The customer: Meet Poka
Poka is a performance support software company built for manufacturers to help reduce training costs and improve overall equipment efficiency. With Poka’s mission to enhance manufacturers’ performance, it is no surprise that the organization began looking for its own way to improve internal efficiency!
Etienne Talbot is the Engineering Manager at Poka, responsible for front-end development. Etienne’s role is communicating with other managers, ensuring the engineering department runs smoothly, and supporting his team to work efficiently.
Overall, Etienne manages a team of 12 engineers and has close contact with those parallel to him.
It’s safe to say that collaboration and communication are a big part of the job. Etienne needed a tool that would help keep track of the many conversations he had with his team and others at the company daily.
Etienne’s challenge: Organization as a new manager
Like many new managers, Etienne found it challenging to organize all this new information about his team and direct reports. It can be impossible to know where to start when managing an entire team of people.
At first, Etienne relied on the old-fashioned pen-and-paper method to jot down talking points for upcoming one-on-ones and team meetings.
With this form of organization as a new manager, Etienne also found it difficult to be thoughtful about meetings with his direct reports and team. Since there was nowhere to store notes, feedback, progress or takeaways, meeting preparation was always improvised.
As the meetings and follow-ups piled up, Etienne needed a better solution to keep both his team and himself accountable.
Etienne’s solution: A one-stop-shop for meeting and management productivity
When Etienne first started using Fellow, it only took a few days to get used to it…
According to Etienne, it also helps when your teammates are on board to use Fellow for meetings. When other people use Fellow for every meeting, you don’t want to feel left out.
When we asked Etienne, “What are you able to do now that you were not able to do before Fellow?” his response was:
As Etienne became more familiar with Fellow, his favourite feature quickly became action items. In fact, when this interview was conducted, Etienne had just completed an action item from six months ago because it was stored and visible in Fellow!
As a manager of a team of 12, having a tool to keep track of absolutely everything helps Etienne stay more organized, allowing him to be a better leader.
Another feature that has helped Etienne and his team stay on track and organized is templates.
Fellow enables users to create meeting templates and apply them to specific meetings. Etienne has created one-on-one templates in Fellow for each of his direct reports specific to their role on the team.
Etienne mentioned that using Fellow is a behavioural change at first because it trains your brain to think about meetings differently. Once you and your team start using it together, you will never join another meeting without an agenda. No Agenda, No Attenda!
The results: Team participation, accountability and organization 🎉
Etienne reflects on his journey as a manager at Poka by explaining that:
Fellow made it easy for Etienne to be a great manager. By using a meeting management tool like Fellow, meetings became more productive and delightful for everyone, changing the landscape of how Etienne and his team work together moving forward.
