You've just logged into Strety for the first time, you're pumped - finally a tool that will help your organization implement & run Pinnacle more effectively, efficiently, and with focus - and you see this screen. Now what?

Whether you are new to Pinnacle or you've never used a system to manage it, this guide will walk you though our recommendations on how to approach setting-up Strety the right way, the first time, so you can implement and roll-out Strety to your team in no time

When implementing any new SaaS tool, it's best to start with a pilot or testing team then scale-up after a few meeting cycles. Typically this will be your Leadership team but it can be any group that likes to influence process and will provide quality feedback

By default, there will be a Leadership team already created in your account. You can use that team if your pilot team is made up of leadership members or you can create a new team for this purpose.

If you're new-ish to Pinnacle structure, we recommend creating a new team for this purpose. Know you can always re-assign any items you add to a real team down the road - this just creates a clean & clear-cut partition between real and test teams as you get familiar

If you opt for the test team route, create your test team & add your test team members

Once we have set-up our pilot or test team, it's time to populate it with information and data as we begin to build towards that first Weekly Tactical meeting. From your pilot or test team's home page, click into any of the tools and create the first Rocks, Scoreboard Metrics, Action Item, Announcement, and Topics

Once everything has been added, click back to your pilot or test team overview page to see how everything looks

With your data added, some of you may be ready to run your first Weekly Tactical. However, there are a few more Strety features to call-out in order to make Strety an interoperable part of your tool stack

Strety integrates where your work happens. That means Microsoft Teams, Planner, Connectwise, Autotask, and Halo (and more on the way). In order to truly take advantage of all Strety has to offer, we recommend integrating before you begin to run your meetings

If your organization lives in MS Teams, we encourage you to use the Strety App in Teams - no need for another silo'd tool. All we need is for a global admin to grant the required permissions then anyone invited to Strety will be able to use Strety within MS Teams.

For more on how, check out this article: Microsoft Permissions:

For many Action Items that originate within Strety, the work happens somewhere else. In efforts to reduce duplicative work and meet people where they actually work, we have a growing list of platforms you can create, link, and bi-directionally sync Action Items with:

The best part is when those tickets or tasks are completed within those platforms, the Action Item will automatically complete back in Strety

With data entered and integration(s) configured, you're ready to run your first Strety Weekly Tactical. Navigate to the Agendas tab from your pilot or test team page and click into the active Weekly Tactical agenda

Not all teams run Pinnacle or their Weekly Tactical meetings by the book. Strety gives you the option to set custom durations for each section, toggle on/off sections, reorder sections, and even add custom sections so you can fully control what gets discussed in the most important meeting of your week

Once you have your Weekly tactical configured how you want it, you're ready to run your first meeting! Click Start Agenda, mark who is attendance, and use the Next nav button in the top right to progress through the meeting

As you move through each section, notice the timer counting up in the left agenda pane. As the allocated time nears, the timer will turn red letting you know it's time to wrap-up that section.

At any point throughout the meeting, you're also able to create an Action Item, cascade an announcement to other teams, and take notes. Take advantage of the features during the meeting rather than after. You can also trigger a tangent alert if things start to deviate too far off track as good natured way to get everyone to refocus.

The Topics section is typically where teams spend the majority of their Weekly Tactical time. We recommend giving everyone a couple minutes to review the Topic list and vote for the topics they feel are highest priority. Everyone gets (3) votes. We show a vote counter in the top right so you know once everyone in attendance has exercised their full voting power. Once the votes are in, click the Votes column header for a quick sort and begin to tackle your topics list.

You can merge Topics, send Topics to other teams, cascade a message from an Topic, and convert short to long and long to short by clicking the 3-dot menu of any Topic. Again, do this during the meeting, not after.

We believe it's important to celebrate the wins - big and small - and resolving topics should be seen as a win. Hopefully you are able to resolve a few during your first Weekly Tactical. If you want to take your celebrations up a notch, you can customize the confetti settings from your personal profile and make it rain emojis across your screen.

You can disable confetti anytime if or when meetings require a more formal tone

The check-out page serves as both a meeting review and an opportunity for housekeeping. On it, you'll see a list of Action Items that remain open, any cascading messages that were sent out during the meeting, a rating section where everyone in attendance can provide rankings and add context, as well as option to have Strety auto-archive any resolved Topics and discussed Announcement (recommended).

Upon concluding the meeting, you'll see a meeting summary page. The summary is sent out via email to everyone on the team whether they were in attendance or not - making it easy for everyone to stay aligned on what was discussed that day.

We'll show you total meeting time, # of attendees/absentees, # of tangents, average ranking, a Topics report, an Announcement report, and an aggregated set of notes from anyone who took them throughout the meeting

When you navigate back to then pilot or test teams Agenda tab, you'll see the competed agenda in the Past Agendas section and the the current - or next - iteration of the Weekly Tactical ready in the Active Agendas section

Fixed Agendas have pre-set sections that automatically pull your team's data into them and are built to provide out-of-the-box structure for the biggest meetings of your week, quarter, and year. The following are agenda is considered fixed:

However, Fixed Agendas are still customizable. You can toggle on/off sections, change the order of the sections, and even add custom sections to your Weekly Tactical

Custom Agendas are created empty allowing you to build your meeting agenda from scratch. Meetings such as 1x1s, daily huddles, project planning, project reviews, or post-mortems are ideal use cases for custom agendas.

To setup a custom agenda, click Create Agenda from your pilot or test team's Agenda page. Give the meeting a title, toggle on the Auto Create option if this will be a recurring meeting, and even invite people from other teams to the meeting if/when applicable.

Begin to build out your meeting agenda by adding items, setting them as recurring (if desired) and attaching Rocks (common in 1x1s). Know you can add or remove items in the build-up to the actual meeting at any point after the agenda has been created

Once the agenda has been created, it will live in the Active Agenda section along with any of fixed or custom agendas currently active for that given team

1x1 meetings are between a manager and direct report and typically run on a recurring weekly or bi-weekly cadence. Agenda Items can vary from meeting to meeting, but having a dedicated time to discuss topics like professional development, personal updates, and/or any problems or issues facing the direct report is a valuable use of time for both parties.

Strety automatically creates a 1x1 agenda for any manager and direct report pairing. To establish the manger/direct report relationship, find the direct report's user page from the Users section in Adminland and assign their manager - or watch this video

Once assigned, the manager and direct report will both see the 1x1 agenda appear on their homepage and can begin to collaboratively build out the agenda for their next 1x1. Follow the same steps as above from the Custom Agenda section

Managers also gain access to the personal overview page of each direct report, allowing them to see a summary of the direct report's Rocks, 1x1s, Scoreboard Metrics, Action Items, and Reviews. This makes for great page to review ahead of any 1x1 meeting

Once you've concluded a 1x1, you'll see a historical record of all 1x1s appear from the direct report's 1x1s tab. Note that any agenda items that did not get checked-off will automatically carry-over into the next 1x1 agenda along with any topics that were designated as recurring

SaaS tools rely on accurate and up-to-date data to provide their value, Strety is no different. It's imperative that everyone - managers & direct reports - are accountable for checking-in regularly, so when it's time to meet your focus is on moving forward, not catching everyone-up.

Strety has built-in features to ensure every team member knows when to check-in and where to check-in, removing excuse-making from the equation.

From your Notification settings you can customize the day & time you receive a reminder to check-in your Rocks & Scoreboard Metrics. We default this to Monday morning, however, you can set them to remind you the morning of your week's most important Weekly Tactical

Though you may have Rocks & Metrics that are spread out across different teams within Strety, we provide one place where it all comes together - the Personal Overview Page. This is where we recommend making all your check-ins each week.

Here you see all Rocks, Scoreboard Metrics, Open Action Items, and Reviews assigned to you. Click into your Rock's Status Columns or any Scoreboard Week and provide your updates. Remember to add context, transparency is a key ingredient to improvement

If you would like to connect to discuss how to set-up & implement Strety, reach out to me at derek@strety.com and we'll get something on the calendar!