PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 29, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Koan, a leading provider of team management software, today released a new suite of functionality for organizations that use the objectives and key results (OKR) goal setting framework, marking a major step towards its mission to help teams work with purpose. Koan also announced that Portland-based Vacasa, North America’s largest vacation rental company, has embraced Koan’s Collaborative OKRs as a new customer.
OKR support is a natural evolution for Koan, whose 2018 launch promised managers a new way to build a transparent, constructive team culture. "First you need transparency," says Koan CEO Matt Tucker, "but once the team is talking, you can start that next conversation: 'Ok, what outcomes are we trying to reach? And how do we deliver them?'”
The answer? A collaborative, team-centered approach to setting goals that breaks with industry orthodoxy.
"Goals used to be something executives set once a quarter, only to fall back on hastily-assembled to-do lists in the scramble to hit sales targets,“ says Tucker. “Great leaders know that you can’t win by just telling people what to do. You have to manage to outcomes, foster transparency, and give employees autonomy to accomplish amazing things”.
Enter OKRs, a goal-setting framework pioneered at Intel and championed by Silicon Valley heavyweights Google and LinkedIn. Instead of pushing goals from the top-down, OKRs are set by individual teams that self-organize in support of the company’s objectives and then published transparently throughout the whole organization. Koan steps in to automate the process of measuring progress, keeping teams accountable and driving a robust conversation about goals and priorities.
The benefits are clear to Vacasa, the nation’s leading vacation rental manager with more than 2,500 employees around the world. “Vacasa has undergone tremendous growth over the last several years and we needed a framework and a tool to support OKR alignment and accountability across the organization,” said Vacasa founder and CEO, Eric Breon. “With Koan, we now have a single place to communicate and execute on our strategy. I can see the status of our top priorities —and more importantly, everyone else can, too.”
Koan takes a unique, collaborative approach to OKRs, balancing qualitative confidence scores alongside quantitative metrics, tying objectives to the company’s mission, vision and strategy, and keeping goals central to a team’s other work and priorities through a brief, weekly “reflection”.
As part of the launch, Koan also announced updated pricing that makes Koan accessible to organizations of all sizes, from startups through large enterprises.
About Koan
Koan drives transparency, boosts engagement, and helps leaders at every level achieve amazing results. Share your mission and vision, deliver strategic OKRs, and discover more purposeful work at www.koan.co.
About Vacasa
Vacasa is the largest vacation rental company in North America and offers property management and other real estate services directly and through licensed subsidiaries. Leveraging industry-leading technology, Vacasa maximizes revenue for homeowners and its partners, and provides unforgettable experiences for guests. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Vacasa and its subsidiaries manage a growing portfolio of more than 11,500 vacation homes in the U.S., Europe, South and Central America, and Africa. In nine years, Vacasa has grown to more than 2,500 employees, has been honored as the Oregon Better Business Bureau Large Business of the Year and was ranked ninth on the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies list. For more information, visit www.vacasa.com.