Remember your team fairly.
You are tilted toward what is recent. Your notes do not have to be. By review season you remember the last six weeks and the most emotional moment, not the year. Five reports, five years of work, one head. It does not fit.
Five reports, five timelines. Walk into every 1:1 already caught up.
Built for managers carrying several people's years at once.
If you run recurring 1:1s, write reviews for several direct reports, and want to give everyone credit for their whole year, this is for you. Notivo is the private place that whole year lives, organized by person, so the work nobody else saw is not the work you forget.
Four jobs, one private memory per person.
Each one runs on the same simple loop: capture a line, tag the person, read it back when it counts.
Type @Sarah, see everything since your last 1:1.
Every 1:1 starts from history, not a blank doc. Great questions are easy. Remembering the answers is the hard part. Capture a couple of lines after each meeting, tag the person, and your next prep is reading what is still open instead of reconstructing it.
One-on-one notes, per person →
Next 1:1 opens with "I raised the design sign-off bottleneck, here is what changed," not "how's things?"
From memory, the September feeling drives a "meets." The February line, dated, makes it "exceeds on impact."
Write reviews from a year of notes, not last week.
At review time, read the year and fill the template: pull two or three dated examples per competency, and write each rating from evidence. "Delivered strong results" becomes "Shipped the billing migration Feb to Mar, zero downtime, unblocked 3 teams." Notivo is your own record that helps you remember the whole year. It is not a guarantee of fairness and makes no decision for you.
Performance review prep → Beat recency bias in reviews →Specific feedback needs a specific dated moment.
"Be more proactive" lands as noise. "When the client escalated on the 22nd, you stayed calm and reset the scope" lands because it is real. Because every note is filed under @person with a date, your feedback is drawn from actual entries, not a recent impression.
Constructive feedback examples →Bank the moment a report stepped up.
A promotion case is a year of breadcrumbs you have to remember at exactly the wrong time. Capture the moment it happens ("Jordan ran the incident call calmly while two senior eng panicked, Mar 12. Use in promo case."), and you walk into calibration advocating with dated evidence instead of a feeling.
Manager notes, per person →Read each person's year before a review. Coming soon
What is live today: a private per-person timeline you read before any 1:1 or review, so the whole year is in front of you. A team recap layer that pulls those timelines into one period view is coming. The notes you capture now become its foundation.
Sam41 notesMaya38 notes
Jordan27 notesLive features, no waiting list.
Everything in those four jobs runs on features that work right now. The loop is the whole product: jot a line, tag a person or topic, read it back when it counts.
- Capture on the web in five seconds. A few lines after the moment. No transcribing, no new habit to force.
- Tag @people and #topics. Type @Sarah or #onboarding and the note files itself, dated.
- Per-person and #topic timelines. Each report becomes one running, dated story you can read end to end.
- Search and export anytime. Find any name or topic across every report; take your notes with you.
- Private by default, on secured infrastructure. Account-scoped notes. You decide what is ever shared.
A notebook, not a tracker.
Give everyone credit for the whole year.
Notivo captures your observations as a manager so you can support and guide your team. It is not a way to watch people. The point is to remember fairly, not to keep score.
A few things managers ask first.
Is it OK to keep private notes on the people I manage?
Yes. Keeping your own notes on your reports is normal and is for your recall, the same way you would jot anything in a notes app. What you write is yours: a memory aid, not an HR record and not a decision. Notivo is private by default and account-scoped, so you choose what is ever shared.
How does Notivo help me run better 1:1s?
You capture a couple of lines after each 1:1 and tag the person with @name. The note files into that person timeline, dated. Before the next 1:1 you type the name and read what happened last time, what is still open, and your coaching note. Prep becomes reading, not remembering.
Can this make my performance reviews less recency-biased?
It helps. When you capture short dated notes per person all year, January wins stay visible in December. At review time you read the whole period and tie each rating to a logged, dated moment instead of leaning on the last six weeks. Notivo is your own record, not a guarantee of fairness or a decision-maker.
Is this surveillance or employee tracking software?
No. Notivo is a private notebook for your own use, not a tracker. It captures your observations as a manager so you can support your team and remember the whole year fairly. It makes no employment decisions and is not HR software.
Start with one note.
One person, one line, today. By review season you will have the whole year instead of the last six weeks.