Tada! Here we are, bursting into the world, fully formed. Well, okay, not really, but after months of sketching, exploring, testing, iterating, and refining in the studio, then engineering and testing real live mobile products, we're delighted to be able to share our work with you.
Over the last few weeks, we've invited users from around the world, from small companies and the Fortune 500, to try Kiwi Dials. Kiwi Dials is a new approach to measuring employee engagement and team health. We designed it with teams in mind, since if it doesn't work for them, it won't actually work for anyone.
Kiwi Dials started out as a laminated bird that measured whatever the team wrote on it. The bird's beak could point to excellent (happy, eating bugs and seeds) or terrible (legs up, dead and unhappy) or anywhere in between. Anyone on the team was allowed to move the dial whenever they felt like it, and everyone could see where the bird's beak was pointing. The Kiwi Bird was assumed to always be current, and a team could use as many of them as they liked.
What surprised us was how carefully some teams monitored the dials, and how fiercely they defended them from outside meddling. Once, when a manager moved the bird beaks into higher territory, the team abandoned the dials and posted a new set of dials in secret that only they saw. That was a long time ago. (See the original Kiwi Dial here.)
As we watched how teams used the dials, we started thinking how cool it would be to build a mobile app that everyone could use whenever and wherever they wanted, that would reflect everyone's voice rather than just the last vote, but that would preserve the same anonymity, and visibility of the original plastic birds.
The rest, as they say, is history.
We're delighted that you found us. If you're still reading, it means that you are interested in a topic that we care deeply about. We can't wait to meet you.