Welcome to Results
Moving into the world’s best business management platform should take less time and effort than most any other system you’ve used. Should you need it, please do not hesitate to reach out for assistance – our customer satisfaction rating is consistently over 90%.
This Getting Started Guide will tell you everything you need to know to start using RESULTS.
In this article we'll cover:
Logging In
To login:
- Go to get.results.com
- If you did not receive a welcome email, select the "Forgot password?" option
- You'll receive an email with a link, follow the link to create a new password
You’ll see your dashboard. On the left is the main navigation menu; you can collapse it to a stack of icons with the arrow button at the bottom. In the middle is the main panel where you'll see your individual goals. On the right is the Watercooler, described below.
Setting up 'My Account'
Upload Your Profile Picture
Click on "My Profile" button at the top right-hand corner and choose "Profile"
Your Time Zone & Email Notifications
Click on “More” again and choose ‘Preferences.’ Set your timezone and glance through the email notifications available; you’ll probably want to come back and select some of them after you know what they mean.
Get Your Mobile App
We’re in the App store for all major mobile operating systems, or, if you’re on your phone now, you can click the links below.
Login to the app once and it will remember you from then on.
Your One-Page Strategic Plan
While not required, creating your One-Page Strategic Plan can make it easy to explain exactly what you’re trying to accomplish as a business to your people.
Parts of it, such as the “Positioning Statement” or elevator pitch, ought to be memorized by everyone.
Other parts, such as our Core Values, appear in dropdown menus for essential team-building functions within the Meetings interface.
Even though it’s only one page long, most leaders struggle mightily to complete it. If/when you need help, we've got a Strategic Planning Certification to help you through it.
Your Teams
RESULTS is all about directing your people, and that starts by organizing their teams. To load your Team Dashboard, click on “Teams” on the right hand menu.
You’ll see the first set of teams your Product Champion created, each with it’s own heading. Under the heading you’ll see tiles representing Goals, each with it’s own name. Some of them are metrics and are measured by a Key Performance Indicator or KPI. Others are Objective and Key Results (OKRs), which are projects.
This page gives you a snapshot of your entire company and can be customized so you see the information that's most important to you. Each Goal tile will show the Goal’s name. The highlight color will let you know if the Goal is on track (Green), almost on track (Yellow), or falling behind (Red).
For OKRs, you’ll see a circle graph letting you know what percent of the project has been finished. Most OKRs have several Child Goals rolling up into them. Click on the Goal and you’ll see the Child Goals, as well as other information and related tasks, in the left hand panel.
For KPIs, you’ll see the metric. Click on one, and its details will appear in the left hand panel.
Any of the tiles may contain one or more of these icons:
Icon |
Description |
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This goal is on track |
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This goal is below target and should be discussed in your next Team or 1:1 meeting. |
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The flag indicates that the metric for this goal is input manually and hasn’t been updated in awhile and needs its owner’s attention. In addition, this goal is below your warning threshold meaning it's off target, it should be discussed in the next team or 1:1 meeting to brainstorm on how to get it back on track and should be considered a top priority. |
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This Goal has Child Goals that determine its value; to understand why it has the color it does, check the Child Goals. |
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This goal imports data from another application, like Salesforce or Google Analytics. Values refresh every three hours by default. |
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This is a team goal. To assign goals so they are only visible to individuals, take a look at our individual goals documentation. |
Creating a New Team
Your Product Champion and our Onboarding Team have already created the Teams you can see now.
To create a new team, navigate to the team dashboard and click on the "+ New Team" option at the top of the page.
To make changes to existing teams, like adding a new Manager or Team Member, go to the Teams page and click on the team name you would like to make changes to. From there you can click on the "Add Team Member" option.
If you’d like to re-order the Teams, simply drag and drop from the Teams Page.
Adding a New User
Typically you’d have your managers do this, but just in case, to add a User click on the ellipsis or 'More’ and select ‘Users’. The space to the right will fill with a list of existing users. At the top right of this space is a '+' sign. Click it, and the Create User form will appear on the right hand side of the screen. Find it here.
Each user must be assigned their Permissions. There are four, in the dropdown:
- Restricted User: Guest; they can change only things they’ve created for themselves and view their team’s goals and projects.
- User: Employees; they can change their own KPIs, OKRs and tasks, including team goals which are assigned to them.
- Team Admin: Managers; they can change their own and their Team’s world.
- Site Admin: Ultimate power; usually just you and your team.
Creating Meetings
Many RESULTS clients say that the Meetings functionality is the application’s best feature. Rather than reinvent the wheel every time you try to engage people in a meeting, now you can take advantage of two decades of consulting experience and automate the most business-critical aspect of meetings.
Click “Meetings” in the left-hand menu and then the blue “Create Meeting” button at the top right of the center panel.
“Subject” is the meeting’s title, and “Location” is often a link. “When” is the meeting start time, which is why it's important to set your timezone in 'Preferences' since this will become your default meeting time.
“Recurrence” allows you to establish a “meeting cadence” for your one-on-one’s as well as your Leadership and Team meetings. The right cadence will be different for each, but you meetings always become more effective and shorter if you hold them regularly.
To invite people, start typing their name in “Attendees.” There’s no limit.
Meetings work in RESULTS because we provide you with great agendas that support real communication and team building. You can start with one of our recommended Templates or create a custom agenda by clicking the dropdown menu and selecting 'Custom Agenda Item' and create one of your own design.
Assign each a timeframe, and notice that they stack up in the panel below. Rearrange them using the up/down arrows to the right of each element.
Before clicking 'Create' below, you might want to save this meeting as a Template. That way, the agenda will be available to others, which can give structure to your company’s overall meeting cadence.
Click 'Create,' and the Meeting appears in your calendar, and in the calendar of every person who was invited, another reason you'll want to make sure to set the correct timezone in 'Preferences'.
Running Meetings
After you’ve created a Meeting, click on it to open it in the center panel. Navigate through the meeting with the controls on the upper right.
Meetings work in RESULTS because coming prepared is easy. It’s best for you to require attendees to pre-populate their meeting notes so those in attendance they'll be engaged every moment, with little need for side-conversations.
Starting with Good News (one personal item, one business item) has a positive effect only when people have already decided what they’re going to tell. Ending with a Core Value story (related directly back to your Strategic Plan) has a great effect, too, especially when people have prepared their stories in advance.
You can imagine that Goal Reviews or Tactical Projects will also progress much more effectively when they’re pre-populated.
Work the interface during the Meeting, too. Respond to people’s posts and mark your response as a 'Comment,' 'Decision,' 'Parking Lot,' or 'Question' by means of the dropdown. The 'Parking Lot' is where you put great ideas that don’t fit into the current meeting.
You can also assign Tasks right in the Meeting interface so you and the attendee understand why the Task was created and how it fits into the company’s goals.
Understanding Goal Types
All goals are measured on a red-yellow-green scale, with red indicating a problem, yellow indicating progress, and green meaning on target. For each type, you’ll set up targets which may be due dates or thresholds, depending on the goal type, RESULTS will then automatically update the color of your goal based on where you are in relation to your target.
They key types of goals that you'll use when getting started are listed below.
Objective & Key Results (OKR)
OKRs are projects, and they measure progress within a timeframe. When they stand alone, you can manually update their progress by clicking on the ‘current value’ field within the goal and changing the percentage.
Additionally, OKR’s can be setup to have child goals. Child goals (except Link Goals) will roll-up and affect the parent goals rate of progress. You can setup child goals underneath a parent OKR by clicking on the setting icon once you save your OKR. We recommend using this option when you would like to see performance broken down by individual or are working on a project across functions where each function has specific goals that impact a larger company goal.
Detailed History or Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
Detailed History Goals allow you to set success and warning thresholds for a given KPI or datapoint, and then periodically enter it by hand or to upload it from a .csv file to track it over time. This gives you complete control over what the goal means and how progress is measured with the visibility to see trends over a month, a quarter or annually.
KPI Integration Goals
The Integrations workhorse that pulls a single data point from another application, indicates where it stands in the red-yellow-green scale, and records it to show trends.
Creating Goals
Since the entire platform makes it easy to discuss and accomplish goals, it’s also really easy to create new ones. You can create them on your Dashboard page, on any Team page, and during a Team Goal meeting. Where those goals show up and how they’re related to other goals depends on where you are when you create them and which options you choose.
Each time you create a new Goal, the same wizard appears in the right hand panel, so let’s review that functionality.
First, depending on which page you're on (Dashboard, Team's Page or in a Meeting) you'll look for the '+' option to create a new goal and then select the goal type you would like to create. Then you complete the creation of the goal as described here.
Objective & Key Results (OKR)
- Complete 'Name' and 'Due Date', both fields are required.
- ‘Describe the Key Results’ - Document the key milestones to success and the high level overview of what the Key Results of this Project will be. This is also a great place to save links to documents or other resources.
- Every OKR must be assigned to a 'Team,' even if it will be accomplished by one person, and it must be assigned a 'Goal Owner' even if it will be accomplished by a Team. This helps enforce visibility and accountability.
- The 'Scope' determines who will see the Goal on their Dashboard Page.
- If the 'Scope' is 'Team,' them everyone in the organization will see it whenever they look at the Team page.
- Set to 'Individual,' it will appear only on that person’s Me Page. Please note, however, that anyone can navigate to anyone else’s Me Page.
Detailed History or Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
To create a KPI:
- 'Name' is required but 'Due Date' is not because these goals might be tracked for long periods of time and, often, all of that history is of interest.
- 'Team' and 'Goal Owner' and 'Scope' function the same way.
Next there are some decisions you'll need to make around formatting so your data will appear correctly in the Goal:
- Format as: each time you manually input data should it appear as:
- Currency: is used for metrics that are measuring financial values such as sales or gross profit or average sale price.
- Number: is frequently used for activity numbers such as number of appointments made.
- Percentage: is frequently used for effectiveness measures when we are looking to improve performance for example profit % or review expenses vs budget.
- Goal Value Calculation: Once you’ve done that, how would you like RESULTS to calculate your goal based on the data you input?
- Average of Values: within the reset interval, e.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly should the data you enter appear as an average?
- Current Value: within the reset interval should your data appear as your last reported value?
- Sum Values: within the reset interval should your data appear as a sum?
TIP: For common use cases on goal value calculation take a look at our quick reference guide
- Reset Interval: determines when the application will return the value to zero. (Don’t worry; 'Never' is one of the options.)
- Work Days: Tell the application your work week so it will reset on a meaningful schedule.
- Reminder Interval: Tell the application how often to remind you to manually input data. A yellow flag will appear with the goal if it's out-of-date.
- Target Values
- Target: based on your goal calculation, what number do you need to hit within a reset interval?
- Warning: when do you want RESULTS to flag your goal to let you know you're off track?
GREEN = When the goal is at or above the Target for today's date
YELLOW = Below the target, but above the warning for today's target. The threshold represent's the bad target for today.
RED = The goal is off track, and is below your warning for today's date.
- Your 'Strategy' measures your progress against time. You’re either maximizing, accumulating over time, or minimizing, eliminating over time. RESULTS will automatically indicate your strategy to you based on your target values.
- Pro-rating: can only be selected if your goal has a due date. The reason is that, if selected, pro-rating will provide you with a daily target based off of the number of days you have to complete a goal by your due date.
TIP: Learn more about common use cases for pro-rating by checking out our guide to pro-rating.
KPI Integration Goal
To create a KPI Integration Goal:
- After you select a KPI Integration Goal, scroll down and you will find a list of all the Integrations you’ve set up. Click the one you want.
- The panel automatically scrolls to the bottom to show you a list of the data sets available.
- Select the metric you would like to pull from your 3rd party data source. If you don't see what you're looking for, email support@results.com.
- 'Name' is required but 'Due Date' is not because these goals might be tracked for long periods of time and, often, all of that history is of interest.
- 'Team', 'Goal Owner' and 'Scope' function the same way as described in OKR's.
- Format as will determine how your data will display, similar to how detailed history goal works.
Assigning a KPI to Your Team
Key Performance Indicators measure a metric that your Team can control completely. You wouldn't hold your team responsible for the weather, but you can certainly hold them responsible for how many phone calls they make or how many products they assemble.
That's the essence of a KPI; to become an expert, attend our KPI Workshop.
To assign one to your Team, click on "Teams" in the left hand menu. Click on the name of your Team and then the "+" in the upper right of the center panel. The Create Goal interface will appear in the right hand panel, and the goal you create will be assigned to your entire team.
Updating Your KPI's
In addition to KPI's that you assign to your team, you will likely have your own KPI's that you'll be responsible for keep up-to-date. KPI Integration goals will update automatically, however, Detailed History Goals will need to be updated by you manually. To update your KPI's you will go to your dashboard and click on your goal.
TIP: Detailed History Goals and OKR's look visually different so you can tell the difference between them on your dashboard. Detailed History Goals will appear as a circle with a number in the middle, while OKR's will appear as a half circle with a number below them.
Detailed History Goal: OKR:
Once in your KPI you will have a few different options to update your goal:
- Update your target by clicking on the grid icon and entering it into the value field
- Update your threshold by clicking on the icon which has three columns
TIP: Thresholds should only be updated using this option if you expect your target to fluctuate overtime. For example, a sales team which has a monthly target which increases month over month.
- Create a task by clicking on the '+ create task' button
- Completing or editing a task by click on the check icon or pencil icon respectively
Assigning an OKR to Your Team
Objectives and Key Results are projects. They often include several Child Goals coordinating the efforts of several people, and when they do, the Parent OKR's progress is calculated entirely from the status of its Child Goals.
Progress isn't based upon an objective measure; usually your Team Members will self-report progress relative to their part of the project.
Updating Your OKR's
Similar to the OKR's you assign to your team, it's important to keep your own project's up-to-date so the rest of your company knows where your projects are at. To update your OKR's:
- Go to your OKR Goal, remember, it will appear as a half circle icon on your dashboard
- Click on the current value field and update your percentage complete based on how far you are along in the project.
NOTE: Results will automatically calculate your daily target based on the start date and end date of the project by taking the number of days you have to complete a project and equally dividing the percentage complete required for a given day.
Additionally, you'll want to be sure to manage your tasks by:
- Completing tasks that are done by clicking on the check mark box
- Editing tasks by clicking on the pencil icon. You may need to edit tasks if they are not clear enough or if they need to be re-assigned to someone else.
- Creating new tasks as they come up.
TIP: Tasks can be created from within a goal or directly from your dashboard by clicking on the '+ New Task' option.
Communication Channels
Watercooler
The Watercooler is an open forum that builds community across your whole company. It displays in your dashboard on the right-hand side. Everyone can see it; everyone can post to it. Use it to trumpet good news, to ask everyone for input on something, or to communicate useful information.
To make sure this is as fun as social media, we give you a ton of special phrases and emoji’s to play with.
Connect
Connect lets teams and individuals form groups. It replaces email and facilitates collaboration. Access it by clicking “Connect” or the conversation icon in the left hand menu.
There are three ways to Connect.
Teams are at the top. Managers can create Teams where everyone included can communicate openly. When a team member comes to Connect, the teams they belong to will appear under this heading. Clicking on the name of the team opens the conversation in the middle of the screen.
Next are Goals. Anyone can click on the magnifying glass next to the header and see all of the Goals currently active across the entire company. Next to each of them is a star icon; clicking on it lets the user join the conversation about that goal. Click “Back” at the top of the panel, and the Goal you want to track appears beneath this header.
After that there are Groups. Click on the magnifying glass and a list of all Public groups appear in this panel. Click on the star next to one, and you’ve joined it. Or, create a new one by clicking the button at the bottom. Name it and add members by starting to type their name until they appear in the dropdown. Tab to select or click on the name. The next time those members login, they will see this Group’s name beneath this header.
Last are one-on-on conversations, starting a one-one-one conversation works the same as a group conversation. Search for the person you would like to speak with and star their name. They will now appear in you users section until you un-star them.
Notice that you have the option to make the group “Private.” If you do, then that Group won’t appear in the list when non-members click on the magnifying glass. Otherwise, it works the same.
Open a Connect forum in the middle panel to see the input field at the bottom. Notice the paperclip icon in the text box – you can attach files of almost any size to your message. To the left, notice the drop-down box. This lets you tag your message. Usually, it’s a “Comment,” which is the default. However, to alert other team members that you need help or input, you can tag it a “Question.” Conversely, if you’ve answered someone’s question or resolved an ongoing discussion, you can tag it a “Decision.”
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