How do your executives interface with Asana?

How do your executives / management teams interface with Asana? Since executives are not in the day to day Tasks, how do you report back to them and keep them engaged?

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Hi Amy. One of the best ways you can report back to executives/managers is by using the “Progress” tab at the top of each project. On this page you can set the colour status of the project and comment about the general progress of the project. The executive will be notified and can add this project to their dashboard where they’ll be able to quickly review a number of project statuses and see graphs of task progress.

Please let me know if you have any more questions. If you’re interested in improving your use of Asana further or want to discuss team training, please feel free to book a free 30-minute introductory call with me to discuss consulting options.

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In the organizations I have worked for Advanced Reports has been the key. I have managers and executives explain what they want to see such as late tasks, custom fields, like Green-Yellow-Red and they can pretty much monitor what they want. I also think that @paulminors post was very good on this also.

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Hehe @paulminors - @Amy_Lee is a Customer Success Manager at Asana :slight_smile:

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@Amy_Lee,

I’m a manager and for those projects where I have no tasks, I use the dashboard and look at the color status. I also use a 1:1 Project and have my employee put the high priority tasks on there for discussion. I also have saved searches for incomplete tasks and completed tasks so I can track without having to send an email asking for an update.

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Haha, @Alexis completely didn’t realise :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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I keep it pretty simple as my section of the org chart is the only one using Asana. The most frequent thing I do on larger projects is just sort the tasks by date and PDF print that view. When I check in with the CEO it gives her a super easy “what’s coming next” list and roughly when she should expect to see certain deliverables from me.

I also use the 1:1 meeting check in concept for my direct reports and love it. Highly recommend if you are reading this and are not doing it - do it!

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HI,

I have often done it very similar to @James_Carl.
I ask what the executive wants to see, and build him a search report which he can star.

I once did also an onboarding for an executive to explain him, how his employees use Asana and how he can use it and support his staff.

I usually prepare Roadmap projects with the most important Projects/task for a certain time, usually 1 year.
Moreover, I use Instagantt a lot to display these Roadmap projects or any other projects which are of particular interest. Here is the great advantage that you can show the executive, that if he does not support the resources for a certain project, which other dependant projects are also shifted to the future. I also like to label and colorcode projects which have a certain dependency on other departments to show potential blockers.

In addition, I keep a 1on1 for the executive on me, even though he is not using Asana, it shows him how we use it in our teams and I have also all my points and questions for him, if he has some spontaneous 10 minutes for me :slight_smile:

And last but not least, if the executive has an idea I create a task for it and label it, so if he asks again about it, I can immediately create a view to show him the progress of his ideas :slight_smile:

Best
Sebastian

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It’s fun hearing how organized you all are! For what it’s worth here are the key ways I interface with leadership in Asana:

  • Add them as collaborators on specific projects and tasks + modify notification settings so it doesn’t feel spammy to them

  • Status updates that are strategic and to the point

  • Comment on tasks/projects/conversations of which the executive is a member and add my or my team’s insights. Similarly, tag them or add them as a collaborator to relevant conversations that they should know about or would find valuable.

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Like @paulminors, we use the weekly Progress Report. Sometimes 2 and 3 overs aren’t on the team…not necessarily a bad thing. So for them to receive this report we adopted a simple CC: @2Over, @3Over convention at the bottom of the Progress Report.

So far the dashboard hasn’t take off at that tier but at my level still having multiple projects I use it similar to @Alex_K to spot the R/Y/G items.

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Hi @Amy_Lee,
I saw your post and i believe we’re half way to create what you’re looking for.

We’ve been working on a productivity solution to help track progress for projects and individuals who use Asana.

Our focus with the next line of additions is to create a dashboard / widget for executives to get a progress snapshot overview in real time at any moment.

currently we’re in early beta, but already fully functioning.
i’m certain it’ll provide at least some of the features you’re missing with regards to overview of projects and individual / team work load.

we’re happy to receive feedback, you can help us design the product around your own needs.

If you’re interested, please contact me directly Itai@dometrix.co and I’d be to happy provide more information and a link to get started.

Thanks,
Itai

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If you think of any great report to use for executives, make sure to ping me so I can add them to đź’« Advanced search & the best reports

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