hey everyone my name is Karla I'm on the
customer education team here at asana
and as you can see just like many of you
I am currently working from home we know
that a lot of teams have had to adapt
pretty quickly to working remotely
together over these past few weeks and
so today I want to share 10 practical
tips that you and your team can put into
use right away to help you stay
connected and clear on your priorities
no matter where you're working from so
I'll go ahead and hide my video so that
we can focus on the slides and hope that
you and your team find something useful
here
so first let's talk about what's
different about working remotely here
are five factors to consider the first
is work visibility and clarity so when
we're working remotely we can't just
turn to a colleague for a chat or
quickly see what everyone's doing and
they also can't see what we're doing
so this sometimes creates lags
miscommunication or even micromanagement
or trust issues and I want to focus on
this one for just a minute because asana
really solves for this particular pain
point by design having a single
transparent system of record to clarify
and coordinate who's doing what by when
and a single source of truth for
interconnected work is really at the
heart of what makes asana so powerful
and many of the common features in asana
really support creating clarity and
visibility just right off the bat so
custom fields keep everyone on the same
page as priorities and progress changes
portfolios give you a bird's eye view of
progress towards broader initiatives and
even the basic design of my tasks an
inbox creates a single source of truth
for the work on your plate and updates
from teammates the second factor to
consider is delayed feedback loops so
since work is often done asynchronously
feedback can take longer to give and
receive
and as a result progress and learning
can sometimes feel slow the third is
contextual cues so when we're in person
we can see that someone's busy in a
meeting or doing something else when
we're at a distance it's hard to figure
out the meaning of silence or of a lack
of response and it's hard to hear tone
in written communication the fourth is
isolation
so working remotely can feel you know
pretty remote sometimes so without a
deliberate dedication to building
connection a feeling of disconnect can
sometimes seep in and then the last
factor is workflow or just flow being in
the state of flow while working each
time you start to work in a new place
your brain needs to create a noose
of triggers and sequences to become
productive and so at home now all of a
sudden you're handling a lots of lots of
different and new kinds of distractions
you know family pets TV other loved ones
other kinds of things going on around
you so I've represented each of these
factors with an emoji on this slide as
you can see and you're going to see
these emojis show up throughout the rest
of the deck as we talk through each tip
and kind of relate each one back to
which of these factors or pain points it
helps to alleviate first I want to talk
about what role can a work management
system like asana actually play in the
big picture and helping remote teams be
successful in our recent anatomy of work
remote teams survey we discovered that
employees using a work management
platform while working from home
actually felt significantly more well
supported by their manager and more
productive so there's a real opportunity
here to keep your team connected
supported and doing their best work even
if you can't all be in the same place
great so let's dig into some specific
tips and best practices our first five
tips have to do with how your team
collaborates together in asana team tip
number five is to use the team
conversations feature to keep everybody
on the same page so if you visit your
team's home page you can create a
conversation separate from any specific
project that will send an inbox
notification to everyone on the team
this is a really great way to make sure
everyone is getting the same updates as
well as create a record of those updates
in a single location for future
reference unlike slack posts or emails
that can get buried after they're sent
so this tip really helps increase
clarity and also combat isolation
keeping everyone on the same page
team tip number four is to use project
status updates to keep the team up to
date on progress and blockers so status
updates are similar to conversations but
they're focused on the work happening in
a single project so only members of that
project get notified you can create a
status update by clicking into the
progress tab below the title of your
project
status updates increase visibility and
help to shorten those delayed feedback
loops you can request a status update
from a project owner at any time from
the progress tab so you don't have to
wait for a weekly meeting and again you
have that single record of all the
project updates in one place in case you
need to refer to them later our third
tip for teams is to use asana to run
your shared meetings so creating an
agenda project in asana gives the team a
shared space to collect discussion items
throughout the week transparency about
what's on people's minds and then the
best part discussion items can be
instantly converted into actionable
tasks on people's to-do lists showing up
in their my tasks which we'll talk about
later
again this tip increases visibility and
clarity and it also helps your team stay
in flow moving seamlessly from
discussion to action with accountability
check out our templates for meeting
agendas and a bunch of other use cases
at asana comm slash templates team tip
number two is to set up integrations
with the other tools that your team uses
our teams are using so many tools these
days the threat of what we call tool
fatigue is real so get clear with your
team on what type of work belongs in
which tools and then make it really easy
for your tools to talk to each other so
work can stay connected between
different teams working in different
places as an example here's what our
Gmail integration looks like in action
so you can capture tasks directly from
your Gmail inbox so action items don't
get lost in those lengthy email threads
integrating asana with your other tools
helps to shorten those feedback loops
when your tools are talking directly to
each other and you can also stay more in
flow with less context switching you can
check out asana comm slash apps to see
the full suite of apps and integrations
we offer there's an integration
most common tools your team probably
uses some of the most popular we see are
again Gmail slack
also Outlook calendar JIRA and
Salesforce and finally our number one
tip for teams is to create shared
conventions around how your team is
using asana for example agreeing on how
you'll name projects and tasks who
should set due dates what a thumbs up
means this is really about creating a
shared language in asana so you can
spend less time interpreting what your
teammate meant and more time in flow on
work we actually covered this topic in
depth in our virtual training on how to
help your team adopt asana where we dig
into specific conventions around
creating collaborating and communicating
about work on the right here you can see
some examples of real conventions that
one of our customers created and shared
with his team during their asana rollout
and you can dive deeper into this topic
again if you join us at that help your
team adopt asana webinar so having
shared conventions reduces friction to
keep you in flow and this is the first
tip we've talked about that helps
address the issue of contextual cues
when working with a distributed team if
you've got clear agreements with your
team ahead of time there's no need to
spend as much time guessing or reading
into what someone meant when they
assigned you a task so you're just
codifying some of those context cues
right into a sauna ok let's recap our
top five tips for teams they are number
five
using team conversations to share and
track announcements and information for
use status updates to report on project
progress 3 create meeting agendas in
asana to convert your discussion items
to action items for integrating asana
with your other common tools and then 5
setting conventions and agreements
around how your team will use a sauna
together
now let's talk about some tips that you
can use as an individual to support your
own workflow and stay connected to your
team number five on this list is to use
the my tasks and inbox features so many
people just use asana to plan and manage
projects and miss out on accessing the
full power of managing those projects in
conjunction with my tasks in inbox so
many of us are probably familiar with
using projects and tasks and maybe even
integrations on the mobile app to
capture work in asana but the full cycle
of managing work also includes needing
to organize what work will do when and
track updates on how work is moving
forward so if you're working across
multiple projects which most of us are
my tasks gives you a one-stop-shop to
see everything you need to do across all
those projects in a single place this is
where you'll organize your daily work
and prioritize what needs to happen when
your asana inbox on the other hand is a
running record of everything you need to
know all the updates on work happening
around you that you're connected to so
this is one of the biggest benefits of
asana what you need to do and what you
need to know are separated out and
organized in the context of the work
unlike long email threads or slack
conversations where these two can get
mixed together and balls can get dropped
so my tasks in inbox really helps you
get clear on your priorities as well as
stay focused and in flow on the work
that you've decided needs to get done
that day tip number four is to make good
use of your asana profile so this is a
space you can use to communicate with
your teammates about your availability
your working hours your pronouns email
whatever you and your team decide that
you want to include a lot of us are
working different hours than we normally
are in the office and so this is a great
place to drop that information and give
your team some more context about when
they can expect you to be available you
can access your profile settings from
the drop down menu if you click on your
photo or initials in the upper
right corner of any asana screen in
addition to increasing clarity between
you and your teammates this tip also
helps with giving more proactive context
cues helping to demystify what's
happening on the other side of the
screen tip number three here is similar
to our third tip for teams but in this
case the recommendation is to use asana
projects for your one-on-one meeting
agendas with colleagues so you'll get
all the same benefits as that team
agenda that shared visibility into
what's on the other person's mind before
you meet and a quick and easy way to
convert discussion items into action you
can even multi-home tasks from other
projects into your agenda so you have
all the context right there in the
meeting linking that same task to both
projects if there are topics you discuss
every week
you could consider even adding a
recurring task that'll show up every
time you meet so using asana for
one-on-ones helps to increase clarity
between you and your coworkers and it
also helps to shorten feedback loops
because sometimes you can just resolve
or discuss an item asynchronously in the
comments of a task instead of needing to
wait until your actual one-on-one you
can read more about using asana for
one-on-ones and lots of other specific
use cases at asana comm slash examples
our second last tip for individuals is
to proactively manage your notifications
and availability if you've got more work
flowing through asana
all of a sudden since your team started
working remotely you may also notice
that you have a whole bunch of new email
notifications landing in your inbox so
you may want to consolidate those
notifications into a single weekly
report or even turn them off altogether
if your team is pretty consistent about
checking asana you can also decide
whether you want to receive browser
notifications either staying in the loop
or opt out and helping you stay more in
flow just depending on what you're
working on and you can also set up
do-not-disturb hours for yourself when
you don't want asana to notify you so
the main benefits here are really about
staying
floo and minimizing interruptions as
well as providing some of those context
cues in the form of your do not disturb
ours so people know when to expect and
not to expect a response from you and
finally our top tip for individuals
working on a distributed team with asana
is to build really healthy daily habits
around checking and updating work that's
happening in asana
especially your projects my tasks and
inbox so teams really start to feel the
magic of this tool when they can get
into a consistent responsive rhythm
working together and can really feel
work moving forward the best way to do
this is to create consistent routines
one of our customer success managers
blocks off time at the start of each day
for coffee and my tasks where he
organizes and prioritizes what he'll
work on for the day over his morning cup
of coffee
so these kinds of habits help reduce the
time of those feedback loops when you
know you can count on teammates to be
checking every day on a consistent
cadence and also combat some of the
unpredictability of a new work
environment helping you get and stay in
flow that brings us to the end of our
list of 10 tips so we already reviewed
these five tips for teams so let's just
do a quick recap of our tips for
individuals at the five spot benefiting
from the full cycle power of asana by
managing your - dues through my tasks
and staying on top of updates within box
number four is to use your profile to
communicate your working hours and other
kinds of work expectations or
preferences to your teammates
number three is using asana for your
one-on-one meeting agendas - getting
proactive about managing your
notification settings and finally
building strong daily habits around
checking and responding to work in asana
we hope you found these tips helpful and
hopefully you found something that you
can go ahead and put into practice
either on your own or with your team
right away to wrap us up I want to leave
you with a couple of reason
and next steps to support your team
while working remotely first our team
has pulled together an entire resources
page dedicated to our best thinking and
best resources focused on remote work so
check out that URL on your screen asana
comm slash resources / - work - check
out all of those resources in one place
if you're new to asana or looking to
brush up on your skills or maybe you
have some teammates who are newer to
using asana you might consider joining
one of our other virtual trainings or
inviting again inviting your teammates
who might be newer you can find all of
those at Asin a forward slash training
this URL on your screen thank you so
much for joining us today we hope you
found some tips and some advice that you
feel like you can take back to your team
and start making you sub right away