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5 reasons I think you’ll love Asana as much as I do

Sarah · Mar 27, 2018 · 4 Comments

How do you currently manage your workflow and projects? Is your current setup working for you, or would you like to step up your game?

My #1 recommended tool for any size team is a fantastic web-based project management tool called Asana. In late 2017, PC Magazine named Asana one of the best collaboration and productivity apps for teams.

There are five core reasons why I love Asana and think you will too.

Why I love Asana:

1. Asana is easy to use.

You can get setup and started in Asana in about five minutes. In an hour or so, you can have a working tool managing your work. (I know! I can’t wait for you to finish reading this and get started also!)

Asana is structures work into Teams, Projects and Tasks and provides multiple options for viewing the same core information like list view, a kanban board view and a calendar view. You have the ability to add tags, @mentions people, projects or tasks and do some cool search-based reporting.

The core functionality is pretty straightforward and can be quickly learned by anyone who can use a web browser.

2. Asana is flexible.

If I had to rank order my absolute favorite reason to love Asana it’s the flexibility and versatility that it provides.

Asana comes out of the box as a fairly blank slate that can be customized to meet just about any team’s needs. And trust me, I’ve tried to break it working with some complex teams.

There are a handful of core ways to enter, sort and categorize information, but the possible combinations within that are endless.

Asana is a tool can work with you at whatever state you’re in. If you already have a dialed workflow and process, you can easily configure Asana to execute your existing process the best way possible.

If you kind of know what you’re doing, but are still figuring out what works best, Asana can help you figure it out. Put what you do know into Asana, and adjust as you go – it’s that flexible!

One of the more common reasons people don’t set up technology and tools to support their systems is that they don’t want to put a lot of effort into something that will be wasted when the process or the work changes. With Asana, that won’t happen. Decide that it makes more sense to work a slightly different way? Asana’s flexibility and bulk editing options work with you, not against you.

3. Asana is continually improving.

I first used Asana for a side project in early 2013, and it was very barebones. In fact, the only reason we chose to use Asana over a more robust tool was because it was free and we had zero budget for tools. In the last five years, the Asana team has continually rolled out new and improved features, along with a robust API that connects Asana with other applications for added features.

Two notable project management features not currently natively in Asana are a Gantt chart view and time tracking. Integration with Instagantt covers off on a Gantt chart view, and Asana has their own version currently in beta. If needed, you can implement time tracking and resource management with add-ons like Harvest and Float.

Based on everything I’ve seen, I’m confident the Asana team is in it for the long-haul and I’m on board.

4. Asana is FREE (or cheap).

Asana comes in two versions: Free and premium. Premium starts at $6.25 per month, per user, although there is currently a minimum of five users.

The free version is pretty impressive and can meet the needs of many users. The premium version will blow your mind. If Asana offered a premium version for fewer than 5 users, I would recommend that everyone go for the premium version. They don’t currently, so if you have fewer than 5 people in your organization, the per-user cost is higher and you’ll need to decide if it’s worth it.

5. Asana is fun!

There are unicorns! And narwals! In my experience, even the most tool-averse, skeptical teams want to use Asana, in part because it takes some of the seriousness out of managing projects and is fun to use.

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Combine fun, flexibility, ease of use and robust features, and what more could you want or need? Well, in talking to people who have used or attempted to use Asana, my beloved flexibility can actually be the hardest part.

There can be some trial and error involved in figuring out how to make Asana work best for YOU and your work. If that’s you, I’d like to help. Email me and let me know what questions you have, and how I can help you get set up for success in Asana.

How asking for help quickly can save you time and money

Sarah · Mar 26, 2018 · Leave a Comment

I had a nagging, annoying problem with my website. I spent 20 or 30 minutes trying to fix it one day and couldn’t. I then proceeded to get interrupted, ignore it and forget about it.

A few weeks later, the issue popped up again, and I’d had it. I momentarily thought about posting a rant in a blogger Facebook group (note: not the most productive or helpful solution to a problem). Or asking the FB group for help in how to fix it (note: more productive, but not ideal).

Instead, I had a crazy thought. What if I asked the technology provider for help? Crazy idea. Clearly, I’m not a big one on asking for help, but I’m learning. I had a few minutes, and I clicked the chat help with Siteground, my hosting company.

The associate quickly identified the problem and shared a link for the tutorial to fix it. That was fast and easy.

Then, before I could even say “Thanks,” he added, “But I’ve already fixed it for you.”

What?! Amazing. Why didn’t I do this weeks ago? Also, fixing the problem for me is way more than I expected based on the level of service I pay for. I was thrilled.

Then he commented again.

Naturally, fixing that unocovered another issue. Well, shoot. The customer service rep then sent me a screen shot of the problem and explained it (it went over my head). I asked what the solve was, again expecting to be sent a long how-to that would take me a chunk of time to sort out (especially on this one, when I didn’t even fully understand the problem!) Before I knew it, he had also fixed this problem for me.

Even more amazing!

In less time than it would have taken me to post a rant or complain about the issue on Facebook, the Siteground (affiliate link) customer service team had fixed the problem I knew I had – and fixed another I didn’t even know about.

I’ve written about the importance of customer service before, but it can’t be repeated too many times. Customer service can make or break a business.

As a businessperson: Surprise and delight your customers. Go above and beyond, especially when it doesn’t cost you, and you’ll create loyal customers. In this case, the customer service rep could have spent 5 minutes with me and left me to fix the problem on my own, but took another 5 minutes and fixed it himself. In so doing, he created a loyal customer at an insanely low cost to the company.

Don’t forget that your customers can be internal too. How to you respond to requests from those you work with? Is there something you can do easily to go above and beyond the initial ask that would take the requester a lot longer? Strategically doing this can build credibility, goodwill and relationships that have far-reaching impact on your work and your career.

As a customer: Don’t be shy about asking for help. I’m not naturally a person to ask questions, preferring to figure things out on my own. Instead I spent at least 30 minutes of my own time non-productively and then left a problem lingering for weeks. Since I’m not a website technical expert, I could have decided to ask for help much easier. At a minimum, I would have had clear instructions for fixing the problem! In this instance, don’t be me. Ask for help!

Go above and beyond with customer service and you’ll create loyal customers at an insanely low cost to the company.

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What can you do to go above and beyond today?

How to make it look easy with a keystone habit

Sarah · Mar 25, 2018 · Leave a Comment

My first “real” job post college graduation was in retail management. If there’s any place that desperately needs keystone habits and clearly defined systems and routines, it’s a retail establishment with primarily low-wage and high turnover employees.

I was an assistant store manager for a now-defunct mid-level retailer. (Anyone remember Mervyn’s? If not, think of Kohl’s, just not done as well. Thus, why they’re out of business.)

In my year and a half there, I worked in three stores, and the single biggest thing I learned was the importance of having a keystone habit.

Store #2 was my first official placement and was a store known for having many challenges. Geographically, it was the farthest away from the rest of the stores in the district. All of the other stores were within a two hour radius, and this store was four hours away in a relatively small town. This meant the store historically had lower turnover and drew management from local folks who rose up in the ranks.

When I arrived, I was one of three brand-new assistant managers. One was a freshly promoted local gal who had started out as a part-time sales associate. Another had just completed the trainee program with me.

The employees in this store were some of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. Yet for some reason, the store always struggled and just never gelled. You know when something feels like it’s so.much.harder than it should be? That was this store to an extreme.

Our lead store manager was big on rah-rah initiatives and rallying the troops. We cheered, we struggled, we cajoled, we struggled, we came up with elaborate incentive programs, we struggled. There were truck unloading initiatives and customer response time initiatives and special snacks and presentations when district leadership had planned visits. We gave employees leeway to figure out how to creatively solve their problems and ended up with multiple half-baked executions that took a whole lot of focus and energy.

It was miserable.

I knew it was harder than it needed to be, but didn’t have the experience or insight to understand why until I left there and landed in Store #3.

Store #3 was the polar opposite Store #2. It ran like a well oiled machine.

What was different?

Steen had a singular obsession, a keystone habit, that reigned above everything else:

Recovery.

In retail terms, recovery is straightening, organizing and generally getting the store ready for customers. This includes hanging items on the proper fixtures, facing the correct way, and evenly spaced.

Recover can be divided into “rapid recovery” and “detailed recovery.”

Rapid recovery is a very quick first pass through to get things good enough. When doing rapid recovery, ensuring alike products are on the same rack and facing the right direction is the goal. When doing detailed recovery, the goal is to make the racks look perfect, in size order, including finger-spacing hangers so the product is perfectly, evenly spaced on the rack.

The reality in a low-budget store is that man-hours are scarce. For many hours of the day, there may be only one person responsible for an entire department, and that includes manning the cash register along with keeping the entire area neat and put together.

Steen’s single-minded focus on recovery was simple:

If you weren’t actively with a customer, you were recovering.

Recovery had a flow: Rapid recover the first three fixtures back from the aisle, then a very quick sweep of remaining rows to ensure there was nothing on the floor, hangers sticking wildly out of placer or other glaring errors.

Once basic recovery was done, a team member could go back through their department with a focus on detailed recovery. And even if the team was busy enough that they didn’t get to detailed recovery, the store was still generally put together and in order.

This system was genius.

Everyone in the store was clear exactly what their priorities were at all times.

When someone had a minute of downtime, they didn’t need to find a manager and ask what to work on. They already knew. There weren’t elaborate planning meetings for “what are we going to focus on this month?” It was recovery, recovery, recovery.

Charles Duhigg, in The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business says “keystone habits [don’t] depend on getting every single thing right, but instead rel[y] on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers.”

Recovery was the keystone habit that enabled everything else in the store to function properly.

Trucks could be unloaded and new product moved to the floor with ease because there was general order everywhere and truck teams didn’t need to straighten as they went. Breaks and time off could be covered easily without elaborate handover plans made.

A whole lot less communication was needed, because everyone followed the same habit to achieve the goal of a well-run store.

The obsession with recovery was a single-minded focus ingrained as habit. This habit freed up literal time and brain space to be proactive and get ahead rather than constantly coming from behind.

If you don’t already have a single-minded focus, what is one habit you can put in place as a keystone to unlock your potential?

The one thing that can make or break your meeting

Sarah · Mar 24, 2018 · Leave a Comment

How many times have you walked into a meeting without really having any idea what the meeting was about, what you were supposed to prepare, or what would be expected of you in the meeting?

Yep, same here.

A meeting agenda is one of the most critical components of a meeting, and often one of the most overlooked. I’ve seen (and sent!) far too many meeting invites that have nothing in the body of the meeting invite and often have rather cryptic subject lines.

Clearly identifying the meeting agenda before a meeting starts can make or break the success of a meeting.

A meeting agenda should be planned and articulated before a meeting is scheduled and included in the invitation to a meeting.

If there are valid reasons that you need to schedule time for a meeting before you have an agenda finalized, one easy solution is to include in the body of the meeting invite, “Meeting placeholder. Agenda to follow.” Then follow up with the agenda as soon as possible.

What goes into a meeting agenda? Let’s look at the questions a meeting agenda answers.

Seven questions a great meeting agenda answers:

1. Who really needs to attend this meeting?

In a company with a meeting-heavy culture, it’s common to be invited to meetings that overlap, and to be invited to so many meetings that there is no time left to get actual work done.

For volunteer groups, the line can be even blurrier as meeting invites can be a shotgun approach to attract anyone interested in a topic.

As a meeting owner, a well thought out agenda helps determine who should be included on a meeting invite in the first place. While it is important to ensure the right people are in the room, don’t fall into the trap of over-inviting anyone who may happen to come to mind.

There are likely potential attendees who need to know the information coming out of the meeting but don’t need to be present at the meeting. They are perfect candidates to get a written meeting recap.

As an attendee, a well thought out meeting agenda can help you take ownership of your time and attendance by giving you critical information about the importance of the meeting to you at this time.

2. How long should the meeting last?

An agenda should spell out what needs to take place in the meeting and how long each segment of the meeting should take.

Yes, meetings are scheduled for set blocks of time, but it’s common for meeting schedulers to be unrealistic with the time they have allotted. Has someone scheduled an hour for a conversation that should take 20 minutes? Or scheduled 30 minutes for a topic known to take 2 hours?

As a meeting owner, think through how long a meeting should actually take first, then look at available times to meet. Do you have a meeting participant known to be long-winded? Is it a complex topic? Is it a simple topic? (If it’s super simple, does it even need to be a meeting, or can the outcome be accomplished via email or other technology?)

As a meeting attendee, trust that the meeting owner has adequately allotted time for the topics that need to be covered in the meeting. If you don’t, consider suggesting an adjustment to the meeting owner prior to the start of the meeting.

3. Will the meeting start on time? Early? Late?

The company culture may dictate whether all meetings start exactly on time, or it may be common for meetings to start 5-10 minutes late. If external partners are attending a meeting, they may arrive 10-15 minutes early and the meeting scheduler should account for that when planning schedules. There’s also always that person who you know will be late.

Particularly when you’re running from meetings scheduled back to back, that 5-10 minute swing to start early or late can have a big impact on the flow of your day.

Meeting owners, review your schedule and ensure that you have adequate prep and setup time before a meeting starts. Depending on the format and formality of the meeting, you may want to consider scheduling yourself 5-15 minutes before a meeting specifically to set up.

Meeting attendees, find regular time to review your schedule and ensure you are planning enough time to get too and from each meeting that you need to attend. Proactively make a plan for tight transitions.

4. What is the type and format of the meeting?

There are several distinct meeting types that include topics like brainstorming, information sharing, alignment and decision-making, formal reviews, training, team building and more.

Meeting owners, are you clear what type of meeting you’re conducting? If not, getting clarity on this can help shape the agenda.

Meeting attendees, the type of meeting likely won’t be explicitly stated, but should be implied and give you clarity on your role in the meeting.

5. How formal will the meeting be?

The number of attendees and who those attendees are can change the tone of a meeting dramatically. A meeting with 2-3 peers to brainstorm is a completely different thing than a formal review 15 people in the room including senior leadership or external partners.

Meeting owners, understand how the meeting attendees will impact the formality of a meeting. If you want a meeting to be more or less formal than naturally indicated by attendees, proactively address this and set expectations accordingly.

Meeting attendees, pay attention to who else will be in the room and act accordingly.

6. Where and how will the meeting be conducted?

Will the meeting be in person? A teleconference? A video call? A text-based chat using a technology solution? A mix of multiple types?

Meeting owners, have you booked the conference room or reserved and set up the call line or video technology? Do you know how to operate a presentation screen or any other tool needed to run the meeting? Do you have a backup plan in case your technology glitches?

Meeting attendees, do you know where you’re going and how you’re connecting to a meeting? If there’s technology involved, do you know how to use it?

7. What does each attendee need to be prepared for and bring to the meeting?

Is this a meeting where you need to “bring your brain” or prepare a presentation? If you need to prepare a presentation, is it casual or formal? Does information need to be submitted ahead of the meeting to be compiled for discussion? These clues may be hidden in a meeting agenda, or they may be explicitly stated.

Meeting owners, be upfront and identify what attendees should prepare and bring to a meeting. If you expect materials to be submitted ahead of time, clearly identify how and when materials should be submitted.

Meeting attendees, are you clear what you need to prepare and bring? If not, ask!

Clearly identifying the meeting agenda before a meeting starts can make or break the success of a meeting.

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Meetings and meeting agendas range from super simple to super complex. No matter the size of the meeting, the importance of the agenda should not be overlooked. Spending time crafting or reviewing a meeting agenda before the meeting starts ensures that all attendees are aligned and prepared for a successful meeting outcome.

The most important business tool you need

Sarah · Mar 21, 2018 · Leave a Comment

Which would you rather have? A three-inch binder with every single thing you could possibly need to know in detailed spreadsheets, flow charts and documentation? Or a one-page cheatsheet that gives you critical information to get done exactly what you need to do?

I don’t know about you, but 99% of the time, I choose the cheat sheet.

Years ago, I had the official job title of Business Process Improvement Analyst, which meant that I worked with sales and marketing teams to analyze the work they were doing and figure out how to do it more efficiently.

We started by spending a full year conducting in depth interviews and documenting work with complex flowcharts, spreadsheets, roles and responsibility charts and more.

It was highly informative.
It was comprehensive, to the extreme.
It was an overwhelming volume of information.
It was very ugly.

If the point was to have detailed documentation in case the entire team got hit by a bus, and there was no one left in the world who knew how to get the work done, the documentation fit the bill perfectly.

If the goal was usable information for teams to improve their work and drive decision-making, it failed horribly.

A reference manual has it’s place, but it wasn’t a useful tool for getting day to day work done.

As you’re creating documentation, consider the following:

What is the purpose of the documentation?

A reference manual calls for far more detailed information. The intent is for someone to reference detailed, specific, nuanced information as needed, not to use as a day-to-day guide for doing work.
A training manual needs enough detail for a user to do the work they need to do, and is likely laid out in a format that builds upon levels of information.
A cheat sheet provides a clear, concise overview of the critical information needed to do a job.

Who is the audience? What information do they already have?

An audience completely new to the information is going to need to start at the most basic level and need information that explains all the details. You’ll also likely want to include a glossary of terms.
An audience that’s already got the basics down can skim over higher level information.
If you’ve got an audience that’s already fully trained, short reference cards and cheat sheets are the most useful.

Back to the year-long interview and documentation exercise:

Once we finally finished the documentation, we printed a few dozen copies and gave them to key members of the team. They were fantastic dust collectors. Every few months, my boss would send me around with updated printouts of key sections. I’m pretty sure my fingerprints were the only things removing the dust from the covers.

Somewhere along the way, I also created a one-page laminated half-sheet calendar with key dates and summary descriptions of major milestones and meetings.

It was the single most useful piece of that entire year’s worth of work.

Soon, the laminated one sheet calendars and key info were hanging on cubicle walls all over the company. The same executives that had binders gathering dust in their offices carried copies of the laminated version in their notebooks and regularly referenced the info in meetings.

(Note: If you’re printing and laminating any major reference item, include the date printed and/or a version number. I learned this the hard way the first time I updated it and tried to ensure everyone had the updated version!)

By concisely sharing exactly the information teams truly needed to get their work done, we created a simple tool that became a vital part of the day to day workflow. What simple cheatsheet can you create and implement today?