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.