How to improve team productivity by 20% with Asana

In this video, I chat with one of my former clients, David Burk, from the Electron Shop. David adopted Asana and rolled it out to his team a few months ago. I helped David to review his companies account setup and train his team on the best practices. David has experienced a 20% improvement in team productivity since making the switch to Asana.

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Hey everyone.

Welcome to this video and in this video

I'm joined by Mr. David Burk

from the Electron Shop.

Hey David. How are you doing?

Hello.

In this video I want to talk...

David and I are gonna have a bit of a chat

and I want to really learn from you David

about your journey and

your transition moving your team to Asana.

Because I know that some companies

can struggle with the transition

changing how their teams communicate,

how they manage their work.

It's not always easy to make

that transition so I'm really interested

to hear your take on

your experience with that.

So maybe to kick things off

you want to give us a bit of

background context around like

before you guys were using Asana

what did your workflow look like?

Were you using any other tools

or what were the...

how did you, tell us the story,

how did you get into Asana?

Great question.

We tried a couple of products actually.

We tried Teamwork, and we tried Trello,

and then we decided that Slack was

working really well for us so we started

managing everything through Slack.

But it got to be too much

and people were randomly

dashing off assignments

and I was unsure

if people could track whether

they were still in the queue or done.

So we took a look at Asana

and in my first review of Asana

what I liked the most was the flexibility.

It is really, really flexible.

That's a plus and a minus, because

it's a plus because it's really flexible

it's a minus because

people tend to go rogue

and use it their own way.

Yeah.

So that's how we chose it.

Yeah. Go ahead. Let's keep going.

Yes the flexibility,

so when you talk about flexibility,

it's kind of what you mean is there's

lots of different ways you can use it.

And one of the things I found is like

you don't just have to manage tasks in it

like things you can do.

You can actually use it to manage clients

or support tickets from

a customer service point of view.

Right.

Yeah. I agree it is one of those

very flexible platforms.

Yeah. I would say that also

our project management methodology

having been in the agency business

for many years,

it's very much around just basics

of getting things done by the end.

Yep.

And this idea of having a platform

that allows you to reduce everything

to a unit of work

with a person responsible

was really what we were after.

Okay.

And in your experience the other tools

that you tried, Trello,

you mentioned a few others,

they just didn't quite tick that box

in terms of making it very clear

who was responsible for what?

There were those issues and then

there were presentation issues.

The idea that in Asana

you could look at a list, calendar,

and use the advanced search,

and then save the search was just

unparalleled relative to other products.

Okay. Actually that was gonna be one of

my questions, was there any,

you mentioned the flexibility,

but was there any key feature

that really sold you on it?

Was the advanced search...

sounds like one of those?

Yeah. The advanced search absolutely.

Okay.

And regarding the transition,

moving your team to Asana,

you've got a little bit of an advantage

in that you have a smaller team

which obviously makes the transition

a bit easier to manage.

But what were the common

challenges or issues that you faced

during that transition

and then part B

if you want to answer that as well as

then how did you manage those

how did you iron out those flaws?

I think a lot of it is very common

change management issues.

Number one,

broadcasting early and often that

in 30 days we're changing.

Right.

Every day for those 30 days.

What are we changing, too.

We're changing to Asana.

You might want to check it out.

Letting people do it on their terms.

And then, as you know, we hired up,

and that was really good

I am fond of saying

when you're in uncharted territory,

hire a guide.

It's worth it. Right?

Local knowledge is worth a lot.

So for very effective investment

basically Paul, you provided us

with a framework and a methodology.

I took your framework and methodology

and then I drafted several documents.

The two most important of those documents.

First of all, you trained us,

we taped that training,

any new employee that comes in

watches a one-hour training.

Mm-huh.

Number two,

I did a document called

Using Asana the Electron Shop Way

and that covers all the idiosyncrasies

of how we use it.

And then the third document was

the File Naming System at the Electron Shop

Every file has prepended a client name

and has date in a certain format

at the end of the file name,

and then a version number.

Gets complicated,

but the version number has client's themes

and then internal rips.

So 1.1 would be clients of 1.0

we internally rip to 1.1.

And this really helps us

track the most recent file.

That's really interesting.

I want to back up a little

something you said at the beginning.

You said you had like this.

This definitive start date,

in 30 days, we're using Asana.

What did you do during the transition

we using it a little bit

and it was kind of you were

trying to pull people into it?

Why did you choose, how did that look,

and why did you choose to do it

that way instead of just saying

right, starting today we're doing it?

Talk me through that a little bit more.

I got the free version,

which is wonderful for teams under 15,

and I pulled people in one by one,

and I also did demos once a week just

we were on a production call or something

and I would say, let me show you something

I found this interesting thing.

Remember also that

like you Paul I'm interested in

productivity and efficiency.

So I spent a lot of time in the system

experimenting with my partner. Right?

Just the two of us

assigning tasks to each other

starting to play

with all the various systems.

You know.

We figured out sections on our own

but that was not easy to find.

Okay. That's really interesting

because I think from the experiences

I've had working with different companies

as well as companies I've been

part of where we've used Asana

there's been that almost like

that communication element that

you've said to your team like

guys, we're using this in 30 days

maybe hasn't been so clear

and it's just like you soft roll it out

and you start today

and try and get people using it

and then when people don't fully adopt it

because it's new and it's scary

and it challenges the way they work,

it fizzles out, and maybe

the adoption isn't as successful because

that clear expectation wasn't made.

But it sounds like in your case

you made it very clear.

Guys, we're using this.

Get on the train

because it's leaving soon,

which sounds like it worked very well.

That's right, it did.

And I'll tell you one other thing.

I started basically

putting people in the system

letting them pool around, and I also said

starting on this date

if you send me something via email

I'm not gonna answer.

Okay. And how did that play out?

Were people pretty good getting into Asana

or did you still get a few emails?

It took about a month.

A month.

You know we also use Slack.

So Slack and email really confused

how do we use these things

that's one of the things that's in

How Do We Use Asana the Electron Shop Way.

Yeah.

And so I started delineating

Asana is the system of record.

Slack is for checking in.

Email is for things with clients.

That's it.

Okay. I want to recap

because that's really important

and actually you addressed something

that I think a lot of people

get hung up about is

how does this fit in.

There's so many tools now

if someone emails me or Slack

where do I check

for these points of communication.

And I think which sounds like

what you've done really well is

have clear divisions of what goes where.

You said email is for clients only,

pretty much external communication?

Correct.

Slack it or Asana it,

can you talk to me,

do you do all you communication in Asana

and just informal communication in Slack

or how do the two work there?

All communication in Asana

relevant to tasks.

Right.

Slack,

what we do is it's a sort of thing like

I'm on the phone,

can you tell me this number

or sorry I forgot where this file was

it's not in Asana

can you point me at that file?

That kind of thing.

It's just for brief checking.

It's got to be like a 30-second thing.

My rule is...

What we're trying to do is

get things down to units of work

that take two to five minutes.

Right? Slack is a 30-second tool.

Mm-hm. That's really good.

And I think that's

a really good way to divide it.

Look, if there's any communication

that needs to happen about work

which internally in a team

that's probably going to be

the majority of your communication,

like 80% of your communication?

So it should live in Asana

because it's tied to tasks.

It's tied to things you need to do,

where Slack is

the informal quick communication tool

that you can use to quickly

get an answer or check in with someone.

I think that's a really good way,

really smart way to divide the two so that

you're not stuck in this transition

or this blurry area where you're not sure

did David send me that in Slack

or did he send me in Asana

you should just know.

I think a couple of other things

about that.

One is, I said that

email is for client communication, right?

external communication.

If there's a task,

if the client writes to me,

which is every day, and they say

could you please

change this, do that, fix this typo?

I take that and I put it in Slack either

as separate tasks, or one task saying

please complete fixes and then

paste the email into Asana sliced.

Because the key thing about Asana

that's wonderful is

it's all about accountability. Right?

You can't shirk it.

They're assigned a task,

and you need to either do it,

or reassign it, or get it off your plate.

Yeah. I totally agree with you.

It's very transparent like

who's keeping up and maybe because

you can just click on someone's account

and see exactly

how much they've got going on.

There's no hiding.

I think some people may even find it

a little bit scary like

oh gosh, I need to pick up my game

because everyone can see what I'm doing.

Yeah. I think it's very good.

We have a weekly production meeting

and that production meeting

consists of a budget review

which is done in Harvest.

Okay.

There we are in terms of hours

on various accounts.

The rest of the meeting is basically

all incomplete tasks in Asana.

We go to one by one and also

I have saved searches for every employee.

Incomplete tasks for tasks for so-and-so.

So when I talk to them one on one,

I can say I see that this one stuck or

maybe you have too much work to do.

There's a lot of insight that

comes from it as well.

I said it was gonna be one of my questions

which I think segues quite nicely is

what are the business problems

that you've solved with Asana?

And it sounds like that could be

one of them where

as the manager, as a leader

you can just...

it's not about calling people out

and saying you're not doing your job.

It's about as you've said like

where are you getting stuck,

how can I help you, how can I help you

move these tasks forward?

And Asana is what provides you

with that transparency.

That's right.

There's a larger issue at play I think

that's really important.

And that is engagement,

employee engagement.

So, when everybody is updating their tasks

and nothing is overdue,

people know that everybody's engaged

and everybody's doing the business and

business is as strong as the weakest link.

Yeah.

Someone is consistently letting

their tasks slight past the due date,

so every week

on during our production meeting

I also look at it,

and even before I start the meeting, I say

Okay I'm assuming everybody has updated

the due dates on the tasks.

Yeah.

It sends a big message about engagement

so accountability again is very important

and in my personal philosophy

accountability is actually

a very positive thing for organizations

because people don't like it

when someone's sitting around being lazy.

Yeah. You're totally right.

As not just the managers

but the employees as well

they feel hard done by

because hey this guy over here

he's not doing his job

and I'm working my ass off.

Yes, that's really interesting.

Were there any other significant

business problems that you solved

with Asana that you can think of?

Version control on files

so we insist that

if you update a version of a file then you

delete the one that's attached to the task

and attach the most recent one.

Right.

So it's always there.

That was a big one.

And I think this idea of

employee performance

and resource allocation

there are many indicators of that

within the system.

I would say those were the major problems.

We are probably

I'm gonna guess, 20% more efficient

in productivity because of the system,

because everybody knows

what's hanging out there

and they don't wait around for you

to tell them to do something.

There's a whole list. Right?

Yeah. Go pick something.

Yeah, that's some 20%

and that's not a small number either.

Yeah. Pretty good.

And do you...

you've touched on it a bit with

your client working things but

what kinds of work do you track in Asana?

I mean you've obviously

got the client side

that's really important in terms of

your business planning

and business project

so working on your business

rather than in your business.

Can you talk about

the different kinds of work

that you're currently tracking in Asana?

For internal projects?

Oh, just in general

like if you have to think about

or talk us through your projects,

in both internal and with clients.

What are the main things that

you're using Asana for?

It goes to the framework that we're using

so let me just talk

about that for a second.

I think that the most confusing thing

in Asana is the word, teams.

Because there is an organization,

which is the Electron Shop,

my company. Right?

Then we have teams

and our teams are organized

around clients.

We use teams as a client name

and then we have projects,

and then we have

tasks within the projects.

The reason that Asana is good for us

is because we're a digital agency,

we have multidisciplinary tasks going on.

So how do we organize

an interdisciplinary team on a project?

Right?

The types of projects that we do

and by the way Paul, when I tell you

we're gonna try out that templates

function that just came out.

Oh, great.

So that could be a website development,

could be a weekly email,

could be an integrated content calendar,

could be blog posts,

things to write,

ads, paid ads.

Really, we do a very wide range of things

and again I said Asana is very flexible.

You can pretty much track anything in it.

Let's save that in there

advertising and the right.

That's really good.

David, look, thank you so much

it's been really interesting to learn

how you're using it

and the challenges you face.

Do you have any kind of final

nuggets of advice

that you would suggest to anyone watching

like who's maybe using Asana

they're just onboarding their team

at the moment?

What would be

your couple of key bits of advice

to people getting started

in terms of how they can

just be more effective with it

or get their team using it better?

There are two.

One, you told me, which is

turn off email notifications.

Oh yeah.

But if you're gonna turn off

email notifications

then you have to follow this rule

Check your inbox every hour on the hour.

Right?

You cannot forget just let it go.

The inbox is the key starting point

to everything.

When I say that to clients

when we're working with clients

and they're adopting the system.

Check your inbox every hour on the hour.

They get much better adoption at that.

Yeah. Great tip.

I think it addresses one of

the common problems I see people facing

which is they're not sure

what am I supposed to be doing,

what am I working on right now,

where is the latest updates,

and it's that inbox and you can

really create a lot of noise and stress

for yourself by getting the emails as well

so definitely turning those off,

and then archiving those notifications

once you're done with them.

So your inbox is... really

it only contains or should only contain

the active work in progress

like comments that you're still working on

or obviously new notifications as well.

Great, thanks for the tip, David.

Thanks for having me.