Questions about Signals

What's the difference between Signals and stack ranking?

Stack ranking orders people against one another. Signals brings together your self-assessment and perspectives from teammates and peers to help you understand your contribution and choose where to develop. The mirror score compares those perspectives with your own.

What typically goes wrong with stack ranking, and how does Signals address it?

When people compete for a position that determines their pay or prospects, there is pressure to protect their image and hold back difficult perspectives. That pressure can exist whether a superior or colleagues make the assessments.

Signals uses shared prompts and scale descriptions to collect perspectives. Comments provide context, and administrators review assessments and ask authors to clarify or revise input when needed. The numbers do not determine pay or assign people a rank. Decisions about compensation or roles require context and human judgment.

Why is the assessment scale from -5 to +5?

The scale expresses how someone's contribution compares with your expectations, from far below (-5) to far above (+5). The midpoint means "met expectations": a solid, consistent contribution.

You are expressing your own expectations. No one person's expectations have inherent priority over another's. Use the scale descriptions and specific examples to help the recipient understand your perspective.

Do people see individual responses on the -5 to +5 scale?

Once a round is published, each metric shows your self-assessment, averages from teammates and peers outside your team, and their combined average. Other people's numerical responses are shown as group averages rather than named responses. If a group contains only one response, its average is that response.

Administrators can see individual responses during review. Comments show their authors' names when published.

How much time should I expect to spend on an assessment?

In our first round, some participants spent 30–60 minutes per person. Giving specific, useful assessments takes practice, and we expect it to become easier with experience.

For each role, choose up to three strengths and three focus areas that would be useful to highlight. Leave either blank if nothing stands out.

How are assessments used?

Your collected signals help you understand your contribution and direct your development. Responses on the scale are quantitative, subjective evidence; comments are qualitative evidence. Recognition identifies strengths and focus areas in your roles.

Administrators also use assessments to identify tensions, unmet support needs, and questions about roles or workloads. These can lead to conversations about individual development and changes to how the organization works. Decisions need the context behind the signals.

Who can see my assessments?

You can view the assessments you submitted. Administrators can see individual assessments before publication as part of review. Once the round is published, each participant can see the signals about their own contribution, including attributed comments and aggregated numerical responses.

Are comments anonymous?

No. Published comments show the author's name so you can ask questions, explore different perspectives, or express appreciation. Authors are responsible for making their comments specific and useful.

What happens after a round closes?

Administrators review assessments for clarity and usefulness. They may send a follow-up asking the author to clarify or revise part of an assessment — for example, to describe a specific situation and its effects instead of making a personal judgment. After review, the round can be published so participants can see their collected signals.

What do roles describe?

A role describes a purpose, areas of ownership and accountabilities. One person can fill several roles. This lets you discuss what a role calls for and how it is being fulfilled, rather than making a judgment about the person.

Role-based recognition brings those definitions into regular use. Recognizing strengths and focus areas connects the written accountabilities with colleagues’ experience of each other’s contribution, giving people a reason to revisit and clarify them.

How does role-based recognition work?

Each role lists accountabilities. You can recognize strengths and identify focus areas against those accountabilities, making clear where someone's contribution matters and where it could develop.

Why do I assess myself first, and what does the mirror score show?

Self-assessment makes your view of your contribution explicit before you receive others' perspectives. The mirror score shows the difference between their combined average and your self-assessment for each metric. A positive difference means they assessed your contribution above your own assessment; a negative difference means they assessed it below.

Read the comments and recognition alongside the numbers. Where do others see something you missed? Where might you have different expectations or experiences to discuss?

How can I use my signals after publication?

Compare your self-assessment with the perspectives from colleagues. What contribution do you want to build on? Where are there tensions or blind spots? Ask about situations you want to understand better, then choose what you could do differently and what support would help.

Signals can give you a starting point for a 1:1 or bring a question about team practices into a retrospective. Acting on what becomes visible takes conversation and follow-through.

What if I have concerns about the process?

Contact your Signals administrators about concerns with an assessment, assignment, or how the process is being run. They can review the concern with you and follow up with the people involved.

If you are not sure who owns Signals in your organization, contact Joakim.