Risely is now live. Find out what it is and the backstory.

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We were busy shipping out the very first version of Risely. And the good news is that we are live now. Today, I want to share the back story behind Risely and why we designed it.

In my 17 years of career, I have worked with several managers and been a manager to many. Some of these experiences have been so enriching as a professional. I constantly reflect back to the very job and the manager I worked with. I count working under Deepak Gupta as the best experience I have had in my entire career. Thank you for everything, Deepak! Some other experiences could have been better than that. But so is life, no?

But when I started managing teams, my only reference point was my previous managers. Which were great, BTW 😎 But, I always yearned for more in team situations I hadn’t faced before. I found myself making mistakes that impacted my and my team’s performance. I could always go back to Deepak and other managers I had access to discuss how to handle those situations, but it was always tricky.

In the last five years, we have worked with 200+ managers, and one thing became clear, managers are pivotal for any organization. Managers must ensure that the team performs optimally and meets or exceeds the management’s expectations. The team and manager’s working relationship impacts the end performance of the team. But often, #managers are unaware of their blindspots and have little idea where things go wrong. They deal with different challenges with different people on the team. Bad working relationships impact the careers, health, and well-being of everyone involved.

I was interacting with a manager I was coaching in late 2021. It was our monthly catch-up, and we discussed a few situations he faced. We were about to end the call when he said, “Ashish, I wish this kind of discussion happens in real-time when I am in the middle of the day working with my team.” That’s when it hit me, and I returned to my early days as a manager. You need help and support in real time when you are in the thick of things. This is why we designed Risely.

So, what is Risely? You can think of Risley as your co-pilot for your people management issues. As a manager, you might face different challenges with different team members. Stuff like:

1) your team member is not performing as per expectations

2) you have to do frequent follow-ups with your team member

3) you find yourself doing a lot of firefighting

4) your team members find themselves in conflict situations.

5) or 30 other similar challenges. You know them. You are living them, aren’t you?

If you don’t address it, you and your team will not be able to perform at the optimal level. As a result, you will not deliver on your objectives as a team. Your mental and physical well-being will be compromised. You will spend more time on your job that you could instead spend on yourself or with your family.

Solving these challenges is vital for your professional and personal growth and well-being. But the question is, where can you go to solve them? There are many asynchronous learning modes, such as 1-1 coaching, training sessions, seminars, books, etc. But they all have limitations, and none are synchronous or adaptable to your daily activity and challenges.

So how does Risely help you? It is simple. You create an account and feed in a few details about your profile. You then go and set up your challenges. You can configure blanket challenges you face with your team, or you can customize the challenges to every individual in your team. That’s it. Risley will create your customer Learn Journey for the next three months. Once activated, Risely will send you practical and actionable tips daily at the time of your choosing. From time to time, Risely will also send you detailed toolkits for the core manager and leadership skills.

How do you know if you are improving or not? Well, first of all, you will see that as your start implementing the suggested changes, you will see a marked improvement in your working relationship with your team member in question. If you like numbers, you can take self-assessments for the relevant skills in your Learn Journey. You can also invite feedback from your team on those relevant skills if you like. Risely will guide you till you become a pro in all the core and advance people management skills. 😎

Please give it a spin here. You can try Risely for free for the first 14 days without entering your credit card. What I am most interested in is your feedback.

We are running an exciting launch offer. 🥳🥳 When you are ready to purchase a subscription, you can use the offer code “LAUNCHOFFER” to get a 50% off on all plans. We are extending an additional 20% discount for a limited time. You can use another coupon, “SPECIALOFFER” to avail of that. 🎉🎉

PS: You can use your team’s learning and development budget. Could you check with your manager or HR about its availability?

As is customary, I will not leave you without a Dilbert to put a smile on your face. 🙂