Projects credited in
- What’s on the agenda? How to run effective meetings(This post was originally published by Asana: How to run effective meetings) Meetings, meetings, and more meetings. Between recurring team syncs, planning meetings, brainstorms, and project check-ins, it probably feels like your calendar is overflowing with meetings. Which it probably is. If meetings are taking up so much of your time, you must be getting a lot out of them—whether you’re leading them or participating in them—right? Unfortunately, most meetings are destined to fail. The end goa4
- One-on-one for the books: how to plan productive 1:1 meetings(This post was originally published on the Asana blog: How to plan productive 1:1 meetings) Meetings are a fact of office life. And while they may not be everyone’s favorite part of the day, with a little bit of planning, it is possible to make them productive and worthwhile for you and your teammates. One meeting type in particular can even help people feel more engaged at work: the one on one meeting. Unlike department meetings, planning meetings, or quick syncs where teams might discuss the most pressing issues of the day, week, or month, the one on one meeting agenda looks a little different. For managers and their reports, one on one meetings are dedicated time for connecting regularly on goals, building rapport, and most importantly, coaching and mentorship. One on one meetings are dedicated time for connecting regularly, building rapport, and most importantly, coaching and mentorship. The most effective 1:1s are those that are prepped ahead of time. But more often than not, work (about work) gets in the way of planning a meaningful one-on-one agenda, leading to wasted time deciding what to talk about or meandering discussions that don’t feel actionable. The good news is: planning a productive one-on-one meeting is easier than it seems. Whether you’re a manager or a report, here are few simple ways to make the most of your one-on-ones. Create a shared one on one meeting agenda One of the reasons why 1:1 meetings can feel ineffective is that there isn’t a consistent, shared space for creating and tracking agenda items. Without a designated spot for planning your agenda ahead of time (and to refer to during the meeting itself), it’s easy to veer off course. If, for instance, you’ve ever kicked off a 1:1 with a list of agenda items in your head, only to find yourself talking about cat memes 10 minutes later, you probably need a better way to prep for your 1:1 meetings. Instead, create a shared 1:1 agenda for you and your report (or manager). This makes it easy for both of you to collaborate on what to discuss. In Asana, you can set up a private meeting project for this, but whatever tool you choose to use, make sure that it’s easily accessible and editable by both 1:1 participants. “Now that I’m using Asana, my conversations and 1:1s are so much more productive because we have this shared space where we can collaborate.” – Tim Wood, Head of Product, Patreon Organize your 1:1 agenda Once you’ve created a shared space for planning and tracking your one on one meeting agenda, the next step is to add some structure. The idea here is to define a couple of high-level themes to help you organize discussion topics from one meeting to the next. Depending on the needs and preferences of you and your report, you can organize your 1:1 agenda many different ways. For example, it might be helpful to group agenda items into the following categories: Discuss this week Revisit later Roadblocks and wins Goals Action items To do this in Asana, just create sections for each theme in your meeting project:2
- New year, new ways to set your team up for success(Article originally published by Asana) From tracking goals to running better meetings, there’s no better time to create a more productive and engaging work experience for your team. Here are five ways: 1. Cracking the code: 6 steps to achieving your company goals8
- How to take back your productivity with No Meeting Wednesday( Article published originally by Asana) Meetings are a part of nearly everyone’s work life: some of us have more than others, but we all have days when we feel it’s nearly impossibleto get uninterrupted time to do work. In response to this, we created No Meeting Wednesdays (NMW): every team member knows not to schedule meetings on that day, unless absolutely necessary. It’s a simple, mindful practice but something that we’ve seen has helped our team tremendously and we think could help yours, too. Goals of NMW Give all team members a large block of time to focus on heads-down work, without having to fit it in between meetings. Allow everyone, including managers, to be ‘doers’ and ‘makers.’ Benefits Fewer disruptions means more team members can be productive. We get to check more work off our task lists than any other day of the week. Wednesdays are many Asanas’ favorite day of the week (productivity is rewarding)! Why no meetings? Managers are typically used to having a schedule-driven day and even makers’ days get filled with meetings. But unlike many companies, at Asana we want to enable managers to be makers some of the time as well, and we want everyone to be the as productive as possible. We created a schedule that ensures everybody gets some flow time to work on a time-consuming project, projects that always seem to get put off, or to check lots of little things off their tasks lists — but that also gives us time to have meetings to discuss ideas. It’s a concept pioneered by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a social theorist (you can watch his inspiring TED talk on the topic here). How it works, in practice We observe No Meeting Wednesdays, even with over 100 employees; when you look at our calendars, there are usually no internal meetings. As with many practices at Asana, we ask employees to practice mindfulness and encourage everyone to use judgement. There are occasions when we have to schedule meetings, for example: a job candidate is only able to come in on a Wednesday. Other times, teammates may decide to proactively schedule a working session with a teammate on a project they’d like to tackle together (for example: pair coding). We make exceptions to NMW when absolutely necessary, but we all try really hard to avoid them. Because a meeting involves more than one person, it may be hard for the meeting invitee to push back (particularly if they’re new). As such, we ensure that everyone in the company is informed about the policy but from there, trust our teammates to make an appropriate decision. Implementing NMW with your team If you want to implement a No Meeting Wednesday policy at your company, we recommend adding NMW as a recurring event for the entire staff as a gentle reminder to keep those days free. Encourage team members to use judgement when scheduling a meeting on a Wednesday, if a meeting has to happen. Results Since NMW have become a regular occurrence at Asana, we’ve noticed that our productivity, in terms of number of tasks completed and work accomplished, increases over other days of the week. Having one day focused on flow time is a simple and effective way to get teammates energized, get heads down in the work they need to or want to do, and feel that at least one day in every week, their day isn’t schedule-driven. No Meeting Wednesday is an integral part of Asana’s culture, and something everyone looks forward to. Have you tried implementing No Meeting Wednesday? We’d love to hear how it’s working for you. This article is part of a series of spotlights on how we work at Asana. Read our previous article on how to implement AoRs. (Published on the Asana blog)2
- The dos and don’ts of giving creative feedback(Originally published on Wavelength by Asana)19
- Stop the drop-bys: how to master the work request(This post was originally published on the Asana blog: How to master the work request) We’ve all had an Office Space moment: when someone drops by your desk to give you a new project and needs it by tomorrow—and it’s not greeeeat. Or maybe your designer was working on a “quick project” for sales that you didn’t even know about. Even with a great planning process, teams like design, IT, and marketing can’t always account for the needs of other departments, sudden and time-sensitive opportunities, or new work that arises as projects progress. Without a clear system for creating and tracking requests, priorities can fall to the wayside, leaving teams overwhelmed and less engaged—adding up to a less-than-ideal professional experience. "Without a clear system for creating and tracking requests, priorities can fall to the wayside, leaving teams overwhelmed and less engaged." So instead of being subject to anyone who walks by with a “quick question,” follow along to learn how to create a more productive way to file and track work. Using it, you and your team can stay on top of priorities while moving new requests forward to maximize productivity. Create a template for incoming requests A work request is any type of “ask” or to-do from around your organization for your team, as compared to project work your team is already aware of and working on. They seem easy enough, but often lack the details to be tackled effectively, getting your team off track and wasting time. Instead, you can create a better system to capture and prioritize work requests by making a request template. First, start thinking about what information is most important when making new requests of your team. For example, you might want to have requesters indicate the goals, format, timeline, or stakeholders. Next, get your template in a format that’s easy for requesters to fill out. In Asana, that could be creating a template task in a project with custom fields. You could also try a Wufoo or Google form (which both integrate with Asana.) Make sure the template is in an easily accessible place so anyone in your organization can find and use it.1
+ Show more