The Top 4 Roadblocks to Your Team’s Productivity and How AI Can Solve Them, According to Asana’s Head of Corporate Marketing

You open your laptop on a Monday morning, and you’ve got just a few Slack messages a couple of marketing campaign you are launching on Tuesday.

After you‘ve answered these, you test your inbox and see you’ve been tagged in some slides for that very same marketing campaign.

When you’re performed responding, you hop on a Zoom name to talk with stakeholders about last-minute duties that must be accomplished for launch. Just a few of the stakeholders would really like you to electronic mail a follow-up from the assembly, so that you do.

However others would moderately you tag them within the applicable Google docs, so that you do this, too.

All of the sudden it‘s 1pm, and also you’ve performed nothing substantial in your to-do listing to get this mission launched. Your total day has been hopping out and in of assorted messaging apps, slide decks, and Zoom calls, simply making an attempt to get everybody aligned.

Sound acquainted?

I spoke with Jake Cerf, Head of Company Advertising at Asana, to untangle the most important challenges most groups face in terms of productiveness in 2024 – and how one can remedy them.

What Groups Get Improper When It Involves Productiveness

Jake empathizes with the chaos that may ensue when you do not deal with creating environment friendly processes for team-wide productiveness.

“It could possibly get chaotic,” he instructed me, including, “Earlier than I joined Asana, I mirrored again on how I spent my time coordinating with people — and it was a large number. We’d be on electronic mail, Slack, and Google docs, and slides. And also you by no means actually knew who was doing what, and when, and it was too simple to lose sight of the target we had been all after.”

Which sounds painfully relatable. Luckily, he has some tried-and-true suggestions for cleansing up your staff’s processes and creating extra scalable choices to enhance cross-functional collaboration.

1. Every staff chief must know the way their work ladders as much as company goals — and they should make it clear of their workflows.

Individuals at all times wish to know the way their work connects to broader strategic initiatives. They wish to really feel seen, valued, and know they’re making an impression. A lot of a frontrunner’s job is about ensuring persons are engaged on the suitable priorities, and aligning to objectives that transfer the needle.

That’s what makes a product like Asana so essential. Jake has a straightforward time guaranteeing he isn‘t micro-managing his staff on particular duties, and that’s as a result of in Asana he can see how every sub-task his staff is chargeable for ladders as much as the corporate’s key goals for 2024.

Moreover, to resolve for conflicting cross-department objectives, it may be useful to make use of one centralized productiveness instrument that highlights the top-down priorities for the corporate.

“As a frontrunner, a lot of our job is ensuring persons are engaged on the suitable issues, serving to unblock staff members and enabling them to have a North star. It is good for productiveness as a result of when people really feel like they’re engaged on issues that matter, they do higher work,” Jake says.

He provides, “You do not have to be as in-the-weeds on the small print. You may inform staff members the what and the why, and so they can determine the remainder out. However being clear about large image goals unlocks productiveness up, down, and throughout the group.”

In case you‘re coping with productiveness points, begin by guaranteeing every chief is aligned on the foremost firm goals for 2024 – after which process them with demonstrating how all of their staff’s tasks ladder as much as that final purpose. If a process doesn‘t match, it’s time to think about re-focusing on the actions that do.

2. Assign your AI a “function” to uplevel your staff’s productiveness.

There’s been loads of dialog surrounding AI over the previous two years, however persons are nonetheless skeptical in regards to the enhancements it may make to their day by day lives.

In truth, 62% of entrepreneurs globally imagine folks ought to use some AI of their roles. For Jake, AI has confirmed rather more helpful as a teammate moderately than only a instrument.

“My life modified drastically after I stopped prompting AI with generic requests like, ‘Please write this weblog submit‘, and as an alternative honed in on who I needed AI to be: ’Please write this weblog submit as if you happen to’re a tech author at a large-scale SaaS firm.‘”

Jake extremely recommends assigning AI a “function” when leveraging AI for productiveness.

“When groups are engaged on an vital initiative, and also you give every AI bot its personal particular function, the output is way higher. As an example you are writing a weblog submit — you possibly can assign AI to be the editor, the fact-checker, or the content material strategist.”

“Or,” He provides, “if you happen to use instruments like Asana, you’ll have entry to AI that is among the world’s biggest mission managers. It could possibly show you how to unblock points and triage requests and ensure persons are engaged on the suitable issues.”

Ideally, the productiveness instruments you leverage have already got AI capabilities built-in. If not, look into which plug-ins or exterior instruments you may use to extend effectivity.

3. Leverage AI to reduce busywork.

The antithesis of productiveness is busywork.

In case your staff is slowed down by menial duties, they probably don‘t have the vitality or time to deal with the large image goals that account for many of your staff’s impression.

That is a serious roadblock – and one that can be solved with AI.

Jake affords the instance of repurposing content material as one alternative for elevated productiveness. He says, “With AI, you possibly can take a keynote presentation and ask AI to draft a weblog submit on the keynote. Or, you possibly can take your keynote script and ask AI to design the presentation itself.”

He continues, “Discovering new avenues to extend the longevity and impression of your content material is among the greatest methods to make use of AI.”

Moreover, Jake encourages entrepreneurs to leverage AI for content material creation, in addition to extra artistic outputs like supervisor opinions, sending suggestions to teammates, riffing on concepts, function taking part in situations, and extra.

4. Have one centralized workspace for groups to work cross-functionally.

Lastly, none of that is attainable with out creating a powerful basis for environment friendly, scalable cross-functional collaboration.

Keep in mind these slide decks and Google docs and Slack messages and emails I discussed earlier? Why not attempt to put extra of your work in a single centralized place?

“Productiveness comes right down to visibility,” Jake says. “Your staff must be rowing in the identical course. Having a instrument like Asana has been tremendous useful for our staff productiveness — you want a spot the place you possibly can set your objectives after which observe all the staff’s work and maintain folks accountable.”

“Plus,” he provides, “It is essential you employ the identical centralized workspace once you’re setting technique so that you’ve got alignment across the duties and initiatives that may show you how to obtain your objectives.”

In different phrases – leaping between 30 completely different messaging and content material creation apps and instruments isn‘t conducive to long-term productiveness. As a frontrunner, it’s your job to determine tips on how to centralize as a lot as you possibly can in a single place – after which use AI to supercharge all of it.

To study extra about how HubSpot and Asana are serving to entrepreneurs drive productiveness, check out the HubSpot and Asana integration accessible right this moment.