago, we invited our employees to answer an anonymous survey. (See below for a list of questions we asked.)

The results were a real eye-opener, and I would encourage any small business to spend time and effort finding out what its employees really think.

Here’s how we did it – and some of the things we have changed as a result.

Design the survey to get the information you want

We wanted to measure our employees’ satisfaction and their engagement with the company. More specifically, we wanted to know how much they like working at Klipfolio, whether they respect and enjoy working with their peers and with management, and whether there are any retention issues we need to know about.

There are various standard surveys that measure different things. We studied what was out there and designed a survey to measure engagement on the one hand and retention issues on the other.

Make the survey detailed enough to give you information you can use

Although all our 26 questions were meaningful, one thing we learned from our survey was that we didn’t get quite get the granularity we wanted. Most of the questions asked employees to choose one of four possible responses to a statement:

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

But is an answer of “Agree” a positive answer, or merely slightly better than neutral? In our next survey (and we intend to do these surveys twice a year) we want to offer more nuanced choices. So we’re going to add ‘Somewhat agree’ and ‘Somewhat disagree’ to the list.

Tell staff in advance

Don’t spring a survey on staff without warning; you risk setting off alarm bells. Tell people in advance that you’re preparing a survey and explain why. In our case, we want to make Klipfolio a really great place to work - and to do so, we need to fully understand what’s working and what’s not.

Do what you can to make sure you get truthful answers

Getting people to answer truthfully can be a challenge, no matter if you’re big or small. Yet truthful answers are absolutely critical.

To encourage truthfulness, we worked hard on guaranteeing anonymity. We used Survey Monkey to administer the survey instead of paper or email. We created a Survey Monkey account separate from our corporate account just for the survey. And we informed staff that only two people would see the results – me and our head of human resources.

We also did what we could to prevent people from unwittingly revealing their identities. The only identifiable question that was asked was what department they work for, and only two of the questions were open-ended, allowing people to write in their answers.

Encourage people to take the survey

When the survey was ready, we announced it at an all-hands meeting. We reminded employees a few times, and allowed about three weeks for everyone to get to it.

Give some thought to those who didn’t fill in the survey

We got 40 responses out of a possible 52. That’s just under 80 per cent. That’s good, but nevertheless I wonder about those who didn’t answer. Were they people with real issues? Or were they co-op placements who didn’t really have anything to say? I’ll be doing what I can to increase uptake next time.

Analyze and share the results

We learned a ton of stuff. For example, we learned that there are certain things about Klipfolio we should not change. People really like the people, the culture and the openness.

We also learned that there are some things we should change - mostly around increasing communication within the company, between departments and between individuals. We can do that!

Once we were able to summarize the results, we shared them with managers and the executive team individually. Then we held four sessions where we discussed the results with staff. This last point is key - if you are going to run a survey on employee satisfaction and engagement, you need to be ready to share the results with the employees. You’ll be amazed at the amount of goodwill this creates.

Act on the results!

You can’t do a survey if you’re not prepared to act on the results. That’s why we met with the management team before meeting with staff. We wanted to make sure we had something to announce.

It wasn’t hard to follow up. When I met with the managers, they immediately began offering solutions to the issues that were flagged, so that when I met with employees I was able to tell them issues were being addressed – and what action was being taken.

For example, to improve internal communication we have started holding 15-minute talks that anybody can give and everybody can attend. And I have started to make sure all managers do weekly one-on-one meetings with employees, because the survey showed greater satisfaction among employees whose managers met with them personally every week.

The survey also revealed that a lot of ‘soft’ elements really matter. People were more satisfied, for example, if they felt their ideas were heard, if they received praise for work well done, and if they felt they had a friend inside the company.

We also realized that the responsibility for satisfaction does not rest entirely on management. An employee’s peers contribute to making work enjoyable as much as management does. The company as a whole is a community, and as a community it is collectively responsible for the wellbeing of its members.

And that, I think, was for us the biggest surprise.

I’m already looking forward to the results of our next survey.

Here are the questions we asked:

• I am proud to tell others I work for Klipfolio. 4 point scale.
• I am optimistic about the future of Klipfolio. 4 point scale.
• Senior Management seems to be doing a good job. 4 point scale.
• Allan seems to be doing a good job. 4 point scale.
• I know what Klipfolio's vision and mission are. 4 point scale.
• I know what is expected of me at work. 4 point scale.
• I can see a clear link between my work and Klipfolio's success. 4 point scale.
• My job provides me with a sense of accomplishment. 4 point scale.
• I enjoy what I do at work. 4 point scale.
• I have the tools I need to do my work. 4 point scale.
• My opinions and ideas are valued. 4 point scale.
• I am satisfied with my current salary. 4 point scale.
• I have a good friend at work. 4 point scale.
• I enjoy working with and respect my colleagues. 4 point scale.
• I enjoy working with and respect my manager. 4 point scale.
• My manager or someone at work cares about me personally. 4 point scale.
• Over the past 3 months someone has talked to me about my progress. 4 point scale.
• Over the past week, someone has praised me for my work. Yes/No
• I can picture myself being at Klipfolio a year from now. Yes/No
• I would recommend Klipfolio to a friend as a place to work. 4 point scale.
• Over the past 6 months I have had the opportunity to learn and grow. 4 point scale.
• What is the one thing that you would not change at Klipfolio? Written reply.
• If you could change one thing at Klipfolio, what would it be? Written reply.
• I am a member of the following team: Pick list.

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.

A few weeks ago I came across this great blog post on building an agile sprint planning system by Karl Hughes. Karl is the head of engineering at Packback and has spent the last several years in edtech startups. It turns out that Karl and team have integrated Klipfolio into their process helping them solve a number of problems.

It’s always great to see people work successfully with the product we are building at Klipfolio. But this case in particular is even more interesting to me personally because they are using Klipfolio to track agile software development metrics and processes - topics I am passionate about and that I deal with day-in-day-out and even write about. So I decided to reach out to Karl and do a quick interview with him. Before we get to that though, let me explain the core problem that most agile software development teams face.

Agile software teams generate too much data

Agile software development teams use many different tools for tracking their projects, running builds, managing releases, source control, code reviews, code coverage, and other quality metrics. While some of these tools are integrated and work well together, it’s often hard to see the big picture on a dashboard.

I know from personal experience at Klipfolio that we have way too much data to manage and understand. Without a way to aggregate it, finding useful nuggets would be like finding a needle in a haystack. We track close to 100 tasks at any given time in various states in our development pipeline. Each of these, whether they are being coded, reviewed, tested, prepped for the next release, or released, already interact with many different systems producing data along the way. That’s way too many data points to track without having a proper monitoring system in place. This data, if monitored and used properly, helps detect problem areas, bottlenecks and improve processes. It it’s not, at a minimum, it represents a lost opportunity to increase the efficiency of processes and at worst,it can result in project failures.

Fortunately, a tool like Klipfolio allows you mash up different sources and services on a single dashboard. Let’s hear how someone who doesn’t work for Klipfolio, but who has already written a post about this very topic.

The interview:

1) What does your agile process look like in summary? Do you use scrum or Kanban?

Karl: As we built the in-house engineering team, we started out with a Kanban process to help us get things in order and determine our throughput.

As our team gelled and the product planning and release process has gotten more predictable, we have moved to a scrum process. We aren't super-strict on all the rules - we're just a team of five - but we do use most of the standard artifacts: sprint planning, standups, demos, and retrospectives. We've used both one and two-week sprint cycles, depending on the size of the projects planned for the sprint.

Ali: That’s interesting, we use Scrumban at Klipfolio which pretty much combines Scrum and Kanban. I have concluded overtime that in the continuous delivery world having a prioritized list and a single backlog is really important. This reduces the need for sprint plannings but that’s a topic for another day :)

2) Why do you think tracking data in agile projects is important?

Karl: With any project management framework, you hope to answer two questions: "what can we do?", and "when can we do it?." I like agile because it encourages smaller pieces of work and constant re-evaluation of the process. If you don't track data though, it's very hard to know if changes you made actually improved things. We try not to rely wholly on how fast it "feels" like we're moving; we want to point to concrete metrics to back up the feelings.

Ali: I totally agree, having the data is really important. For instance by tracking our Cycle Time (CT) and time spent in each state of our pipeline including wait time, we have discovered very quickly that we have a bottleneck in our QA step. While, we had the anecdotal feeling the data helped us to step back and think more seriously about how we can solve this problem in our process.

The following sample Klip shows average Cycle Time for Critical and Major defects as well as the time spent in Code reviews and QA.

3) What are the main metrics that you track daily, weekly, and per sprint?

Karl: We keep up with a number of metrics throughout the planning and sprint process. As the leader of our engineering team, I check all of these metrics at least a few times per week:

• Number of items ready for the next sprint planning meeting
• Number of items in the current sprint's backlog
• Breakdown of points in the current sprint (backend vs. frontend, bugs, late additions, number of items stuck in QA, etc.)
• Time left in sprint vs. the number of points left (essentially a burndown)
• Number of items and points completed per team member
• Amount of time taken vs. estimated points

When you're trying to track that many metrics, you can't spend a ton of time analyzing them, but keeping up with big picture trends in your team definitely helps us make estimates on future projects.

Ali: Those are for sure good metrics to track. One of the useful metrics that we track and that kind of reflects the Kanban aspect of our process is WIP (Work in Progress) limits. Here is a live dashboard that shows an example of a WIP limit visualization.

4) What are the metrics that you track for longer term projects to make sure project is on track?

Karl: When we have a really large project, we'll usually break it up into smaller pieces, then map each of the pieces onto a sprint-by-sprint roadmap. It's dangerous to make a timeline and then force everyone into it (this encourages people to skip testing and best practices in the name of adhering to the timeline), but it does help provide a reality check by making us ask "is it even possible to get this project done by date X?"

Then, we update our timeline based on reality rather than forcing reality into an artificial timeline. We keep up with the points we complete each sprint and will adjust or remove features further down the timeline if it becomes necessary.

Ali: I really like the approach you guys are taking. Again having the data helps to set expectation and give visibility to where the project is and avoid those artificial timelines that you mentioned.

5) How often do you look at your dashboards and what actions do you take based on your observations?

Karl: We have a number of dashboards at Packback including our agile sprint tracking dashboard, and all of them are on a rotation on TVs in our office, so everyone can see how things are going at any moment.

I try to take a look at our sprint progress dashboard every day or two and if I notice something is off, I'll look more closely at our sprint board (we use Trello for this). I would love to be able to set up alerts and get emails when certain metric triggers are matched, but I haven't found a great way to do this in Klipfolio yet.

Ali: That’s a nice process you have for yourself, look at the high level aggregated data and the dig more into the root cause, if required. With respect to tiggers, that’s true Karl, while you can create indicators on visualizations (we call them Klips) to monitor and highlight certain conditions, we don’t yet at the time of writing this post support metric triggers and notifications as you call them but it’s for sure one of the items on our roadmap that we are exploring. Thanks for the feedback!

6) How has using Klipfolio dashboards helped you improve your agile process?

Karl: One of our biggest weaknesses has been on the planning process. We often enter into sprints with too much work for our frontend engineers and not enough for our backend team. Our sprint tracking dashboard on Klipfolio has helped alleviate this imbalance by showing us how much work is planned for each team in each sprint. The dashboard also helps me track our velocity as a function of number of team members, amount of work planned, etc.

Ali: That’s great! It’s good to hear that our tool has helped you guys solve a problem you were facing. In our case, I have solved a number of problems with our dashboard but one that I will leave you with is keeping on top of the number of Critical and Major defects that customers have reported. The other two related metrics that we’ve been looking at recently are number of releases and number of regression issues introduced by the releases, they are helping us to move faster while keeping an eye on quality.

7) What are the tools that you use in your development process and how do you get data out of them and into Klipfolio?

Karl: We use Trello for our sprint tracking. One of the nice things about Klipfolio is that it works with any API. Initially we used Trello's API to directly pipe sprint data into Klipfolio, but as we've built more complex dashboards, we actually created our own internal API that does some of the data manipulation before we make it available to Klipfolio. Some of this manipulation could be done in Klipfolio, but since there's no version control in the Klipfolio formulas, we decided it would be safer to do it internally.

We also have a dashboard that tracks our application health where we hooked Klipfolio up to NewRelic, Google Analytics, and our internal test coverage reports. Our sales team has also integrated with Salesforce and Google Sheets to track their progress throughout the campaign.

Ali: Wow that’s great, sounds like you guy pay a lot of attention to monitoring the pulse of your process throughout your business. Yeah, while we support many different integrations, I really like that I can push data to Klipfolio via our API it makes it easy to do some pre-processing if I need to and then push the data to Klipfolio data sources.

Wrap up:

Agile teams often customize the common methodologies and frameworks like Scrum and Kanban to their needs. However, no matter what kind of software development methodology they use and how large their teams are, they can always take advantage of monitoring the data points that are produced by their process. As Karl has nicely put it in the conversation above, you need to use metrics and monitor them if you want to move from how it “feels” to concrete “facts”.

Some of the metrics that agile teams often monitor are velocity, number of ready stories, story points per team member, WIP limits and Cycle time. While these are good examples, you should obviously not be constrained by these. epending on your process and what you’d like to improve, you can come up with other creative metrics that help you and your team better understand what’s going on, change your focus, update behaviour, and improve things.

Next steps:

Want to know more about Klipfolio and using dashboards for your software development or DevOps teams? I suggest you to read the following next:

• How Klipfolio works
• List of Integrations
• Key metrics for agile development teams
• Build and agile sprint tracking system
• Can DevOps teams have a life in the age of cloud-based software?

No one likes it when something goes wrong. But take it as a fact: It’s inevitable, and at some point, something will. A server will fail, someone will press the wrong button, or invalid information will be taken as true. And customers will notice.

Children often lie or deny when caught red-handed doing something bad. “Did you eat those cookies?” asks the parent. “No, it wasn’t me!” replies the child, despite chocolate-stained fingers and a face full of cookie crumbs.

In business, that lie-or-deny instinct can be fatal.

The best policy – in fact the only policy – is to take responsibility for whatever went wrong.

It has always been our policy to do so. And I know from experience that it pays off many times over in trust, goodwill and understanding.

Here’s our approach to handling mistakes, screw-ups and problems:

Admit something’s gone wrong

When my Internet goes out at home, I get annoyed. I get even more annoyed when I check their service status page and it shows all systems are green, even as the Twittersphere is lighting up with the same issue. However, I’d be much more understanding if there was a message on their status page admitting there’s a problem and saying they’re working on it.

So when things go wrong, put yourself in the customers’ shoes. Nip any frustration in the bud by telling them very quickly that something’s amiss and that the problem is being worked on.

Give people information

We have a protocol in place for dealing with problems, and that protocol provides for regular release of information to customers.

As quickly as possible, we put a message up on our support site. We also send out a Tweet saying we’re working to fix the problem - no matter what time, day or night.

We send out updates even when there’s nothing new to report. An update telling people we’re still working to fix the problem reassures customers. (Again, think of how you’d feel if your cable or Internet went down). The last time we had a major outage we were Tweeting every 30 minutes.

Tell people you’ve fixed it

When the problem is fixed and things are back to normal, send out an all-clear message. Otherwise, you’ll leave people wondering what’s going on.

That message should also explain what the problem was, and address any concerns that might have been raised by the situation.

Learn from your mistakes

As soon as you can after the problem, screw-up or mistake, figure out what went wrong. See what you can do to prevent it from happening again (in other words, what was the root cause and how will you fix it). Then, also assess what you did wrong in response to the mistake – and also what you did right.

Apologize and acknowledge concerns

As soon as possible, send out an apology. The apology for the mistake should be sent by a person at the right level in your association. For example, if one customer was affected in a minor way, our customer success representative responsible for them would reach out directly. But when we had a major outage last spring, it was important that the emails to our 5,000 customers come directly from me. And I replied personally to every single person who responded.

Any apology should acknowledge concerns customer might have. For example, you may need to reassure them about the security of their data. The apology should also quickly describe the problem, explain why it occurred, and talk about what you’re doing to prevent it from happening again.

A lot of our customers are like us – growing businesses. They understand the issues we face and can empathize with our situation. And when we’ve admitted to a mistake, they have responded positively.

It’s not productive to blame anyone or anything for the mistake. Even if the problems were not ultimately your fault, your customers won’t see that; they see you.

And when they see that you admitted to a screw-up, they will recognize that you are a company that takes responsibility. They will recognize your honesty. And they will respect you for it.

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.

As our business becomes more complex, I have less and less time to read the reports, long- winded emails and other written materials that regularly come across my desk.

Because of this, I value when people get to the point quickly when they send me a written document of any kind. Tell me what’s important, why I should care and whether I need to do something.

If I want more detail, I can drill down myself or ask for more information.

As I explained in a recent blog about how to prepare a killer package for your board, I try to get my own reports and briefings down to one page.

Often it’s a challenge. But with good editing and practice, it can be done.

Here are four tips when writing your next executive summary and for condensing almost anything down to one page.

1. Lead with the main message and action items

A lot of reports and briefings are organized like a mystery novel with the ‘whodunit’ coming at the end. Management reports should be just the opposite.

Put the key messages and action items up front. For example, “We need to adjust X in product Y” or “There is a new competitor in the marketplace.”

Having identified the issue, you have to establish the relevance and impact - usually in one or two bullets or sentences. For example,”Customer complaints have increased” or “We are bleeding sales this quarter.”

Finally, tell me what action needs to be taken. What are my choices? What decisions have to be made and when? And finally, state your position. Don’t leave out your recommendation.

2. Group information around the most important themes

In any presentation, it is important to identify what I call the ‘big beats’. These are the issues and data that continually stand out - the themes.

They will vary from report to report, but they are vital to content and presentation.

Organize your information around these ‘big beats’. Make them into headings that stand out.

The architecture of these headings (similar to a table of contents) should tell your story at a high level, so that someone who reads only the ‘big beats’ understands the essence of what you are saying.

The headings will help de-clutter your text which, in turn, should provide necessary detail or direct the reader to other sources if required.

3. Think graphically

To squeeze everything onto one page, you need to think about how you organize and present your information.

The reader’s eye usually goes first to the top left-hand corner of the page. So make sure your most important information appears here.

Then the eye usually scans to the right of the page and down from there. You need to provide visual guides to ensure information is consumed in a logical order.

This may require some experimentation. But try using different font sizes, colours, blocking or boxing text, highlighting text, or other graphic techniques.

One of the most successful techniques is using white space - lots of it! Giving the eye a visual breather increases the likelihood that the text will be read and understood.

4. Get over the fear of leaving something out

People provide too much information because they are afraid that they may leave out something important.

But if everything is important, then nothing is important.

If you, the subject matter expert, can’t pick out what is important, how am I supposed to do it?

Getting it down to one page shows me that you have thought about what’s important to me and our company.

If I have a question (and I usually do), I will ask. I know that there is a lot more detail behind what appears in the one-pager.

So lose the fear.

Shorter is better.

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I am taking a couple of weeks of holidays with my family, so my next blog will be towards the end of August. Have a great summer!

Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio and its president and CEO. He’s also a designer, a cyclist, a father and a resolute optimist.