Productivity Mastery 103: Asana (free-to-use project management tool)

PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY

“Accountability breeds response-ability.” – Steven Covey

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Accountability is so essential to organizations because without it, collaboration is impossible. When we depend on others to push forward a team objective, our success or failure is a shared output. Whereas open communication and resource organization are tools that help improve collaboration, personal accountability is what enables it in the first place. In this context, accountability is more than just doing what you say you will do, it’s knowing what it is your supposed to do, which highlights a critical issue most small businesses face: how to properly equip staff to manage themselves on a lean operating team. In the absence of a dedicated manager whose job it is to oversee the day-to-day tasks of the team, employees have to wear multiple hats and fit various roles interchangeably. In our experience, the best way to do this is to have a clearly defined project plan that everyone can access and understand, with deliverables, reviews, & presentations clearly called out. Turns out a lot of people feel this way too, and there’s more than a few free tools to help small businesses take the planning by the horns. Our favorite? Asana.

THE TOOL

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Asana is a free-to-use online collaboration and planning tool. In their own words, “Asana helps you coordinate all the work your team does together so everyone knows what needs to get done, who’s responsible for doing it, and when it’s due.” In our experience, that couldn’t be more true: a clearly delineated task & subtask structure allows users to build a comprehensive plan. Task ownership allows the project manager to clearly define who is responsible for what. Due dates down to the smallest task clearly communicate the cascade of due dates for all team members. All of these features make for a seamless planning process, but Asana also offers a creative calendar view for easy visualization and, most importantly, clean integration with other collaboration tools such as (you guessed it) Slack and Box. This is important because Asana serves as a wonderful central tool for planning and executing your next client engagement, thanks to it’s ability to fit right in with your other free, online tools.  Like the other tools in this list, Asana is free to use with pay-to-play upgrade options that add significant marginal value to the tool but are not at all necessary to generating core value from the tool. We like to think Asana’s biggest value add is eliminating surprises by enabling us to so accurately plan our tasks and generate actionable accountability. 

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Streamlining small business operations is key to increasing productivity. From open communication to resource organization and personal accountability, there are some key elements every small business should pursue and the tools listed above can help get you there. The Audible Group does not own or claim any ownership with regard to the above imagery or video content.

For more information on increasing productivity or to learn more, please reach out to Josh Moscot jmoscot@groupaudible.com or Rachel Link rlink@groupaudible.com