How Amplitude delivers personalized 1:1 coaching to every manager – in the flow of work

With Kona, Amplitude was able to turn concepts from their manager training program into personalized, bite-sized coaching moments delivered in Slack after managers’ meetings. They picked Kona because it effortlessly integrated with their internal content library and tech stack, including Slack and Zoom. Kona saved managers up to 1.5 hours/direct report/week, led to less HRBP involvement, and gave managers real-time coaching in line with Amplitude’s management style. Kona enabled Amplitude to reinforce manager training at scale while continuing to develop their leaders.

The Challenge: Coaching 170 managers in their workflow, without additional headcount

“With over 700 employees, we need strong managers to communicate our vision and ensure teams feel invested in it. We found that a learning program is great–– people enjoy it when they go through the experience and they take a lot away from it. But as time goes on, it becomes harder to recall the concepts they learned during that experience. There needs to be more ways  to reinforce key values and  help managers apply those learnings to their day-to-day, real-life situations. Kona is a great tool to work alongside managers to do that.”
‍– Aniya Grimm, Head of Talent Success at Amplitude

Amplitude (NASDAQ: AMPL) is a leader in the digital analytics space. Having gone from zero to IPO in 9 years, their culture of innovation stems from having world-class talent and leaders to guide the way. Manager development is therefore a top priority for the Talent Success (Learning and Development) team, led by Aniya Grimm, Head of Talent Success. In 2023, Aniya and her team developed Managing the Amplitude Way (MtAW), a two-day in-person program to align manager expectations and drive a continuous feedback culture. With a 96% NPS rating, managers loved the training, and were hungry for tools to continue reinforcing the values they learned in a scalable way.

However, training is most impactful when it’s ongoing. The Talent Success team was excited to find a solution that could help managers continue to reinforce new learnings in a self-serve way, as well as provide feedback and career coaching, so that they could better scale training programs. With Kona, the team had ongoing support to extend the impact of training experiences.

Why Amplitude chose Kona

Amplitude needed a way to incorporate MtAW’s takeaways into a manager’s day-to-day workflow for their 170 managers. Here’s how Aniya went about deciding between the options:

“In our search, we looked at a lot of different tools. We looked at content libraries, e-learning, and leadership chatbots. It ultimately came down to the question, ‘Where are we going to be able to help our managers the most?’ The fact that Kona was integrated into Slack, Google Calendar, and Zoom was really effective because those were existing tools in our ecosystem. Our managers are busy, so we want to save them from having to spend a lot of time figuring out new tech. They just need to be able to use it in the current system of tools they have. That was the first thing.
The second thing was the ability for Kona to take in our information and operate as an extension of our People team. The fact that it was already trained on various leadership frameworks was a huge plus. We were also able to easily insert and upload our own documents. When we tested the functionality, each member of our People team was impressed—from HRBPs to Employee Relations – by how well Kona understood the nuances that were being thrown at it.”
– Aniya Grimm, Head of Talent Success at Amplitude

Managing with Kona: Real-time coaching and support, personalized to each manager

Amplitude piloted Kona with a group of around 20 managers, with managers engaging with  coaching and enablement in the flow of work three times per week on average. Many shared that they enjoyed the tool, especially the AI-powered support and coaching.

“I use Kona constantly! I love the reminders it sends of upcoming 1:1s, the agenda prep with questions, the feedback prompts, and the real-time meeting feedback. It saves time prepping for 1:1s and searching the web for tips on handling situations, as well as provides creative ways to give difficult feedback.”
– Manager, Amplitude

Amplitude added Kona to Slack and managers began connecting their Google Calendars to add Kona to their 1:1 meetings. Kona helped managers prepare and review their meetings, take notes, and get real-time coaching all based on the “Amplitude” way.  

“Kona saves me at least 45 minutes to 1.5 hours every week, especially when I need to prepare for difficult conversations. I appreciate having an expert at my fingertips before one on ones to help me tackle growth challenges with team members, provide constructive feedback, and shape talking points for agendas.”   

Kona not only saved managers time, it also helped them keep Amplitude’s expectations and learnings top of mind. Amplitude’s Talent Success team loved how Kona reinforced the skills from Managing the Amplitude Way at scale and kept relevant frameworks and documentation top of mind with helpful takeaways.

“This type of coaching is something you only get in manager trainings, and those are difficult to make time for. This type of tool offers me real-time feedback that I can apply every day as a manager."
– Manager, Amplitude

Becoming a manager comes with a giant learning curve, and Kona was a game-changer for newer managers who often didn’t know who to turn to. When managers have questions, they can DM Kona in Slack and get instant answers. They can also identify blindspots with Kona’s continuous meeting coaching and reporting.

“My first year as a manager was the hardest, and I had a lot to learn. I would’ve loved to have an easy-to-use guide like Kona that could’ve helped me figure things out.”
– Manager, Amplitude

Kona’s Impact: A tool to help Ampliteers manage the Amplitude way

Kona provided a win-win solution for managers and L&D. People managers got an assistant that saved them hours per week on meeting preparation and follow-up. L&D leaders could rest easy knowing skill-improvement was on autopilot, and busy managers were improving with bite-sized coaching after every meeting.

“Kona helps ensure that managers are operating at a high level and have our resources at their fingertips. There are processes and expectations that we need our managers to follow, and Kona helps reinforce that. I'm trusting of Kona because it understands our context and our culture based on the documents that we're continuing to upload into the system. It feels like it's just an extension of our People team. There are always going to be managers who will want more, and we want to be able to provide more to them. Kona gives us that ability.”

This also translated to extra time savings for HR Business Partners and more effective manager enablement.

“When I think about the amount of time spent––by myself and my team and HR business partners over the last couple years––building scripts, talk tracks, coaching managers on these types of [difficult] conversations, this struck me immediately as a huge time saver and very cool.”
– Senior HRBP, Amplitude

Looking to the future, continued Kona usage translates to even more effective managers and game-changing analytics for essential People programs. Kona provides anonymized, privacy-conscious data that Amplitude’s People team can use to help inform their strategic decisions and investments.

“The anonymized manager effectiveness data that comes from Kona—where managers are asking questions or where they’re getting stuck in their meetings—is really helpful for us. It ensures that we're meeting and delivering on business needs.”
‍– Aniya Grimm, Head of Talent Success at Amplitude

Amplitude has already been embedding Kona’s AI into its performance review and engagement survey process, saving managers time and improving the quality of these programs. The end result is manager enablement without the added headcount and happier teams overall.

"The Performance Review Wizard is amazing 🎉! Very simple and easy to follow. I added a few notes on the wizard regarding my direct report's performance. With a click of a button, it generated a very professional, clear and concise summary, for each of the Performance Evaluation questions. So cool! Thank you so much, Kona Team! You have simplified the performance review cycle and have made the process less daunting 👏. I really appreciate it!"
– Carlota Canilao, Payroll Manager

“We’re writing Kona into our People strategy. When you come into a manager role, whether it's externally or you've been converted from an IC, there's so many things that you need to learn. Here's Kona to help you navigate this at the beginning of your tenure as a manager so you can be the most effective leader right out of the gate.”
– Aniya Grimm, Head of Talent Success

Ready to give your managers support in the flow of work?