Aspiration, explained
Our sole focus on a positive Learner experience is what differentiates us from any would-be competitor. It is what makes Lessonly special, and it shines through in every facet of our business. If the decision you make creates a better experience for the Learner, you are making a good decision.
A Story for Illustration
I sat down with an AE in December 2015, and he asked a great question: “As we grow our feature set, how do we ensure that our software doesn’t become bloated like the competition?” The AE was clear that a big reason he loves selling Lessonly is that it works, and if we lose that distinction, it will be tough for him to keep his heart in it.
I was impressed by this question, and so grateful for his desire to only want to sell something that truly adds value to the prospect.
My answer to him was this: We ensure that any feature we build has two components:
It has been validated by users as both valuable and necessary, and,
It improves the Learner experience.
I went on to explain that building a feature in order to check a box on a prospect’s list of desired features was a surefire way to build crappy software. That approach got all those LMSs we were just talking about in the constraints they are today. But that was the old world, and that’s not the way it works anymore.
Lastly, I said, if we ensure that our feature set always ties back to a better Learner experience, we will have a firm reason to reject requests for many of the administrative features our competitors have already built—the same ones they can never take back.
For example, when an Admin asks for a feature that allows them to force a Learner to watch a video or stay on a certain section for a certain period of time before moving on, we can explain how Lessonly Lessons are built for frequency. That is, we want the Learner to come back to Lessons often, over and over again, long after their initial completion. That’s how learning happens in our ever-changing work environments; that’s how employee confidence is built.
If we ever locked down content, we would send a signal that says, “We don’t trust you to do what we need you to do,” and we would deliver an experience that discouraged the Learner from ever wanting to return to the information. Don’t believe me? Ask everybody who has ever used an LMS.
If the prospect says, “Well, that doesn’t work for me,” you can send them links to plenty of other systems that will provide that feature at the expense of a pro-Learner experience. Our investment in the Learner will win them in the long run, even if it doesn’t always win the day.
Learner first. Always.
Examples / Observations
Observation created almost 5 years agoFeaturing:Brittany H.We put learners firstWe share before we're readyWe ask clarifying questionsWe get agreementsBack-end engineerBrittany has been taking the lead on our Forced Logout acceleration (doing some discovery, determining the best approach from an architecture standpoint, story shaping, delivery, etc.). While planning and working through some discovery, she ran into some roadblocks. She gave context, asked a clear question, and provided potential solutions so folks could easily comment in hopes to gain clarity and move forward in a timely manner (see the below Slack conversations for examples). Keep up all the great work, Brittany 🎉
https://lessonly.slack.com/archives/C97TXG1PW/p1592937599264700
https://lessonly.slack.com/archives/C97TXG1PW/p1592937611265000
Observation created about 5 years agoAs of yesterday morning, Tom had "officially" been on Practice for one full day (depending on how you look at it). But the first thing he shared with us was a Datadog dashboard he created to keep an eye on the performance of some high-traffic Practice pages in the app - that way we could be proactive about dealing with performance issues rather than reactive after things blow up.
I really appreciate his care for the app and our customers, as well as the initiative we he took to put this together!
It looks great too - check it out if you're interested! https://app.datadoghq.com/dashboard/8gf-ng2-kpt/practice-performance-dashboard?from_ts=1580910018394&live=true&to_ts=1581514818394
Thanks Tom!
Observation created over 5 years agoMy main objective this quarter has been to fix bugs that leave learners unable to complete Paths (since learners completing stuff is kind of the reason we exist as a company). Of the 5 big bugs on our radar, we were only able to fix 2 before my newborn son arrived a week and a half early back in December. I fully expected the Learn squad to stay focused on their other important objectives in my absence, but Tom had other ideas. While I was out, he identified and fixed the root cause of another issue (ch36348), and had made major inroads researching the others. On my first day back yesterday when I mentioned Paths in the Learn standup, Tom smiled and said "I've got news for you on that". When we sat down together and Tom explained how he'd gotten to the bottom of several major issues and even fixed one of them (and keep in mind these are bugs that have existed for years which no one has been able to figure out), my outlook on the quarter's goal went from "Well, at least we made a dent..." to "Holy heck, we can do this!" So a big shout-out to Tom for not just working on Paths bugs while I was out, but really working on them, and making progress where no one, myself included, had been able to, to the benefit of the 100,000+ learners affected by them. 👏
Observation created over 5 years agoFeaturing:Noah B.We put learners firstWe have difficult conversationsWe ask clarifying questionsWe get agreementsWe recognize the opportunity in challengesWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe challenge ourselvesWe represent Lessonly positively in the communityWe critique, we don't complainImplementation engineerTechnical investigatorTier-2 escalation engineerNoah has been with us for a little over 6 months at this point and in that time, he's done a great job developing relationships with the rest of the company, going out of his way to help both customers and our internal folks resolve issues, and helping improve the escalation process. He's done such a great job that folks outside of our team have sent me messages about how helpful he's been. Here's the latest from someone in the company: "Noah has been killing it! He is doing an awesome job, especially with a few difficult customers lately. We appreciate him and his hard work SO VERY MUCH!!"
Thank you, Noah for your empathy, patience, and the initiative you take to help everyone do better work 🎉
Observation created over 5 years agoFeaturing:Raphael A.We put learners firstWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe put the team before ourselvesCopywritingFeature DocumenterDocumentation is vital for a software company. That is true for all aspects of our app but particularly user management. Lessonly cannot exist without learners, so the action of making it clear and easy to get users into Lessonly is important. Even though I know all of that creating documentation can be seen as the least fun aspect of software. It is more fun to build new stuff than to write in painstaking detail about the stuff you just built.
With all of that being said, it only makes what Raphael did more impressive. We recently wrapped up the development of SCIM for OneLogin. We were left with the documentation piece. I tried my best to get it started but we reached a point where we had to set the JSON user schema and I was lost. Raphael (who got involved late to the project) was able to familiarize himself with the code base and write some killer documentation (found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zaEPLM1wtiDHBth9owIG29R2c-3oYWq04jPtxvH-5P0/edit#)
This is the definition of a team player. Hopping onto a project and helping out any way you can no matter what. Raphael has always been game for these sort of things but I was reminded again by this.
Conversations about We put learners first
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