Many, if not most, tech companies measure success through KPIs focused on user engagement. It makes sense - we want to know our MAU (Monthly Active Users), app retention rate and time on site. This is why companies pour enormous resources into gamification, beautiful design and a seamless user experience focused on making everything intuitive and easy to use. It is how we optimize and scale.

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On a recent train ride in Berlin, we realized that everyone we intend to serve would be much better served if we adopted a different principle, with a different (some might argue strange) set of KPIs and success metrics.

Here’s the principle we arrived at: We optimize for nudging, which can be defined as “gently encouraging someone to do something”. In our opinion, increasing a leader’s screen time with Yomento does not meet up to our standard of “doing something”. Doing something means leaving our product to show up for the people you lead and help them get better.

Following this principle, we have asked ourselves interesting questions, which we are consistently seeking better answers to. For example:

1. What is the absolute minimum amount of engagement a leader can have with Yomento to be nudged into action?

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2. How can we cut away everything that is not necessary for enabling a behavior?
Do we need five brief cards, couldn’t we do with two? Could we design better reflection questions to prompt a new leadership intention, which will be followed by new actions at work?

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3. How can we remove gamification?
Can we make Yomento so “boring” that you can’t wait to leave, while making the getting out and doing something so easy, appealing and inspiring that one can’t resist engaging in a real life leadership action?
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For us, it’s no longer about streaks, competitions, badges and unlocking content.
It’s not about activities logged, or shares and likes.

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It’s all about a minimalist approach to enable powerful leadership behaviors at work.

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