Creating a workspace

Setting one up, and the order that gets you reviewing within a week rather than after a month of design.

Setting one up, and the order that gets you reviewing within a week rather than after a month of design.

Create one

1. Create the workspace and name it for the team.
2. Add the members and the reviewers.
3. Build a short scorecard.
4. Set which conversations are reviewed.
5. Review five conversations yourself before anybody else starts.

Do step five

Reviewing five real conversations against your draft scorecard tells you more than any amount of designing. Categories that seemed clear turn out to be ambiguous, and one you did not think of turns out to matter.

Twenty minutes, and it saves rewriting the scorecard after everybody has used it.

Start with a short scorecard

Four or five categories. You can add later; removing one after people have been scored on it is harder, because their history becomes incomparable.

Involve the team

Ask the agents what they think good looks like before writing the categories. A scorecard the team helped build is accepted; one that appears fully formed is resisted, whatever is on it.

Set the review volume low

Two or three conversations per agent per month is plenty at the start. Enough to have a conversation, few enough that reviewers keep up.

Say what it is for before the first review

Coaching, not assessment. Said once at the start, believed. Said after the first low score, not believed.

See also

• Creating a scorecard
• What makes a scorecard that people accept
• Managing workspace settings